Like a lot of sullen, dorky kids, I first became interested in the occult in my early teens, and the subject interests me to this day....as a sullen, dorky adult. I've bought a lot of books over the years, but three books I purchased at that heady time really stick out in my memory: the first three "occult"-related books I bought.
I might have already read Drawing Down the Moon (Margot Adler, RIP) when I bought these books - I'm not sure - but Adler's book was the first serious study of Wicca I'd read. Even then I knew the wheat from the chaff. It seems incredible to me now, but I found Adler's book in my high school library. I may be wrong, but I'm not sure we'd see it in a public school these days. Even then, anything vaguely "occult" was hard to find in school libraries, B. Dalton's, or Waldenbooks, the leading bookstores at the time. This was, after all, the 1980s, and the US was experiencing a moral "Satanic" panic, hysteria that ruined hundreds of good peoples' lives. QAnon is essentially the same phenomenon, but in this current iteration the "Satanists" have been identified as left-leaning politicians. In the Middle Ages, it was "the Jooz...."
Let's make a blunt aside: QAnon is Antisemitism in disguise.
Those early forays into the occult were not the most auspicious, but for me, they were very potent, even dangerous....
The Magic Power of Witchcraft by Gavin and Yvonne Frost
The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey
Necronomicon (the so-called "Simon" version) by ?
I knew - even then - that the Necronomicon ("the" isn't in the title but Lovecraft uses it and it seems awkward without it) was a work of fiction, but I still felt there was something powerful in it; not in the rituals it contained, not in the incantations, but in the very book itself, the object; it was as if it - literally - radiated some kind of measurable power. Almost like a homing beacon for otherworldly forces.
Voodoo works because people believe it works. Voodoo is a kind of gaslighting. Tell a believer they've been cursed and they will freak out. I believed some books radiated power, so they did.
40 years and 20+ addresses later, across 4 states and 2 continents, my original copies of The Satanic Bible and the Necronomicon are still with me. I just recently moved and most of my books got put in boxes. 2 in particular did not.
The Necronomicon fascinates me because although it was an invention of Lovecraft - a fiction - many occultists insist it is based on something "real." They maintain that although Lovecraft presented his accounts of the tome as fiction, he was speaking of literal eldritch forces and occult traditions. For these people, the book is dangerous. I never believed it could summon ancient entities, but I too, for a while, feared the book enough to resist actually opening it until some time after I'd purchased it. But I was 12 or 13 years old and had a pretty active - and not always healthy - imagination. From about 8 to 10 years old I couldn't sleep alone. I'd awake during the night and lie there in a near panic until I got enough courage to run to my sister's room and sleep next to her. I don't know why; but such was the mind of a kid who a few years later would treat the Necronomicon seriously: An arguably neurotic child....not a "reasonable" adult....
The idea of the Necronomicon is so alluring that someone actually took the time to write it. This is the "Simon" Necronomicon that I purchased. Simon is mentioned in the book's introduction as the person who re-discovered the manuscript. Lovecraft himself claimed that he got the idea from Gothic stories, where "mouldering manuscripts" were often a trope, and he referred to the book throughout his oeuvre. But the "Simon" version was originally published in 1978, long after Lovecraft's death in 1937.
Like The Satanic Bible, my copy is an Avon paperback. The covers are not dissimilar: nothing except the title and a similar sigil, all white on black. Necronomicon has a bit of ornamentation, but otherwise the books are both stark, and about the same dimensions all around.
When I first bought the book, I knew it was fiction, and at the time I was barely familiar with Lovecraft. I mean, come on. The "Mad Arab"? It was obvious the book was akin to The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, published at the height of Twin Peaks mania. To expand the fictional universe....and make some coin. Upon reflection, I find my reaction to the book puzzling; I knew, or at least strongly suspected, it was fiction, yet on some level I was a bit "frightened" of it. Maybe even then I was on some level aware of the precepts of chaos magic, that is to say that even fiction can be used effectively in ceremonial "magick." Fiction or no, I knew it was powerful, because so many of the people I knew who were into the occult spoke of it in hushed tones and seemed to fear it. It was catching. It comes back to that comment about voodoo: it works because people believe it works....
My great hope is that somebody some day will write and even stage The King in Yellow, the play mentioned in several stories of Robert W. Chalmers' eponymous collection. It is an obvious thing to do: a malevolent play, a shocking diary, an accursed grimoire. The fame of the stories in which they are found is such that readers are left wanting more, they want to actually read these disturbing things. Some have suggested Lovecraft was inspired by Chalmers" fictitious play when he invented the Necronomicon, but apparently he did not encounter Chalmers' work until after he had already created his own....
