Gee I'm a Tree

Reminds of two things: 

The time people freaked out about pentagrams in a bus's brake lights.

The time a guy told me Freemasons in France often use triangles in their logos.

Europe Confronts Conspiracy Theory

On an EU website about Europe's COVID response, there are pages about Fighting Disinformation and Identifying Conspiracy Theories. These latter are not just about Covid, but conspiracy theories in general.

I think the latter page is especially useful and both pages should be incorporated into every high school student's curriculum.  Now that an unnamed orange muppet with tiny hands has announced he will run for POTUS in 2024, the page may become a lot more useful to help young people navigate the increasingly murky info-sphere.

I say that half-kiddingly.  I genuinely applaud the fact that the EU finds conspiracy theory a serious enough topic that it needs to be confronted head on.

After the Stateside events of January 6th, (there's that sandy-haired orange muppet again), more people are taking note.  Conspiracy theory has been leading to moral panic, and even violence, since the Romans accused Christians of: plotting to bring down the empire; cannibalism: conducting ritual orgies....probably even before.  

Once Christendom had in effect supplanted the Roman Empire as the warp and woof of Europe (the Romans were right!), the unfortunate target of the conspiracy-fueled mob has more often than not been the Jews. Which is something the EU page notes; conspiracy theory is often crypto-antisemitism.

The name of the players may change, but the elements of moral panic have remained the same since the Middle Ages: medieval blood-libel, the "Rosicrucian furore", the Illuminati, anti-Masonry, Satanic Ritual Abuse, QAnon.  

These elements include powerful, hidden elites; black magic and/or Satanism; trafficking children for ritual sex and murder; an international or even global reach....

QAnon is a political force the orange muppet openly toys with.  Whether he believes it or not is irrelevant.  Many of his supporters do, and it's one reason he wins their votes.  

Democracy can't function when lies and conspiratorial thinking dominate the agora.  Or as the WaPo has put it since the reign of the muppet:  "Democracy Dies in Darkness.". D-D-i-D, yo!

I recommend reading the EU's pages and the downloadable PDFs they make available.  We really may need them in the run-up to 2024.  And maybe even beyond.

I know that global elites working behind the scenes for their own benefit do exist.  By definition, two or more people working illegally for their own ends is a conspiracy.  I would say that in the spheres of business and politics "conspiracy" in it's widest sense is as much the rule as it is the exception.  I also know, thanks to Epstein, that billionaire sex-trafficking exists.  But it ain't Squid Game.

One could say, with or without irony, that the diffusion of outlandish conspiracy theories is itself a kind of disinformation campaign to make people so leery of anything hinting at conspiracy that they just roll their eyes at the very mention of illegal shenanigans in high places; so their crimes are hidden in plain sight. 

I got that reaction when I wrote a paper about the connection between Freemasonry and Scouting.  It sounds so loony that some people refused to read beyond the title for what is a rather sober and well-documented paper.

Anyway, this started out as a simple link to the EU site and as usual has morphed into another LoS prolixity.  And there isn't even a photo!

"You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

I sorta kinda wrote about the Georgia Guidestones in 2010.

Old news now, but someone finally blew them up back in July. Locals seem kind of bummed: 

"My initial reaction was heartbreak and anger, frustration.  And I think that's consistent with the community's reaction."  Elberton Mayor Daniel Graves.

Lots of (if not most) articles about the Guidestones play up the anonymity of the person who originally funded the monument. Seems like a Rosicrucian group cuz the mysterious stranger who ordered them called himself RC Christian....subtle. 

The principles engraved upon it are also not inconsistent with Rosicrucian ideas.

The contact was not actually named RC Cola Christian, but Herbert Hinie Kersten, and was a doctor from Fort Dodge, Iowa.  Apparently a fan of David Duke and an outspoken racist who, in addition to financing mysterious monuments, sought to make a definitive scale to show how Whites are the superior race.

The Guidestones have a generally decent message.  Except the population control measures which evoke culling.  That Daisy David Duke support makes that one a bit more chilling.  

Common Sense Renewed, a book intended to explain the Guidestones, is said to describe a eugenics program to keep humanity going in the future.  So, wariness of the stones is not unwarranted.

Was Kersten representing a racist group, or was it a hobby horse of his alone?

Was he alone, or did he represent a group of "Perfectibilists," as the Illuminati called themselves.  A group of sages directing society behind the scenes:  Rosicrucians, Masons, Illuminists?  Secret Chiefs?  An underground stream?  Or a series of ponds?

So someone blowed 'em up.  And the remaining slabs were then demolished.  

Elberton should have kept them, and let the destruction serve as a monument to ignorance.  Fence them up at night to protect them.  Locals are worried about the lost tourist dollars.  Another reason to keep them.  Not just lucre, but as a "fuck you" to those who blew them up.  Leave what's remaining, and the rubble.  Erect a life-sized panel facsimile of the destroyed stone.  Despite some weird ideas and sketchy financing, it was an interesting monument.  At noon each day the sun used to shine through a hole onto that day's date.  It was a functioning solar calendar and clock.

Alas.  Turning destruction into history.  Too late to make lemonade from these lemons.

I've written a lot about the Temple de Sagesse Suprème, the so-called "Illuminati Pyramid" of Blagnac (a suburb of Toulouse).  They tagged and damaged that too.  Hard time to be an esoteric monument.

But we've written about the destruction of monuments before.  In the end, it's a testament to the power of public art as much as public ignorance....see The Politics of Removal for our take on it.

What is it with Georgia and cwazy cupcakes? Walker, Green, and Kandiss Taylor, who wrote:

“I am the ONLY candidate bold enough to stand up to the Luciferian Cabal,” Taylor wrote on social media app Telegram after releasing her video.

Taylor actually promised to blow them up.  Someone did it for her!  She denied involvement when the destruction occurred. 

BTW, here are the Guidestones' injunctions, originally engraved in 8 languages:  English, Spanish, Swahili, 

Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Traditional Chinese, and Russian.

