Thursday, October 29, 2009

The dog is a domesticated form of the Gray Wolf

Seems like I bungled my post on the Jaycee Dugard kidnapping.... unable to see the forest for the trees, so focused on synchromystic jibba-jabba that I neglected to note the obvious.

When I spent so much time on the name Dugard--"from the garden"--and thinking only of Jesus' night of anguish in the garden of Gethsemane, how could I have missed the Garden of Eden? Probably because I'm currently involved in a dispute with neighbors which has in fact left me sleepless and anguished. Although it is a matter of beams and nails, my crucifixion doesn't seem to be imminent.

If I could see beyond my own nose I might have noticed that Dugard's story can be seen in the terms of the Eden myth. Sexuality and the loss of innocence. It was the Gid who pointed this out to me so I leave it there, as a challenge to the Gid to lay it all out for us. Let the preacher's kid untangle it!

The second (at least!) point of neglect is the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood. I warbled on about St. Thérèse and Anne Frank and forgot to go into this gem of a tale. Worst of all, I'd thought of it and then decided, nah, fuggit. Then this morning I awoke to read a story about Canadian folk singer Taylor Mitchell, a young woman of 19 who was killed by coyotes while walking in the woods and then after thinking "holy shit that's horrible," I remembered the tale.

So, here goes. Apparently the tale was told in the 14th c. by peasants in both France and Italy and may have roots in Eastern or "Oriental" tales with similar themes. There are many versions; sometimes the girl is eaten and sometimes she escapes; sometimes involuntary cannibalism occurs. Sometimes the wolf is a werewolf or an ogre. Sexual overtones abound.

The first written version was published by Frenchman Charles Perrault in 1697. In his version the girl is eaten and there the story ends. A moral tacked onto the end explains that the story is a warning to "good girls" to resist the sexual advances of men.

Since Perrault, many variations have appeared but most know the version as told by the Brothers Grimm.

The Grimm version is almost certainly a re-telling of Perault's except in the end, where a hunter after the wolf's skin saves the girl and her grandmother. In this version the grandmother and the girl are swallowed whole by the wolf, but emerge unharmed after the hunstman cuts the beast open. This ending sees to have been taken from yet another tale. The Grimms also wrote a sequel in which grandmother and the girl trap and kill another wolf with a cunning ruse: they drown him after luring him with a pot of water which had been used to cook sausages.

Many interpretations have been made of the fairy tale, only a few of which I'll mention here. Obviously, wolf attacks were a serious problem in the Middle Ages, so it may have simply began as a cautionary tale to young kids, much like stories of La Llorona are thought to have begun as a way to scare kids away from dangerous waterways.

Alan Dundes has analyzed the tale and interpreted it as the story of a girl who leaves home and in various actions crosses a threshold; she emerges from the belly of the beast as a woman. In another Freudian analysis, Bruno Bettelheim sees it as a rebirth; the child is reborn coming from the wolf, her emotions liberated.

Yet another interpretation sees the story as a warning against falling into the trap of prostitution; supporters of this theory note that the red cloak was a common symbol of hookers in 17th c. France. Less pernicious perhaps is the idea that the story represents sexual awakening. "In this interpretation, the red cloak symbolizes the blood of the menstrual cycle, braving the "dark forest" of womanhood. Or the cloak could symbolize the hymen....In this case, the wolf threatens the girl's virginity. The anthropomorphic wolf symbolizes a man, who could be a lover, seducer or sexual predator...."

We would argue that the pedophile and the kid-snatcher has replaced the Big Bad Wolf as the ultimate danger of our time, lurking in the forest after the sun goes down, ready to pounce; the former is the metaphor for the latter. Indeed the wolf has always had a connotation of sexual aggressiveness. The leering wolf-whistle as the statuesque blond walks past the construction site, Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf (I'm on the hunt I'm after you....) All of these sexual wolf metaphors may derive from this very tale or others like it; the wolf and sexual danger have become intrinsically linked. Wikipedia offers a brief summary of modern adaptations, such as popular songs, cartoons and fiction in which the sexuality of the tale is explored.

