Feral Houses

Interesting term, "feral house," homes consumed by vegetation, e.g.,


An odd site in Detroit, perhaps, but down south in kudzu land, this is just one day w/o mowing...
But still, one wonders, what is a "feral house"? A wild house, or a home for the uncontained?

A tessellation of the plane. And beer.

It all begins with a simple flash of recognition and a sense of poetic resonance.

One the one side of the board, the ebony: Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., respected and renowned Harvard professor.

On the other side, the ivory: Sgt. James Crowley, respected officer and instructor for the Cambridge Police Dept.

More than a classic "town and gown" confrontation, their encounter has been front page news in America for days, and even Barack Obama has stepped into the fray with some ill-considered words--now retracted; in an attempt to be a peacemaker, he's invited both men to the White House to work things out over a nice cold beer.

Now, to deny that racism and racial profiling exist in this country is nothing short of willful ignorance. It would also be naive to think that the election of Obama has somehow eclipsed the very real racial inequalities which the nation faces.

But--gasp!--racial disharmony is not the country's core problem. We propose that stoking racism is a ploy in a great theatrical chess game being acted out by everyone, everywhere, all the time. And lest we forget, the players are not one the board itself, but behind it.

Behinds the actors on both sides of the board there are small bands of extremely wealthy and powerful individuals, families, corporations and organizations. One mouthpiece of these elites cry about the devastating effects raising the minimum wage will have on the economy--a whopping 7 dollars--while defending the practice of looting the profits created by the workers who receive these slave wages in the form of millions of dollars of bonuses destined for the already wealthy. What better way to distract attention from that flow of money than by occasionally lobbing a race bomb?

Race really isn't the issue here. George Bush had no qualms about putting blacks into top positions. To argue that the accomplished Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell were mere tokens is in itself a racist proposition. Whatever personal qualms politicians might have about, say, actually marrying a black person aside, they apparently have zero when it comes to working with people who are willing the take their side in the game. Black Queen, White Queen, ultimately it makes no difference, as long as the money and power keep flowing in the right direction.

The country has, after all, elected our first ostensibly "black" president. In quotation marks because at least half of his DNA comes from a white lineage. Black and white, Americans still seem to be under the spell of the "one-drop" rule.

Now, the poetic resonance of this particular case comes from the names (it's always the names it seems with poor old befuddled Daurade!)

Which brings us back tour opening gambit: Gates and Crowley.

Anyone even dimly aware of occultism will recognize the name Crowley. Our Sargent shares the name with the most famous, accomplished and influential occultist of the 20th century. Aleister Crowley, the great Beast 666 as he liked to call himself: bisexual, drug-addict, alleged spy, occult genius, poet, mountaineer, Moonchild....

Then there's the lovely evocative name "Gates." Crowley was if nothing attempting to open gates between this existence and another. In Magick Without Tears, just to give one example, Crowley speaks of the "fifty gates of understanding" in a chapter entitled "The Black Brothers". In the Enochian system Crowley explored the four Gates of the Watchtowers.

But these examples only limit the field of inquiry. Gates, portals, liminal points of transition. It's all central to the Magickal universe. It's arguably the whole point of ceremonial Magick to begin with.

If one is in any way aware of occult imagery, even on a subconscious level, it's hard to avoid the subtext of the Gates/Crowley conflict as it heads towards reconciliation, and given TV and cinema's seemingly endless parade of occult-inspired fare (no matter how insipid and watered down)--you'd be hard-pressed to find a culturally engaged American who is not on some level aware of occult symbolism.
The old "reconciliation of opposites" played out on the chessboard, the ebony and ivory of the keyboard tinkling out the music of the spheres. "Perfect harmony" as they say, symbolized by the checkerboard pattern on floors and trestle-boards of Masonic Lodges.