Easy to see how this was seen as a kind of NWO blueprint, or some kind of Utopian scheme proposed by Rosicrucians.

• Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

• Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.

• Unite humanity with a living new language.

• Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.

• Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.

• Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.

• Avoid petty laws and useless officials.

• Balance personal rights with social duties.

• Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.

• Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature.

Twilight Effects

Death or Beauty?

 

As far as I can determine, synchromysticism is a term invented by blogger Jake Kotze in 2006:  "....synchromystic (my new word for meaningful coincidence with mystical connotation....)"  

The movement is rooted in the work of Jim Brandon, Michael Hoffman II, James Shelby Downard, and, to a certain degree, Robert Anton Wilson.  

One of the most widely-read examples of synchromysticism is King-Kill 33 (first published in 1988), a collaboration between Hoffman and Downard about the mother of all conspiracy theories....the assassination of JFK.  Marilyn Manson even wrote a song with the same title.  Dan Brown's Robert Langdon books (i.e. the Da Vinci Code) are arguably based in synchromysticism.

One of the principal concepts in synchromysticism is twilight language.  Twilight language:  "clues" left by conspirators in a larger process called the Revelation of the Method, which I'll discuss later.  

A few years ago there were only a few synchromystic blogs, but now they've proliferated.  Even writers who were writing along similar lines before 2006 have adopted the mantle, and there is a thriving online community which exchanges its findings.  One of these writers is L.C.  (I've thinly disguised the name to avoid having it pop up in web searches, because L.C. is not really the focus of this post, but a point of departure and a thread around which to organize my observations).

 

L.C. is a social worker, writer, and museum curator.  Among other topics, he's written about Cryptozoology and Fortean phenomena, and more recently, "twilight language," e.g. mystical toponymy, numerical symbolism, and the hidden meanings of names.  Forteana is a precursor of twilight language.  Indeed, many of the movement's first practitioners wrote for Fortean Times at some point.

At some point L.C. added synchromysticism to his Fortean explorations.  Wikipedia defines the term as "the practice o nof attributing mystical or esoteric significance to mundane coincidences."  Kotze's "meaningful coincidence."

I think it's a good definition; confirmation bias, frequency illusion, and apophenia presented as something with deeper meaning beyond the mind's need to order and organize sensory input and data.  "The Truth is out There."  More like in There.

Synchronicity + Mysticism.  What could go wrong?

To be frank, synchromysticism has always confused me, at times irked me.  After years of following the milieu, and dabbling in it, I've become disillusioned with it.  I think it's a dead end.

 

One of L.C's areas of study are mass-shootings, a topic he sadly has occasion to address frequently.  He wrote a book on the subject titled The Copycat Effect.  L.C. has

"....a master's degree in psychiatric social work and was a consultant for the Maine Youth Suicide Program for nearly a decade. He authored several manuals and trained over 40,000 professionals and paraprofessionals statewide....He has been called on for statements in the aftermath of school shootings and how best to respond to the problem, mostly by the Canadian media."

L.C. has legitimate expertise in the subject and an impressive C.V. can be found on his blog.  The blog, which used to be called The Copycat Effect but is now Twilight Language, however, is not the kind of stuff anyone in the court system or mainstream media would solicit.

 

When he writes about mass-shootings on Twilight Language, he looks at the names of the people involved, toponymy, numerical symbolism, whatever coincidences he finds; he sometimes simply lists facts and recurring images.  By grouping all this stuff together, patterns are created by accumulation, patterns implied to mean something beyond the brain imposing order on the phenomenal world (e.g. "perception as an organizing process").

 

Back in 2012, I queried him about a post on the Aurora, Colorado mass-shooting.  He included my comment and response in a follow-up post.  Here's my comment and excerpts from his thoughtful and courteous response:

Recently, in comments at Twilight Language, a person using the name Daurade, sent this along: 

Mr. C., I have read enough of your posts to believe the Copycat Effect is totally plausible, very difficult to refute. But I'm not sure why you go into coincidences so much. Name symbolism, ladies in red showing up at the Olympics etc.

I do this kind of thing as a poetic exercise. [A few writers] believe these are indications that a "cryptocracy" is staging events for their own nefarious agenda. I suppose I could agree that these synchronicities are in the air and thus play into the copycat effect. 

To be honest, I'm not sure what your getting at when you talk about the meaning of names and show things such as "Aurora" on a building in a trailer. Are you suggesting a conspiracy or what exactly? Not being facetious or snarky, just a bit befuddled.

His (edited) answer (full response here):

....I'm a Fortean....Charles Fort once wrote of a world sense I share, "My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidence?

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I have enough room in my cosmos to allow research, thoughts, and written material on synchromysticism, coincidences, no coincidences, name games, Fortean interventions, and the human factor of the copycat effect....When I wrote The Copycat Effect (2004), I felt an obvious fact - human behavior contagion is a factor in mass violence events - was being ignored. The symbols and signs within these situations, the patterns and plots of these incidents, are mysteries that continue to be worth my time....

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If I'm investigating a shooting, the movie playing at the time, the location, copycats, and various names' meanings, why should I exclude "coincidences" that make no sense, at the time....There is no way I sense this [the Aurora shooting] was planned on a human level to foreshadow the significance of Aurora in a future event. Such tidbits seem to go beyond coincidence, over and over again, in terms of some of these discoveries.

He doesn't claim that his approach reveals planned events, but does say that the "tidbits seem to go beyond coincidence."  That perturbs me.  One reason is not his intent, but that his approach is not always clear to his readers.  His posts imply intentionality, even if unintentionally.  Ha-ha.  I'd argue that the blog implies what lies "beyond coincidence" is conspiracy.

Hoffman

 

My inkling could be due to the name of the blog.  "Twilight language" is not L.C.'s coinage.  I'm not sure if it was James Shelby Downard or Michael Hoffman II who coined it, but Hoffman has used it for years. In fact, it's the name of his most recent book (2021).  Hoffman also coined  "the Revelation of the Method."  I reproduced an excellent post from Skilluminati (with his blessing) about this subject in 2014. 