Shadows here of Don Quixote and perhaps one of the inspirations for Foucault's Pendulum....
The Simon Necronomicon is a bit silly, really. Lovecraft himself knew he could never write something as horrible as the book was said to be. He knew hints and brief citations were much more effective. And he was right. The Simon Necronomicon is just too obviously fabricated to fill the reader with cosmic horror and dread - unless the reader is a 10-year-old neurotic who can't sleep alone....Guilty! To recreate the power of the fictional book is impossible. Chalmers wrote a few stanzas of The King in Yellow, but would never have been able to write an entire work with the effect of his fictional play. The King in Yellow was said to have driven people mad. It burned through Europe like an epidemic. A diseased meme. If he'd written it for real, one would read it, not go mad, and then poof! The illusion - ruined.
H. P. Lovecraft, quoted by Peter H. Gilmore:
....one can never produce anything even a tenth as terrible and impressive as one can awesomely hint about. If anyone were to try to write the Necronomicon, it would disappoint all those who have shuddered at cryptic references to it.
The Simon Necronomicon is still in print and still sells a fairly decent amount of copies per year. Most probably bought by newly-minted Lovecraftians. A novelty for the collection.
Peter Gilmore, Magus of the Church of Satan, wrote an essay about the book which is worth reading. The book has retained an air of mystery even in this era where almost all information can be accessed 24/7. The book's true author isn't known for certain, although Gilmore sheds some light on that.
Gilmore also writes that the fact the book is a fiction doesn't make it useless as a magical tool:
Satanists understand that any prop that is sufficiently stimulating can be used in personal ritual, so if the materials contained in this book send the proper chill down your spine, then certainly avail yourself of them. As Magistra Nadramia has said: “Working with and expressing your emotions in the ritual chamber using this particular little black book is perfectly valid Satanic magic. A careful look at The Satanic Bible will tell you that Dr. LaVey encouraged the magician to use any and all elements of fiction, fact and fancy to create his Intellectual Decompression Chamber.
But, he adds:
Just don’t fool yourself outside the ritual chamber into the belief that you are using some authentic ancient tome handed down by Elder Gods to their human, or humanoid, servitors.
This reminds me of chaos magic and the tenet that "belief is a tool." One can perform bibliomancy with a Bible or Donald Duck cartoons, and have equally valid results.
Anyway, I stumbled across Gilmore's essay because I was interested in learning a bit more about Gilmore's biography. I wasn't looking for Necronomicon information at all. That said, I recently pulled out my copy to look through for the first time in over a decade, and it's sitting on the table next to my laptop. So, when I clicked on Gilmore's essays and saw he'd written about it, my spider senses tingled.
For some reason I wrote Nina Simone on a recent collage and then went to the metro after I'd finished collaging for the day; there I noticed a new poster about an upcoming concert in homage to....Nina Simone.
When it rains it pours.
The coincidence of coming across an essay about a book I'd only just pulled off the bookshelf in over a decade made me think:
Here are three books: "Sci-fi" or "SF" or "Science Fiction" or "Speculative Fiction" or "3 dogs flying the Tricolor," singing the Marseillaise and brandishing sickles, whilst ballerinas clad in garbage bags recite the phone book of Tampa from 1979: Aaron, Joseph, xxx-xxxx; Abraham, Jimpernickle Joe, xxx-xxxx; Absalom, Fred P., xxx-xxxx, etc.
This will of course, take hours: for the encore they act out the advertisements; but dig this: they do it in Russian!
So these three books aren't by the titans (Asimov, Clark, Bester, Heinlein) nor the relatively younger Sterling, Gibson, nor especially literary, like Atwood.
Not especially well-known, thus not influential; not mind-blowing unknowns either, not plot-wise, not stylistically, not something one can pin down so easily. In many ways it's the mood they create, the atmosphere.
I like 'em all to a number. For a character, a scene, a concept, an overall feeling. It occurs to me there's a relation to my first novella in these choices: Dissolute narrators, vaguely aristocratic, who find a purpose thrust upon them. Not explicitly like Gully Foyle, but these characters without strong principle or purpose get hit on the head in some way. Kismet rings. Our heroes pretty much call destiny's bluff and each one changes the course of history....for a planet, or the galaxy entire. For better or for worse.
The Star Virus isn't especially great, but it captured me from scene one. A garish psychedelia, an ennui in the face of the marvelous. Protagonist Rodrone is basically l'Étranger....