The square represents both the physical universe and echos that verse in Revelation (21:15) where the angel who shows St. John the Heavenly Jerusalem "....had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof. (16) And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth...." And St. John the Evangelist is one of the two St. Johns who are considered the patron saints of Freemasonry.

We are dealing with a conflict being played out in the material world and on another plane, call it spiritual or psychic if you'd like, but it is as equally "real" to the players. They would impose a grid of diametrical opposites in a state of constant warfare upon a land free from such artificial dialectics. They would measure, subdivide and enclose everything. Then pretend to bring us all together over brewskis and patriotic jingoism.

The United States--E Pluribus Unum--"Out of Many, One"--the New World, a modern Atlantis, Utopia. Ever striving not only towards social betterment and self-improvement, but perfection itself. A land and culture where a plastic, deracinated androgyne like Michael Jackson--who destroyed his natural beauty in a quest for an artificial ideal--can be held up as a national icon. Where incremental initiatory systems towards perfection such as Scientology and the Boy Scouts thrive like so many Roman mystery religions--Christianity included. As American as apple pie, that mischievous beguiling apple! We bit whole hog and continue to chew and chew and chew, hoping that we can regain Paradise Lost through rigorous work and a healthy dose of self-help books.

And where a black intellectual and a white cop can sit down with a man who is both black and white and solve the nation's race problem over a glass of beer. To reconcile the opposites, as it were. Hey, we love beer--in vino veritas--but we're not sure it's gonna do the trick. One hand giveth, the other taketh away. Pay no attention to The Man behind the curtain. He's too busy nigger-baiting and pouring salt onto wounded crackers.

This great "beer diplomacy" summit will reportedly take place on July 30th, the day on which 276 years prior the first Grand Masonic Lodge in the US was constituted--in Massachusetts.

Miscellanea:

For what it's worth the term checkmate is an "alteration....of the Persian phrase "Shāh Māt" which means, literally, "the King is ambushed" (or "helpless" or "defeated"). It does not literally mean "the King is dead", although that is a common misconception, as chess reached Europe via the Islamic world, and Arabic māta مَاتَ means "died", "is dead"."

July 30 1971: The first lunar rover was used on the moon during the Apollo 15 mission. It was, in effect, the first car on the moon Incidentally, one of the drivers--James B. Irwin--was a Freemason. On the same day in 1990 the first Saturn automobile rolled off the assembly line.

July 30 is also the feast day of "Saint Abdon and Saint Sennen, illustrious Persian dignitaries of the third century whom the king of Persia had highly honored, were secretly Christian; it was they who had taken up the body of the martyred bishop, which had been cast contemptuously before a temple of Saturn, to bury it at night, with honor. "

And finally, these two men Crowley and Gates, the sun and the moon, these opposing pawns, are in fact, related. Turns out they're both descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages, an apparently very fecund kind of 5th C. Ireland, ancestor of the clan which dominated Ireland from the 6th to 10th centuries....and we all know how them Micks love their beer....

Walking on the Moon

We are either born aloft on pinions of whimsy or being scooted along in the palm of an unseen hand.

A few days ago (22 July) we continued our explorations of what some call synchromysticism--and what are beginning to think of as poetic resonance--by Googling the words "Weinman / Carradine"--following some recent posts--with interesting results.

The first link which comes up leads us to a 1999 film directed by Richard Weinman and Keith Carradine called The Hunter's Moon. This would mean little if not for the fact that there were some important moon-related things going on at the moment

The first is of course that it came smack dab in the middle of the ballyhoo surrounding the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon shot. Men first walked on the moon on July 20th, 1969--one day before the Summer Solstice--and returned home four days later.

The second is that on the 22nd the moon eclipsed the sun and turned day into night across much of Asia, widely seen as a bad omen.

Also curious is that LoS superstar Tyler Weinman hunted his feline prey by night.