 

Twilight language is the key to decrypting the Revelation of the Method (ROTM).  ROTM is allegedly used by the "cryptocracy" (deep state) to plant clues in staged events that the public consciously or unconsciously picks up on.  The goal is to make the public know that the cryptocracy knows the public knows about their shenanigans.  The public will thus be made to feel impotent and demoralized; despite knowing mass-shootings, etc. are being staged, and that so much of what occurs are "false flag operations," they can't do anything about, the masses will feel powerless and resigned to being controlled.  

As Skilluminati puts it, they "rub our noses in it."  It's a bit convoluted.

As L.C. states in his response to my queries, he is not promoting conspiracy theory.  But why use a name of a methodology that is a inseparable from a conspiracy theory many of his readers are aware of?  Especially as it's the exact methodology L.C. uses

L.C. credits Hoffman for inventing the term, also noting the latter's Holocaust denial.  (Hoffman doesn't actually deny the Holocaust; he's explicitly said otherwise, but more on that later).  Hoffman, in addition to his own twilight language work, is known for his antisemitic writings.  Which may be why L.C. seems reluctant to amplify the origin of his blog's name.  But again, many of his readers know it.

 

One of the foundational texts of synchromysticism

 

In 2021, L.C. was taken to task by Hayley Stevens and Blake Smith for citing the work of Fortean writer Jim Brandon, aka William Grimstad, without mentioning that Grimstad is also a Neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier.  As Brandon, he's written two influential books about Fortean phenomena.  As Grimstad, he writes books against Zionism, Jews and the veracity of the Holocaust.  

 

Grimstad and Hoffman.  Po-tay-toe / Po-tah-toe?  Probably.  Like many things, there are degrees.  In the end, a bigot is still a bigot, but it would simply be inaccurate to paint the two men in exactly the same light.

There's another weird tale to tell about Grimstad.  In the early 70's, Grimstad was the managing editor of White Power, a publication of the American Nazi Party (now called the National Socialist White People's Party).  In 1978, about the time he was writing his Fortean books as Jim Brandon, he received $20,000 after he published his book Antizion.  He says a check just came in the mail, unsolicited.  At first he thought it was from the Saudi government, but later came to think it was actually sent by the ADL as a way to discredit the Saudis.  Grimstad had registered as an agent of the Saudi government, but the Saudis denied this was true, and apparently his "registration statement was vague and lacked copies of a contract or letter from the Saudis requesting Grimstad's services." (NYT)  He later retracted his declaration.  Very odd stuff.

Hoffman isn't a Nazi.  He is a Traditionalist Catholic, that is to say, a Catholic who rejects the liberalizing doctrines which came out of The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).  One of the more controversial results of "Vatican II" was the document Nostra aetate, in which the Church officially stopped blaming the Jews for Jesus's Crucifixion, placing blame squarely on the shoulders of Rome.  The pre-Vatican II doctrine has been blamed for centuries of antisemitism, and, judging from the angry reactions to the new doctrine, that seems to be very much true.

Hoffman, like Grimstad, has his own "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" relationship with Muslims.  He was a speaker at the Nation of Islam's "Saviours' Day" [sic] celebration in February, 2019.  Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has long been criticized for antisemitic statements, and it is on the topic of the Talmud that Hoffman was invited to speak.  A strange sight.  A middle-aged, white, Traditionalist Catholic who lives in Idaho, addressing the Nation of Islam about how he and the Nation are the "best friends" of the Jewish people.  Strange times.  If you're interested, here's Hoffman's speech, along with a subsequent panel discussion: 

 

     

 

But I digress.  As a result of the criticism regarding Grimstad, L.C. wrote a riposte and denied being sympathetic to Grimstad's views.  I believe him.  I also don't see a problem with citing Grimstad and not mentioning his antisemitism every time.  L.C. is clearly not an antisemite.  I have no idea about his political beliefs, but my sense is that they don't skew towards either the radical or the right wing.  

I really want to emphasize that I don't think L.C. is "wrong" for being interested in the Fortean work of Grimstad and Hoffman.  One can admire the poetry of, say, Ezra Pound, and Marinetti, and not be a fascist sympathizer.  Just as one can admire the work of the Surrealists and not be a Marxist.

I myself really want to read Brandon's Fortean books.  I have wanted to do so since long before I learned the man was also a Nazi named Grimstad.  Learning this didn't change my mind.  I don't see a problem with that, especially because the books are out of print, and buying them wouldn't put money in his wallet.  They are also some of the founding texts of synchromysticism.  As a person with an interest in history, I may one day read Mein Kampf.  Or not.  As a person with an interest in the far right, I skimmed through The Turner Diaries.

  

When you study fringe politics, conspiracy theory, and fascism, "neo" or otherwise, you have to read the primary sources.  Was L.C. wrong to refer to Jim Brandon without adding a caveat each time that Brandon, as Grimstad, wrote some pretty vile stuff?  I would say no.  I searched L.C.'s blog for "Grimstad," "Brandon" and "Hoffman."  He has regularly called them out for their antisemitism.  I don't think his critics are being fair to L.C.

In his rebuttal to Hayley, L.C. credits Grimstad for his Fortean contributions while categorically repudiating the latter's antisemitism.  What he doesn't mention in his rebuttal is that there's a similar issue going on with Michael Hoffman, even though he has identified Hoffman in other posts as a Holocaust denier and uses his terminology for the name of his blog.

What really puzzled me about his response to his critics is its denouement.  In the end, L.C. lays claim to an idea that Grimstad articulated in 1978, yet says because he built upon it, and Grimstad never returned to it, he (L.C.) was claiming "ownership" of the idea for himself. Grimstad's email reply is mocking, smug, and well, in essence correct.

To quote L.C.:

Forteans first became aware of William Grimstad after his appearance in the Spring 1978 issue of Fortean Times magazine. Grimstad wrote an essay on his findings, entitled “Fateful Fayette,” in that issue.  