Blatant eroticism has been a trope of the vampire tale since Bram Stoker. Less so perhaps for the werewolf but nonetheless, there is clearly a brute sexuality to the lycanthrope. A normal man goes about his everyday business until the full moon appears. In the maiden-mother-crone cycle of pagan moon-lore, the full moon represents the point when the woman is most fertile, full, bountiful. "Mother" may be the appellation but the implication is fertility and thus sexuality. An in the presence of the full woman our mild-mannered lycanthrope turns into an uncontrollable beast with an immense hunger for flesh. While not universally true, the werewolf in European cultures is usually a man.

According to NASA, however, neither June 10, 1991 (Dugard kidnapping) nor November 22, 1976 (Callaway kidnapping) were full moons; though certainly a beast, we can rule out lycanthropy in Garrido's case!

Wikipedia again makes the point that certain modern interpretations of the tale resemble "animal bridegroom" stories such as The Frog Prince and Beauty and the Beast. This latter is perhaps even more telling than the tale of Riding Hood. In the popular Disney film, the Beast first holds young Belle's father as a prisoner but agrees to free him if Belle agrees to take his place. Although coarse and full of anger, the Beast treats Belle kindly, slowly revealing a more sensitive side. Given her freedom, Belle returns of her own volition to save the Beast from his tormentors. She has fallen in love with the Beast, and her tears transforms him back into a handsome young Prince. Cue the dancing candelabra; they live happily ever after.

One might reasonably construe this as a glorification of the Stockholm syndrome. Given the prevalence of the fairy tale in our culture, it shouldn't be so surprising that Dugard never seemed to try and escape her captor. We speak of her as being imprisoned, but it seems she had some degree of freedom, working in Garrido's printshop, interacting with the public. Her children have been described as fairly well-adjusted and clever. Not exactly feral kids locked in a cage for years. Disney's celebrated version of the film was released on November 13, 1991. A week and a day before the Dugard kidnapping!

In both Little Red Riding Hood and the Beauty and the Beast, there is an explicit danger in the forest. Folklorists tell us that this is a trope dating back to the Middle Ages where the forest--place of darkness and danger--is juxtaposed against the village as a place of safety. Put in other words, between the wild and the domesticated, the savage and the tame. In French we can speak of the dusk, or at times the dawn, as "entre chien et loup," literally "between dog and wolf." The night and all its attendant dangers versus the safety of the light of day. These liminal periods put in stark contrast the nature of the wild and the domesticated; they are transitions between states of being. The Wolf in Riding Hood you will recall, dresses itself in Grandma's nightdress and bonnet in order to fool Little Red. And what is the Beast but a lycanthrope stuck in his animal state?

Hunter Thompson brought the following quote by Samuel Johnson to many peoples' attention: "He who makes a beast of himself avoids the pain of being a man." I always thought Thompson was explaining, even advocating, his particular kind of behavior. Now I'm not sure that it isn't merely scorn, or an impersonal observation. Men are dogs, they say. And they are right.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Half past three in the Garden of Good and Evil

We've been grappling with this one for a while and we're not sure if any of this means anything outside the fishbowl of idiosyncratic free-association.

On June 10, 1991 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped and was missing for over 18 years. In August 2009 she reappeared and her alleged kidnappers Philip and Nancy Garrido (née Bocanegra) were arrested. The pair are currently awaiting trial and Ms. Dugard seems to be adjusting to her new life--back with her family, including the two daughters she bore while living in a complex of tents and sheds in Garrido's backyard.

The details of this case are indeed remarkable and fascinating. But what is it about this case which drew our attention for LoS?

Let's start with the names. "Dugard" is a French place name meaning "from" or "of the garden." Dugard was born in Garden City, California and the family went to Antioch, where the crime took place, not long after. After her abduction, Jaycee Dugard lived in a backyard, or garden prison.

The name Jaycee is also unusual. According to some baby-name websites Jaycee is merely a name coming from the initials J.C. One even points out that it's an acronym for Jesus Christ. As if necessary. Hardly anyone in the English (or Spanish and French) speaking world could hear those initials and not think of Jesus.