A Hunter's Moon, also known as a Blood Moon, is the first full moon after the harvest moon, the moon closest to the autumn equinox. The name comes from the fact that it's an ideal time for hunters to track and kill their prey at night. Interestingly, the name was used by both Europeans and Native Americans, and it was a feast day among some tribes of North America and Western Europe--before Columbus.

And what of Carradine? One of brother Keith's co-stars in that film was "Wild" Bill Mock. Mock...Bill? Kill Bill? Wild Bill? Hunter's Moon indeed.

What is the film all about anyway? According to Wikipedia "In this Depression-era drama, Carradine plays Turner, a WWI vet who is haunted not only by memories of the war but by the civil and economic unrest of the time."

War and economic unrest? Do tell!

Burt Reynolds plays a tyrant who dominates the residents of the mountain upon which he resides, and who sets out to kill young Turner to prevent him from romancing his daughter.

One can't but help think of Hassan-ibn-Sabbah, legendary Old Man of the Mountain and founder of the 11th century Ismaeli sect sometimes referred to as the Assassins. He was said to be in league with the Knights Templar, in turn believed by many to be the ancestors of the Freemasons.

(The) Hunter's Moon is among other things the name of two TV episodes and a video game featuring 32 star systems:

"Each level takes place in a void with two dimensional cities appearing as they are being built by "worker cells". The worker cells are indestructible but the bricks dropped by them can be temporarily destroyed using the ship's weapon. The goal of the game is to collect enough star cells contained inside the cities to get to the next level."

One of the TV episodes is also called Mystery in Space. Following episodes include Question Authority and Panic in the Sky.

The other TV show is a 3-parter involving a plot to extirminate humanity.

It is also the name of at least three novels. In one of these, a 2005 novel by O.R. Melling, two cousins search for a magic door to a land where humans are ruled by the little people.

Again, quoting Wikipedia: "Gwen must match her wits against those of a mischievous, immortal race, in an effort to save herself and her cousin from the land of Faerie and the Hunter's Moon."

So as we wave flags and pat ourselves on the back over the famous moonwalk by Neil Armstrong and crew, whose great phallic rocket finally conquered the Goddess, we can think of that other famous moonwalker, the plastic androgyne Michael Jackson, dead Sun King. And another famous Armstrong, the phallic Lance, chases the sun-yellow jersey in the Tour de France. He's already won it 7 times.
And fellow moonwalker Buzz Aldrin flew a Masonic flag on the Moon.

To quote: Tranquility Lodge 2000, Texas AF&AM:

"On July 20, 1969, two American Astronauts landed on the moon of the planet Earth, in an area known as Mare Tranquilitatis , or "Sea of Tranquility". One of those brave men was Brother Edwin Eugene (Buzz) Aldrin, Jr., a member of Clear Lake Lodge No. 1417, AF&AM, Seabrook, Texas. Brother Aldrin carried with him SPECIAL DEPUTATION of then Grand Master J. Guy Smith, constituting and appointing Brother Aldrin as Special Deputy of the Grand Master, granting unto him full power in the premises to represent the Grand Master as such and authorize him to claim Masonic Territorial Jurisdiction for The Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Texas, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, on The Moon, and directed that he make due return of his acts. Brother Aldrin certified that the SPECIAL DEPUTATION was carried by him to the Moon on July 20, 1969.

To commemorate this historic event, and to further solidify and establish Texas Freemasonry on the Moon, it is proposed that a charter be issued to a new Lodge, to be known as Tranquility Lodge No. 2000, and that authorization for such new Lodge and its purposes be granted by the addition of Article 201a, to read as follows:" [text follows]

Or maybe it goes deeper than that, as this book asserts:

"Few people are aware that NASA was formed as a national defense agency adjunct empowered to keep information classified and secret from the public at large. Even fewer people are aware of the hard evidence that secret brotherhoods quietly dominate NASA, with policies far more aligned with ancient religious and occult mystery schools than the façade of rational science the government agency has successfully promoted to the world for almost fifty years."