As one commentary said years later, "Since then, the subject has been expanded upon and expounded upon by many other researchers, most notably by author L.C. C. suggested that Lafayette visited certain places in America for symbolic and spooky reasons."

L.C. concludes:

So let me try this. Henceforth, since I have built, researched, banked, and booked almost 40 years of effort and thought into the "Fayette Factor" and the "Name Game" via my "Twilight Language" writings, I will take on the full ownership of this "Fayette" concept. It is not a secret, it is not an idea hidden, but it is mine. "Jim Brandon" and "Bill Grimstad" gave it up by being Holocaust denier(s) and not coming forth with apologies, new editions, or reprints of The Rebirth of Pan.

This is L.C. in 2021 taking ownership of Brandon's ideas, first expressed in 1978.  Because Brandon never re-printed The Rebirth of Pan, a book in which the "Fayette" ideas weren't even originally expressed?  Because Brandon is a Holocaust denier?  Holocaust denial is vile shit, but what does it have to do with not re-printing a book totally unrelated to it?  L.C.:  "It is mine."  Hey, what?  I don't get it.  If the idea is not Grimstad/Brandon's, it doesn't "belong" to anybody, or perhaps it's more accurate to say it belongs to everybody.

Hoffman may be a bigot, but his posts evidence extensive research, developed thoughts, and ideas; some of these ideas are objectionable, but they're eloquently expressed. L.C.'s blog posts present factoids, sometimes without elaboration, and stop at the moment one is expecting some kind of conclusion or analysis.

 

Absent any analysis or conclusion, conspiracy theories bloom.  One only needs to read the comments to see the flowering.  Without an "ergo," we get all manner of loopy conclusions.

And I'm just another yahoo with an opinion. 

I've pondered posting this for a while and haven't done it, because I don't want to belittle L.C.; that is not my intent here.  I respect him.  This post is really more about synchromystic thinking as a whole rather than one man and his blog.

Because conspiratorial thinking has become mainstreamed during recent years, and watching the spectacle of elected officials promoting QAnon as if it were something real, of seeing the fruit of that mindset in the form of a mob storming the US Capitol, and listening to people deciding to use bleach, horse pills, and light bulbs to treat a disease for which we have vaccines....To see a guy in Buffalo kill ten people because of a conspiracy theory pushed by a mainstream media figure, Tucker Carlson, I feel a greater urge to try to say my piece against conspiracy theories with shaky foundations. 

 

It boils down to this.  I've come to believe the synchromystic approach has become a facile dead-end that may be unhealthy.  Unhealthy when it becomes consensus reality among large segments of the agora; it's not twilight language itself, but the conspiracy theory of which it's part and parcel.  

I know it's not L.C.'s intent, but when you read the comments on his posts, there's lots of talk of psy-ops, false flags, and crisis actors.  I may just be over-reacting emotionally to recent mass-shootings.  Maybe I'm just a PMRC schoolmarm wagging a finger at Dungeons & Dragons and Mötley Crüe.  But crying "false flag" when a terrorist shoots up a school is not helpful.

"Crisis actors" are a staple trope for people who believe that mass-shootings are elaborate deep-state (cryptocracy) psy-ops (Revelation of the Method), and not carried out by lone, troubled people.  How can we resolve the problem when people think complicated conspiracies explain the actions of mentally-ill people who have bought into the very same conspiracy theories?  And the false-flag concept is not limited to the fringes.  It has become dangerously close the the center of the mainstream.  

 

We're all living in a fiction without an author, a fiction for which some people are ready to kill.

 

A man shot up a pizzeria in D.C. because he believed there were sex slaves in its basement.  But there were no sex slaves.  There wasn't even a basement.  How many have since been murdered by right-wing "warriors" trying to save the white race from being replaced by deep-state "elites?"

I need to reemphasize that my "critique" here is not really about L.C., but synchromysticism.  

And again, the unease I have with his blog arises from the comments by the readers.  That said, these comments are there because of the empty spaces L.C. leaves around the skeletal presentation of coincidences in the posts, coincidences which are not remarkable at all.  L.C. makes little attempt after these comments to disabuse his readers of their wildest conclusions.

 

Mass-shooting minutiae are not twilight language; they aren't the Revelation of Method, but the revelation of chaos.  Of an inadequate public mental-healthcare system.  Of a gun culture so out of proportion that disturbed individuals can walk into a shop and buy firearms more easily than they can buy a six-pack. The revelation of an unhealthy, materialistic culture obsessed with celebrity.  The revelation of a culture whose films and video games celebrate violence and shooting as many people as a way to resolve problems.  The revelation of a nation built on slavery and genocide.  The revelation of a nation at war for almost my entire life.  

Mass-shootings are not psychodramas staged by a cryptocracy.

Twilight language is the foundation of the Revelation of the Method, and legitimizing one legitimizes the other.  If you call your blog Twilight Language, you endorse the Revelation of the Method.  

Robert Anton Wilson used methods similar to twilight language.  But it took him at least three dense books (the Cosmic Trigger trilogy) of analytical, ironic, and multidisciplinary essays to wrestle with it.  Objective, subjective, mystic, scientific.  He doesn't dismiss mysticism or synchronicity, but he doesn't just write stuff down without questioning the degree to which his mind may be creating the coincidences he perceives.

Ordo Ab Chao.  Order from Chaos.  Synchromysticism puts a hand on the tiller, and having a pilot, even a nefarious one, is better than a rudderless ship.  Because if there is a rudder, a new hand, a "good" hand, can take hold of it.  Meaning is a reassuring lifeboat to jump into when the terrifying irrationality of the oceanic depths comes to the surface.  

The accumulation of coincidence into "meaningful" patterns is often the compulsive process of the paranoid mind.  Or the artist.  Dalí:  "The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."  

 

Twilight language can be a brilliant starting point.  Without the work, or the art, it doesn't go anywhere.  Twilight language and The Revelation of the Method are not the exegesis of political and sociological issues, not "conclusions," but brainstorming techniques, spitballing, word play.  And once the games are over, the real work can begin.