Jaycee is also considered a variant of the name Jayce, itself short for Jason, a name of Greek origin meaning "healer." Jason also appears in the Bible as a possible variation of Joshua.

This brings us back to Jesus. Wikipedia:

The English name Joshua is a rendering of the Hebrew: יהושע‎ "Yehoshua," meaning "YHWH is Salvation," "YHWH delivers," or "YHWH rescues" from the Hebrew root ישע, "salvation," "to deliver/be liberated," or "to be victorious". It often lacks a Hebrew letter vav (ו) after the shin (ש), allowing a reading of the vocalization of the name as Hoshea (הוֹשֵׁעַ) - the name is described in the Torah as having been originally Hoshea before being changed to Yehoshua by Moses (Numbers 13:16).

"Jesus" is the Anglicized transliteration of the Hellenized transliteration of "Yehoshua". In the Septuagint, all instances of "Yehoshua" are rendered as "ιησου" (Iesou/Jesus), the closest Greek pronunciation of the Hebrew.

Jesus, of course, spent his own time of anguish in a garden--the Garden of Gethsemane (lit. "oil-press"), where "being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." Luke 22:43–44. This was of course on the eve of his crucifixion.

Jaycee (J.C.) in the garden. By process of association we can link one little girl's captivity with one of the cornerstone myths of the Western edifice. In so doing Jaycee Dugard follows in the footsteps of a whole series of suffering little girls, now sanctified.

France, in particular, loves its little-girl martyrs. In the region of Toulouse, for example, every church has a shrine to Saints Jeanne D'Arc, Germaine of Pibrac, Thérèse de Lisieux and Bernadette Soubiros. These count among the most popular Saints in France.

Western literature has pitched in, giving us the sufferings of Alice and Dorothy. Anne Frank may as well be a saint in her own right.

Jesus never went to Antioch, but the city was an important center of early Christianity. Jews there were evangelized by no less figures than Peter and Paul and the converts were the first to be known as Christians. Antioch, California was founded by brothers William and Joseph Smith (not the Mormon prophet!) in 1850. As such it is one of the oldest cities of California.

Not surprisingly, Jaycee's liberation has been hailed as a miracle. Garrido believed he communicated with God, controlled sound with his mind (and vice versa) and kept a blog called Voices Revealed. Posts just before his arrest include: THE U.S. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE SOURCE OF MIND CONTROL, A POWER THAT HAS BEEN KEPT HIDDEN, CULTURAL TRANCE....

How all this ties into the Jaycees remains a mystery. I'm sure we could we could somehow tie it all up to a revelation of the method, of mind control with sound, of a cultural trance woven into us via media overload and sympathy for the little children...."suffer the little children"....sympathy for the Jaycees, Proto-Gymnasium for New World Orderism. Etc.

But that would just be crazy....

Friday, October 23, 2009

Bush: "I Did Not Sell My Soul"

While Bush's speech was mostly eloquent and free of the language gaffes he admits he is famous for, he said he regretted appearing in front of a "Mission Impossible" sign during a televised address in 2003. The controversial banner referring to the U.S. mission in Iraq, actually said "Mission Accomplished."

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Jornada del Muerto

On Monday October 15, Howard Barton Unruh, the nation's "first single-episode mass murderer," died in a nursing home at the age of 88.

Because synchromystics and conspiracy theorists often claim that mass murderers and other ne'er-do-wells are in fact sleeper agents--victims of government mind control experiments--they are often on the lookout for twilight language, e.g. the names and numbers that to the observant reveal the methods of the cryptocracy.

That's why when we came across this article we felt compelled to comment on some of the names and numbers in the story.

On the morning of September 6, 1949, Unruh left his home and began his so-called "walk of death." He'd been planning the attack for a year and kept notes, so we know some of the victims were intentional, some were people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There is a strange symmetry to his victims: 5 men, 5 women and 3 children. 5 and 3 are already mystically resonant numbers. No need to point out that the total, 13, resonates all over the place; bad luck, witches' covens, American colonies, layers in the pyramid, etc.

Also interesting is the Masonic resonance. He left the house with a Luger and 33 rounds of ammunition. The shooting occurred in the area of 32nd St. and River Rd.