What does it all mean. We don't know. On 18 June NASA launched its' first moon mission in 10 years. According to NASA:

"The Mission Objectives of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) include confirming the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the Moon’s South Pole. The identification of water is very important to the future of human activities on the Moon."

Maybe they're getting anxious to finally have a Lodge meeting up there.

Quote of the Day II

To have seen a specter isn't everything, and there are deathmasks piled, one atop the other, clear to heaven. Commoner still are the wan visages of those returning from the shadow of the valley. This means little to those who have not lifted the veil.

Neal Cassady, fragment included in The First Third

The Apotheosis of Michael Jackson

Note: The following was written a few weeks ago but due to vacations hasn't been posted until now.

The King is Dead !

So read the banner headline of the Drudge Report on June 26. How fitting this comes so soon after the summer solstice.

Long Live the King!

The phrase was first employed when Charles VII inherited the crown from Charles VI in 1422 and embodies the principle of le mort saisit le vif-death takes the living-which signifies the instant transfer of sovereignty upon the death of a reigning monarch.

Ebony and Ivory, living together in perfect harmony. This would be more than the piano keyboard as metaphor for racial harmony, but the code for the tessellated chessboard of the magickal universe. Jachin and Boaz, Tonto (fool) and the Lone Ranger (dipshit).

Michael was Whacko Jacko in life, but in death becomes the celebrated icon who burst through racial barriers and made it possible for black entertainers to become bona fide superstars. But then again he is white, no? Ebony and Ivory indeed. Strange to see him celebrated as a black icon when he strove in life to remove all traces of his African heritage.

And the Mormons used to tell the Indians that if they sold their land to the church and became Mormons, they would become white....er, pure.

In July 1831 after the arrival of Joseph Smith, Jr., and others in Jackson County, Missouri, plans were made to preach to the Native Americans. Smith received a directive on intermarriage with the Indians....

He was an androgynous creature, not quite male or female, not quite adult or child. Not quite black or white. Like some mythical beast representing the reconciliation of opposites: Long Live the King! The King is Dead. The circle of life goes on. The sun dies and is reborn.

He was the King of Pop, which spelled backwards still makes him the King of Pop. And he took himself for a king. Even named his sons Prince Michael I and Prince Michael II. And his daughter is Paris. Which isn’t Versailles but close enough. Did someone say Sun King? Here’s looking at the man in the hall of mirrors.

The sun has just begun its dying process: The King is Dead! Long Live the King!

Oh and lest you forget, there’s a great alchemical secret to get in on: Nature can be perfected....

"There is also, of course, the old adage that celebrities die in threes, with the deaths of Gianni Versace, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa in 1997 frequently held up as an example of this."

We cite (Carradine, Farrah Fawcett aka Darby Crash) and Michael Jackson. All icons of the Dead Seventies.

And in South Carolina, another king, Governor Sanford, as in Sanford and Sun, disappeared, leaving the state in a tizzy, but his return didn’t really smooth things over. Seems he was visiting his Argentine mistress: Maria (mother of Jesus) Belen (Bethlehem) Chapur. Chapur is a Persian surname. And in Persia the media has perfect leverage to wag the dog. Which backwards spells God. As if waving in front of your face. Heroic youth on the front-lines. With the death of an old regime a new one can be born. Martyred beautiful young woman, liberty leading the people, dead on the barricades, her last breath captured on a cell phone.

The King is Dead! Long Live the King!

It’s Easter and Christmas all rolled up into one. It’s the solstice.

"In the end, sometimes our reactions were divorced from reason and rationale, and had nothing to do with how we felt about him. They were reactions born of the raw emotion that comes when a seam in the fabric of our culture unravels, when someone as undeniably monumental as Michael Jackson dies."

How now, brown cow?

[added July 15]

So get ready for the resurrection and the visions. Just like Jesus we've had a (now located) missing body, miraculous sightings and both Kings have appeared in a lowly Cheeto....