 

It occurs to me I may be totally wrong.  A cloud of information could lead to a lightning strike:  "Eureka!"

I'm open to the possibility that twilight language is a useful way of putting it all out there and seeing what comes of it.  I'm also aware that shootings inspired by conspiracy theories, QAnon, anti-vaxxers, and rampant political know-nothingness may have soured me on what is ultimately a harmless endeavor.  But I can't shake the feeling that this it's somehow, well, not exactly harmful, but not exactly harmless, either.    

 

In the absence of some hard-hitting conclusion, I'll just end it here and let the chips fall where they may....It occurs to me I should just lighten up.  But turning to the news and seeing yet another mass-shooting, it's hard to simply ignore what people are saying it about it. 

 

One thing I'm sure of is that a solution doesn't lie with ruminating on the name of Heath Ledger's dog....

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Please see my tentative bibliography of titles directly-related to Synchromysticism or titles I find useful for understanding Twilight Language.

I linked to it in my post, but Skilluminati's take on the Revelation of the Method is an excellent analysis:

It's catching.  The most remarkable thing about Conspiracy apophenia, to an amoral free agent like myself, is that it's distinctly contagious. Once infected, we always tend toward greater certainty. This is not lost on Michael Hoffman himself, who proclaims: "Give me two hours with any group of average intelligence and I'll have them reading twilight language and decoding occult rituals for the rest of their lives." I see no reason to doubt him.

I'd forgotten about it, but in a coda to that second post I discussed L.C., Hoffman, and Grimstad quite a bit.  I don't have it in for L.C., I just have occasion to read his posts frequently as they pop up in my search results, and it's a logical point of entry to discuss the lineage of synchromysticism and it's Fortean roots.

Somewhere in this prolix mess there's a decent post....

Camus' Son is a real Mothertucker

If you read this blog now and again you know we are interested in political extremism, conspiracy theory, and fascism.  We are not political extremists, conspiracy theorists, or fascists.

  

I can read Mein Kampf and not be a Nazi, and I can read The Communist Manifesto and not be a Marxist.  I can watch Fox News and...well, no.  I can't watch that (not-so-crypto)-fascist gibberish.  Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Tucker Carlson.  A Trinity of SWM outrage.  Fair and balanced commentary in a methane atmosphere.  TV emissions from a herd of swine.  

When Anders Breivik shot 67 and wounded 32 teenagers on Utøya Island after his bomb rocked Oslo, killing 8, I was horrified.  Two more people died during the massacre, attempting to escape.  77 people murdered in the name of the Great Replacement.

But his "manifesto" intrigued me.  His claim to be a Freemason (which he was, and was summarily expelled), his claim to be a member of a neo-Templar network (he wasn't)....all those elements made me curious as to what his influences were. Not from prurient interest, but as an historian, and as a writer with a long-standing interest in the radical right, Freemasonry, the Knights Templar, and the effects of the rabbit-hole of conspiracy theory.

I try to understand these things, not to glorify them, but to decrypt them, to find the dog-whistles, and, hopefully, make them easier to identify.  I don't feel I need an agenda to justify researching and writing about the things I find interesting (and deeply troubling), but it helps to announce that your intentions aren't nefarious.  For those unused to the codes of this milieu, it's easy to overlook the things obvious to those who are not.  When Carlson says "replacement," to most it's just a word.  For some, the works of French writer Renaud Camus come to mind.  

Christchurch, 2019.  51 dead.  El Paso, 2019.  22 dead.  Buffalo, 2022.  10 dead.  All mass shootings whose perpetrators cited the "Great Replacement" as a motive for their terrorism. Unite the Right rally, Charlottesville, 2017, Tiki-Time:  "Jews, will not, replace us!"

I understand why people don't want to spread the writings of white supremacist terrorists.  Breivik's 2083 is a rambling screed of 1000+ pages.  Mostly copy-pasted from online sources.  Gendron's document is much shorter, but is also cobbled together in the same fashion.  Both use the Great Replacement conspiracy theory as a justification for their actions, and their fury lies as much with the left-wingers who "enable" it as the "replacers" themselves.  Breivik, if you recall, murdered leftist white youths, not minorities.  People he called "Cultural Marxists."  Another far-right conspiracy theory. Standard Carlson rhetoric, by the by.

Briefly stated, the Great Replacement theory was first articulated in print by French writer Renaud Camus in books dating back to 2010 and 2011:  L'Abécédaire de l'in-nocence (Abecedarium of no-harm) and Le Grand Remplacement (The Great Replacement).  

Camus wrote that French elites on the left, the Gauche caviar ("Caviar left"), are encouraging immigration and suppressing white birthrates in order to create a base of left-wing voters. These immigrants, he says, are easier to manipulate, and naturally more sympathetic to the left.

The American far right is obsessed with overturning Roe v. Wade for more reasons than a "Christian" belief in the "sanctity of life."

 

Check out this NYT special report.  It identifies 400 occasions on which Carlson cites Great Replacement.

Although Buffalo terrorist Payton Gendron disparages Fox News itself, his "manifesto" makes it clear he was motivated by the Great Replacement theory.  Since Camus' books have never been translated into English, somehow I doubt he got it from the original source.  As he says; he got it online.  I'll go out on a limb and say that Carlson had a great deal to do with getting the idea out there.  He is America's most-watched pundit, after all.  Carlson has mainstreamed far-right conspiracy theory.  Backtrack all you want, Tucker, but there are ten people dead in Buffalo you need to answer for. You cant feign ignorance of a theory you pushed in 400 segments (CNN)

I understand why people don't want to allow Gendron's screed to be made available.  Some people will get a kick out of it, and who wants to feed into perversity and racism?  Some feel it might spread his "ideas."  I would say that this argument is not valid.  Gendron was radicalized online:  these ideas are already out there, in many places, forever.  And what effect would it have compared to the effect Tucker Carlson has, with a regular audience of millions?