Further advancing the idea that he was some kind of sleeper agent is the fact that he was a WWII vet and an expert marksman in the Army.

The name is also interesting. "Unruh" is a Prussian or Pomeranian place name and is said to mean a quarrelsome or restless person; it comes from Middle German words meaning "unrest" or "disturbance". It can also mean "careless" or "negligent." An unruh in current German is a technical word meaning "balance wheel" in a watch. Our boy was anything but balanced, one supposes, but he may have been just another cog in the mechanism.

Howard is an Old English name which means "noble watchman." Haha! Time and observation meet in the pun of "watch."

Anyway, a day after yhis unruly German went on his spree, the Allies gave back to Germany the assets formerly controlled by the Nazi Regime. One day after that, the Federal Republic of Germany was officially founded.

Not that there's a link between one and another. 1949 was an especially transformative year in Geopolitics. Indonesia was recognized. The People's Republic of China was officially proclaimed. The Council of Europe was founded. Basically, a busy year in the ongoing sloughing-off of the old colonial order in the wake of the Second World War.

And the "first"American single-episode mass murder occurred; what was shocking then is now a staple of today's nightly news.

One must imagine that being regarded as the first crime of this sort is a result of the fact that the victims were European-Americans and on American soil.

Incinerating countless thousands of Japanese thousands of miles away apparently doesn't count.

Four years prior the route towards the mass murders at Hiroshima and Nagasaki began with the first atomic bomb test at the Trinity site--deep within the Jornada del Muerto, or "single day's journey of the dead man"--a name is said to have originated after a German man died there fleeing the Inquisition in the late 1600's.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Tessellation of the Elementary School

The word "geometry" comes from the Greek γεωμετρία; geo = earth, metria = measure. As such it deals with questions of size and shape and the properties of space. It thus a way not only of defining space but an invented way of seeing.

This way of seeing the world has been with us so long that we've forgotten that we created it ourselves; when we see perfect geometrical forms they often don't register. They are taken for granted; they become like trees and rocks on the plane. The cultivated field seems as natural as the forest glen and people can say without irony that or going to the park or the golf course is a little taste of "nature."

That is why the jungle gym pictured above seems so discrete, hardly noticed in passing. But one day, when the moment is right, it registers.

The way we educate our children, even in play, prepares them for their place in the pyramid of society. There's nothing necessarily conspiratorial in this; it's just so integrated into our way of thinking we don't question it.

But in this particular jungle gym, perhaps with tongue and cheek, slightly bulging, a little cluck of the mother hen, we see an example of how we teach our children to climb the pyramid ladder. They unconsciously know exactly what this represents for them later in life. They will move in artificial stages towards an illusory goal, first reinforced on the playground and thoroughly beaten into them by the drudging "progress" "upwards" in a system of grades. This is called education.


"Reseau Pyramid" is the Réseau régional de formation à distance for the Midi-Pyrénées. (Regional distance-learning network). This is a network of centers which offers training and e-learning components designed to help the under or unemployed get back into the workforce with new training. Anything to help the masses find their proper place in the pyramid.

Just to keep us on our toes we are informed that there are 13 training locations....reminds of the thirteen layers of the Le Temple de la Sagesse Suprême or the unfinished pyramid on the dollar bill. There is an implication of progress to an unfinished goal in this latter. Development is assured. Nature can be perfected. The subdivision is a taxonomy of the land; geometry of the mind's eye; one hand washes the other, and with that, the mind. Perfect Thunder dissipated into a fart upon dessicated soil.

In representing a specific form of "natural" social organization, the pyramid implies a certain "natural" division of land. It's worth noting that there are at least three real estate companies in France called Keops (1, 2, 3). We found this out with a quick Google after seeing the following eye-popper on a sign in a vacant lot.

And since we're dealing with questions of real estate, we've finally got a place to put this next photo. Promologis is another real estate company whose signs feature a prominent pyramid. Metering the geosphere indeed....

Which brings us to a final point. Once a French friend told us that Freemasons in France were deeply entrenched in the real estate business in France. This may or may not be true. But it's interesting that in the real estate context, the pyramid shines forth. This is known as development.