I don't know what it is about Emphyrio. Like my book, it's an odd mix, a pre-industrial society with a lotta "Anchors aweigh, goodbye spaceport!" Perhaps the somewhat horrifying aspects towards the conclusion stuck with me. These two books, and that which follows, are very similar. Short novels focused on a "man with a mission." Treks through foreboding wastes populated by deadly beasts and even deadlier humans. Grim. A future of shit.
The Rosetta Codex is about a young man who's jettisoned from, then must reclaim, his title, wealth, power. It shares a similar kind of hero as our last examples. What really got me is one scene. I might pull a Burroughs and steal the image. If Lautréamont and Houellebecq can do it....I actually am in full favor of appropriation in literature. Not academic work. And "stealing up" as opposed to "stealing down." I think it would be fair for me to steal from Dan Brown. But not vice-versa....
In fact that's how I got turned onto Star Virus: Burroughs took the idea of "deadliners" from it and integrated it into Nova Express. Fair enough, apparently reading "The" Naked Lunch shook J. Barrington Bayley out of his doldrums and a relatively "non-fecund" period due to his disillusionment with writing. I won't tell what it is, but the deadliners are eerie, grotesque, their weird dancing and games disturbing. Existential dread on a cosmic scale.
But in Codex it's a more tangible scene, not so much horrifying as odd and creepy. A barque in a swamp with a corpse swathed in rags propped up in the bow. What's not to like?
I know that's not especially profound "lit-crit." Et alors?
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.
....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 hisintent, 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 Triggertrilogy)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....
I published my novellaThe Ice Minein 2018, but my great-auntAlice Adkins beat me to it by 84 years.
Alice was a badass. She was blind, yet traveled to Africa, Asia, Australia, the Arctic Circle, and of course, Europe. She translated from the French and also spoke German, I believe. Family letters show a woman who was kind, whip-smart, cultivated, and unstoppable. Her husband was a geographer of some note (part of the delegation which hammered out the Treaty of Versailles, for example), Douglas Johnson, and apparently she was a woman who could go toe-to-toe with him on any day of the week.
She publishedFog Phantoms and other Poems in 1934. This slim volume contains original poems and translations from the French. Here's one of her poems from her school days, 31 years prior:
I don't know when he wrote it, but my great-grandfather Alvin Adkins (1853-1926) wrote the following poem, probably close to his death. Alvin was a farmer, but he was an intellectual man as well. His wife Emily was descended from Dutch settlers who'd established farms in what is now Brooklyn as early as the the 1650's. Through her, I am a distant relative of Humphrey Bogart.
Bury Me on the Hill Top High
Under the blue and starlit sky, Placing my feet towards Sun Rise Street Placing my head where sun sets meet, Leaving one hand next to the Northern Light Placing the right toward the South land bright.
Leave my soul in the care of God Bury my hopes where Christ had trod, Think of the Christ who died for me Think of the Christ who made men free Give to the world the best of will Render to man ill for ill.
Forget me not in life's years When time has dried your loving tears Enrich the land that gave us birth Make more happy this home of earth, Honor the God whose land ye till, Seeking the best your mission fulfill.
But when you bury my body in the hill top high Under the blue and starlit sky, Bury my love in the love of my friends Letting it live there till Christ descends Let it grow through eternity's end.
Alvin, along with his dad Isaac and his son Elgin, my grandfather, also have the distinct honor of having been arrested for attempted murder! How now, Caravaggio?
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My most renowned in ancestor, writing-wise, was my great-aunt, from my mom's side, who was a successful romance novelist. Her name was Tilly Armstrong, but she published under other names as well. Tilly served terms as both Chair and VP of theRomantic Novelists' Association (UK). Before her writing career, she'd worked for the World Health Organization in Geneva, and later, for 18 months in Canada. At some point she became the personal secretary to the Chairman of British Steel, Lord Melchett. Quite a woman.
So, there you have it. Go Tilly! Some of my literary antecedents.
My great-uncle Homer Burton Adkins was an author of scientific textbooks, and was a leading organic chemist of his time. The Adkins Catalyst and Adkins-Peterson reaction bear his name. My second cousin Roger, Homer's son, worked in the Office of Management and Budget, working face to face with Presidents from Eisenhower to Clinton. Roger was not a "front office" guy, but Google the OMB and his name and he's all over the place.
One day, I'll get into all these things, but just wanted to name-check some of the literary ancestors I never knew existed when I started writing as a teenager....