No, releasing it wouldn't have many ill effects. I'd say allowing people the opportunity to read and discuss it may in fact bear positive results.  If we hear someone discussing certain themes or using certain expressions, we might be alerted to their meaning among extremists, having been exposed to them by reading Gendron's drivel.  And if it's not too late, you might be able to get through to them somehow.

I've heard this described as a free speech issue, but I'm not sure how the 1st Amendment applies here exactly.  I know a direct and specific call to violence is not protected.  But I don't know if a general or vague appeal is, or not.  I don't know where the legal line is drawn.

A comment on a site I saw a few days ago about a video of someone reading from Gendron's screed being withdrawn from YouTube has (had?) a valid link to the PDF (yeah.docx.PDF), and I acquired a copy.  I haven't read all of it yet.

I will, though, and you can bet it echoes Fox News' fascist pundit Tucker Carlson.  You ever wonder why America is such a steaming mess?  Try starting with this: The country's most widely-watched TV host uses the language and pushes the conspiracy theories of neo-fascists.  Theories which have indisputably motivated terrorists in Oslo, Christchurch, and now Buffalo.

I think this document is important for sociologists, psychologists, law enforcement officers, historians,  journalists, political scientists, etc.  I'm not saying it has any intrinsic value, but when a guy kills ten people due to their race, and has a long list of recent antecedents, we need all the insight we can get into the messed-up minds of the right-wing mass-shooters who are paradoxically both lone wolves and a movement.

Carlson, you're one big mothertucker.  Dangerous, deadly, and crazy like a Fox.

Putin's Rasputin: Further Encounters with Fascism and the Occult

Hot on the heels of our posts about A) fascism and the occult and B) Putin as Czar, along comes a WaPo editorial discussing Russia's pretensions to an imperial lineage, the "3rd Rome" etc. and the right-wing occultist stoking those ideas.

Just as we wrote: ultra-nationalism, fascism and the occult.  Bloop!  Meep!  Tailor-made for my memespiracy....The far-right mystical writer who helped shape Putin’s view of Russia.  He may be full of pooh, but the pooh flows, and Poot listens, apparently.

We shouldn't over-emphasize the occult aspects of Hitler or Putin's ideology, but shouldn't ignore them, either.  The "why" is self-evident:  we need to understand Putin both in terms of rational realpolitik and, well, his nuttier concerns.

Putin's Rasputin's a dude named Dugin (say that 3x, fast), and "back in the day" he mixed with Satanists and punk-rockers before becoming a reactionary who embraced the Nazis to a certain degree.  He helped to found a Party called the National Bolshevik Party (aka the "Nazbols").  Their flag is a hammer and sickle, but the color scheme is pure Nazi.   The allusion is clear.

 

Glory be!  Mother Russia.  Strange how Dugin's time with occult circles and Satanists meshes so neatly with my last post about fascism, the occult, and Satanism.  Somehow, despite a call to the religious values of times past by these jackals, they are not only willing to countenance occultists among their ranks, but Satanists.  Strange bedfellows indeed!

Just by random chance I just won a French history magazine in a pub quiz and it's all about Russia, including the idea that Russia considers itself a "third Rome" after Byzantium.  This is not a new idea.  The Duke of Muscovy married the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, and so the Russians adopted the double-headed eagle of the divided empire, their Cyrillic alphabet is based not on Latin but Greek letters, and they adopted Eastern Orthodoxy, not Roman Catholicism.  "Czar" means "Caesar," after all.  Moscow has long seen itself as the new center of the Roman Empire, the true inheritor of the Byzantines.

Dugin is a Russian Steve Bannon, a once-fringe thinker elevated to the center of power; someone scorned in the past but whose words now echo in Poot's speeches, and have a real effect.  This is not abstraction.  This is how mystical thinking ends up meaning 1000's of civilian casualties in an ill-conceived invasion to rebuild Novorossiya, the "New Russia."  The annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine.  All of it explained by Putin using Dugin's language and mystical vision of a Russia reborn.

Occultists, fascists, Satanists.  And the enemies are, chiefly, the USA and Britain.  

Stay tuned.  Commies cum Nazi-loving, nationalist mystics.  It is worth studying Marinetti and D'Annunzio because the SAME THING IS HAPPENING TODAY (shouting).

Merde, Goddam, and fuck.  Here's a Nazi emblem turned "Soviet" and "Czarist".  It seems at once completely incoherent yet somehow, a "logical" conclusion of what has come before....

_

Tracy Twyman & the Exile of Belief

 

It was the turn of the millennium.  I had just read Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and, like many, became fascinated with the mythology surrounding Rennes-le-Château.  I became a Freemason like generations of my family before me (four, at the very least).  I was deeply into making electronic music, reading and writing "avant-garde" poetry, studying esoteric and Masonic literature, and drinking.  Lots of drinking.  I was also working at Cornell University's Olin Library, and Cornell has an extensive collection of Masonic books.  Thousands.  Literally.  I was like a pig in shit, but to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, my snout was pointed at the stars.  And France.  I moved here in 2002.

A friend of mine, a short-term former bassist of Galaxie 500, worked in a kind of head shop-slash-porno outlet-slash-occult bookstore, and turned me on to The Black Flame and Dagobert's Revenge magazines.  

At the time, I had been working on a lengthy article about the connections between Freemasonry and Scouting, and more specifically, the BSA honor society called the Order of the Arrow.  I submitted that article to DR with high hopes; it was rejected.  But Twyman liked it and published it online.

Twyman also inducted me into a fledgling esoteric order, now defunct, called the Ordo Lapsit Exilis -- the "Order of the Fallen Stone," as a 1st° "Legionnaire."  Motto:  Ab initio (“From the beginning...”).  I   thought it a bit odd, never took it very seriously, but was still rather chuffed.  God knows why.

I don't know if the OLE ever existed beyond a website, a mission statement, and a series of written degrees, but I think Twyman had founded the Order with Boyd Rice and Vadge Moore, occultist and former drummer of The Dwarves. 

(Off-topic, if you get a chance to see them live, do it!  Singer Blag Dahlia probably has a rep as a madman, but when I met him, he was a soft-spoken and very nice dude).

Years passed.  I read at some point the OLE had folded.  Like with many Rice collaborations, it seems to have been an acrimonious parting.  The list of disgruntled Rice collaborators is long:  Giddle Partridge, filmmaker Larry Wessel, (perhaps?) Douglas P. of Death in June....etc.  It didn't surprise me.  Back then, Rice accused Twyman of turning the OLE into a money-making scheme, a scruple he didn't seem to apply to Anton LaVey.  Twyman, I learned much later, accused Rice of being lazy and riding on her shoulders.  Qui sait?

As I continued my esoteric studies over the years, I frequently came across Twyman's work.  Some of it looked interesting.  Some of her associations, like the so-called "Dragon Court" and Dragon bloodline, seemed like utter bullshit.  They seem like people who confuse the SCA with reality.

Everyone wants to imagine their ancestors were Princes or Dukes, or a least minor Lords.  But alas, most of our ancestors were peasants, anointed more with pig shit and flies than the holy oils of Merovingian fish-men.

I later learned Twyman had gotten into QAnon-like researches into topics such as Project Monarch and CIA-sponsored kid-trafficking.  I've seen lots of this kind of stuff.  Before QAnon we had the "Satanic Panic" and waaaaay back, there were accusations that Jews trafficked kids for use in unholy rites.  Blood-libel.  The CIA certainly did some wacky mind-control experimentation back in the day, using LSD on unsuspecting soldiers, among other treats, but the idea that a "deep-state" runs a global ring of kiddy diddlers?  Weinstein and. Epstein are real enough, and add just enough fact to make such a scenario believable.  And hey!  The Jooz!.  (That's sarcasm, friends.  LoS don't truck with no Antisemites).  Just enough real shit to make the balderdash seem possible.

Disinformation.  Psy-ops.  If you prefer, Grade-A mindfuckery.

I don't know what it was I was looking for, probably something to do with recent posts about the Church of Satan and the 8-8-88 rally, ah yes, it was on Boyd Rice's Wikipedia page, where I read Twyman had died.

Searching "Twyman death" on Google I came across a couple of articles. Twyman had been researching sex trafficking rings involving the CIA and other such topics.  Not really new subjects, to be honest.  Cathy O'Brien is the fairy godmother of this bullshit.  Her TRANCE Formation of America is one of the "classics" of what can be called a genre.  Another is James Shelby Downard's Carnivals of Life and Death.

If the latter is an extended allegory, I don't know.  If meant to be a real recollection, then Downard is either a bullshit artist of the highest order, or a schizophrenic.

I'm still not entirely convinced Downard is even real, instead being a concoction made up by Michael Hoffman II and Jim Brandon, pseudonym of William Grimstad.  Both are Fortean types who are also Antisemitic firebrands.  Some even say Adam Parfrey was in on it, despite the fact he was half-Jewish.  Or wasn't.  He got pretty cranky when I mentioned it in a Facebook exchange, despite his claiming to be half-Jewish as a way of defending Boyd Rice against charges of being a Neo-Nazi.  But Parfrey is dead now.  

Not to speak ill of the dead, but his Feral House publishing concern is so frustrating.  A mix of truly interesting and informative books mixed with some of the biggest balls of bullroar on the market.  Downard's Carnivals, for one.  I must also mention Dick Hoagland's NASA "exposé" Dark Mission.  This latter book is such a rancid pack of nonsense it's almost criminal.  If I weren't such a free speech defender I'd advocate banning it just for being so insanely stupid.  Such is the mixed bag that is Feral House.

But I digress.  Twyman was looking into sex trafficking by the CIA before her death and ended up being found in her garage, an apparent suicide by hanging.  How could that not be conspiracy fodder?

I read some things about her death, and while I don't firmly believe Twyman was in fact murdered, there are enough suspicious facts to the case which warrant further investigation.

Before her death she talked of being stalked and threatened, both online and in the real world.  She even made a YouTube video about it.  And that video was here but "....is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Mystagogue Publications LLC."  But of course.

One could (and some people do) argue that this is evidence she was murdered.  It could also be used to prove that her mental state was deteriorating, that she was merely paranoid and losing the plot, breaking down.

I would urge anyone interested to read the testimonies of those who feel something is amiss (see below) and draw one's own conclusions.  I don't claim one thing or the other, but I do feel that if these testimonies are true, her suicide might be more that it appears.

I didn't know Twyman personally and I have no dog in this hunt.  Maybe the police did a proper investigation and she'd simply gone down the occult rabbit hole, never to emerge.  She always seemed to be a decent sort.  Bright, certainly.  Off-kilter?  Perhaps.  But that doesn't mean she was totally off her rocker.  Her interests were esoteric and she was prone to make connections I don't agree with.  But the only time I saw her bear into whack-a-doodle territory was with the Dragon Court nonsense, but I don't even know to what degree she actually believed it.

I don't want to intrude upon her family's grief and wander into what may just be the sad affair of a smart woman who lost her grip and ended up taking her own life.

But if there is something to the claims that she didn't kill herself, it merits a further look, ne c'est pas?

This post won't convince anyone, anywhere, of anything.  She was nice to me, and dug my work.  After DR I didn't follow or read her writings, but what she did in that magazine was remarkable and valuable, if only for the poetry it brought into my life.  For that, I salute her.

And I guess, in a way, I'm still a Legionnaire in the Ordo Lapsit Exilis, so in that small way, a brother of sorts.

Read the links I've posted below and decide for yourselves.  Here in France, I can do naught but salute her from afar.  Godspeed Tracy, whatever happened.    

 

1.  Who killed Tract Twyman?

The title already tells you the author's conclusions.  If any number of things alleged here are true, than an investigation is surely in order.  Thing is, are they true?  How could I know?  I'd like to know.  The post is actually an answer on Quora by one "Providence Athenaeum" who has made zero posts and only one answer on the site.  This one.  The Providence Athenaeum, btw, is a private library located in Rhode Island.  It was frequented, among others, by Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, which somehow seems germane.

The post claims she was murdered but is short on details.  It's well-written, but comes across as well....paranoid.  To say the least.

2.  Tracy Twyman, Targeted Indivdual (podcast)

So, around 8:20 Twyman suggests that a sophisticated AI had hijacked not only her computer, what she was seeing online, but had hijacked her mind.  That is to say, what she was seeing online was based upon what she was thinking.  Not what she'd already visited -- Google algorithms do that to all of us -- but what was in her head, "up to the minute" (her words).

Most people understand that this is the way the internet works.  Search for prices for plane tickets to Mallorca, and you start to see ads for flights to and hotels in....Mallorca.  This is the obvious part.  

What's less obvious is that your entire web history is used to point you towards things Google's AI thinks will interest you.  It's a well-known fact.  And problem.  Leftists get results that confirm their biases.  Right-wingers get results which confirm theirs.  This is not always so blatant, and there has been a lot of hand-wringing about how the increasing polarization of the political landscape is being entrenched due to search engine algorithms.

With confirmation bias or frequency illuisions, the paranoid mind kicks into overdrive. The brain's natural tendency to render perception itself an organizing process becomes a kind of apophenia.  With confirmation bias, the brain sees things that confirm pre-existing conceptions. You have a theory, start looking, and find plenty of data to support it, neglecting that which doesn't.  Frequency illusion is when you see a thing, then see it again, then start seeing it everywhere.  Like if I tell you the number 27 appears in a lot of media, you'll start seeing it everywhere (and trust me, in this case, you will).  Of  course, the 99 other times you don't see it won't be important, but the times you do:  Mind.  Blown.  Apophenia is when you start seeing meaningful connections in unrelated things.  (Sorry for these extremely simplistic explanations).

In many ways, this is normal, and helps us construct our relationship with reality.  For an artistic mind, it can be a very useful tool.  Surrealist aesthetics are in many ways controlled apophenia.  Salvador Dalí called it the paranoiac-critical method.  Dalí also said:  "There is only one difference between a madman and me.  I am not mad."  And that's the crux.  He did say paranoiac, but he also said critical.  I know confirmation bias, frequency illusion and even limited apophenia do not mean a person is crazy.  But when it gets out of hand, it's no longer an artistic tool or a thing that makes you go "hmm."  It could be the onset of schizophrenia.

What's more likely?  That an AI had gotten so sophisticated it could show Twyman things she had only just thought?  Or that her "perception organization tools" had gone wonky?  When she says her computer was telling her to kill herself, is it more likely the computer was saying she should kill herself, or that her suicidal ideations were being externalized?

At the end of the podcast, it is, as the podcaster says, pretty "far out."  Indeed, he says "....to me, at first, I think she's kind of flying off the deep end on some stuff that she's correlating to Biblical scriptures, and the Sumerian Bible texts, and the Book of Enoch, and some end days, uh, kind of virus versus flood, kind of scenarios, but this is the kind of research that she did, the kind of stuff she did...."

Believe what you want, I give you the choice.  But a few minutes into her discourse something seems off, even with the tone of her voice.  If she was being harassed, let's look into it.  But it may have all been in her head.  Some are claiming that the disappearance of her videos and other writings from the internet indicate a campaign to "erase" her from the internet (as if).  Could it be that a grieving family, overcome, simply wanted to take down the paranoid content of a beloved member of the family who killed herself as a result of schizophrenia or another psychosis?

Like I said, by all means, look into the allegations of harassment and any other potential suspicious details.  But make sure we're not twisting the data to "prove" something we've already come to accept as true.  Let's not succumb to confirmation bias and/or apophenia.

3.  Re-open the Investigation into Tracy Twyman and Isaac Kappy's Suspicious Deaths, a peitition initiated by Zachary Brian McQuaid.

If you think there is a valid reason to do so, sign the petition.  The name pretty much says it all.  The text accompanying the petition is awfully damning, though proves nothing.  Any of the claims could be the ravings of a liar, a madman, someone misinformed, or someone actually in the know.  If there's any truth to it, an investigation could verify or disprove it.  I am in no position to refute or confirm any of it, but it would be interesting to see what a proper investigation turned up....

McQuaid speaks of producing videos which he says, unbeknownst to him, were disinformation.  He names names.  I Googled his name, unusual enough, and came up with a reference on IMDb to an actor with a single credit to his name, an actor in an episode of the Goosebumps series.  Same dude?  I don't know.  But it could be an indication he had the means and skills to make the videos he claims to have been hired to make.  A person with the same name donated to Just Adopt, Inc. on on 12/25/2021. If it's the same guy, maybe it indicates he's a decent sort.  Then again, it's an organization for adoptions, and he does claim that trafficking children was part of the nefarious deeds of which his employers may or may not have been a part....

4.  Tracy Twyman Official Website 

The website is a single page with some odd graphics.  It also contains the Latin phrase Nemo me impune lacessit:  "No one provokes me without impunity."  A death foretold?

It also includes an image with the motto "There is More Beyond."   This serves as the title for the selected papers of Gardner Murphy (1895-1979), published in 1989.  Murphy was a psychologist of some note, who in addition to more traditional psychology, researched parapsychology, that is to say, psychic phenomena.  Whether it's a reference to Gardner or not, I can't say, but given Twyman's interests, it's possible.  She was given to using the Latin phrase Plus ultra (on her website included), which means more or less the same thing.  It was also Sir Francis Bacon's personal motto, for whatever that's worth.

********************************

So, with lots of digressions, that's a brief account of my dealings with Tracy Twyman.  I don't know, and have no way of knowing, what happened to her.  But I was sad to learn of her death, and that it's become fodder for conspiracy theory.  It may be exactly what it appears, and her grieving family just wants it go away.  If that is the case, and any friends or family come across this post and are offended, my apologies. I liked our exchanges, and respected her achievements as a researcher, writer, TV presenter (In Search Of....) and the fact that she didn't just talk about doing things, she did them.

My respects Tracy, I regret that our brief encounter wasn't longer. Plus ultra!