Bill Whitcomb - author of The Magician’s Reflection (soon to be re-released and expanded by Immanion Press), The Magician’s Companion, and the forthcoming Selections from the Dream Manual - gives us a lesson in the theory and practice of psychotronics.

Bill’s recommended reading:

Rays From the Capstone, Christopher Hills
Secrets of the Life Force, Christopher Hills
Supersensonics, Christopher Hills

Psionics 101, Charles W. Cosimano

Amazing and Wonderful Mind Machines You Can Build, G. Harry Stine

Websites:

Chuck Cosimano’s website

KeelyNet

Rex Research

Borderland Research

Information Unlimited

Reflections on the Ether and some Notes on the Convergence between Homoeopathy and Radionics

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Imagine receiving a letter in your mailbox asking you to participate in a study for cancer research, and that your doctor didn’t mention anything about cancer during your last physical. This is what happened to 400 women in Maryland. According to the Baltimore Sun, “A state contractor tampered with Maryland’s cancer registry, a database used by researchers to track the disease’s impact, counting hundreds of patients as having cancer when they did not, according to a legislative audit released yesterday. The company, Macro International Inc., found in an internal investigation that data were deliberately altered between August 2004 and December of that year. The company fired the employee responsible for the cancer registry. State officials said that Macro employees apparently overreported the incidence of cancer to ensure that the database met standards set by a national certification association, which closely monitors registries to ensure that states have a complete count of cases.” These letters were sent in 2005, and they’re just addressing it now.

If this can happen with a cancer registry’s database, imagine what could happen with someone’s personal health records. The argument for computerized records is simple. It will eliminate many errors that occur with paperwork, and will help emergency workers to assist a patient if the patient is unable to communicate. While this seems like a great idea in general, the issues of privacy, confidentiality, and abuses of the system lie in the back of many people’s minds. And for good reasons.

It’s not only our health records that are vulnerable. The WSJ Health Blog reports “In yet another example of the health industry mishandling private patient records, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia sent some 202,000 explanation of benefits letters to the wrong addresses last week, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The letters, which were mistakenly directed to the addresses of other policyholders, included names and insurance identification numbers of patients as well as the names of the doctors and other medical providers they were using.[..] A small proportion of the letters also had Social Security numbers, a spokeswoman for the company told the paper. Vulnerability to identity theft is one concern. But EOB letters are especially sensitive from a privacy standpoint because they contain some treatment information. And this is one of a steady stream of mistakes by the health-care industry when it comes to protecting electronic data. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia told the AJC that a computer system change was to blame, and it’s taken steps to avoid the problem in the future.”

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In the second part of our interview with Nemo he talks about the visionary art world, his store the Revolutionary Exchange, the late Seth Fisher, and his advice for aspiring artists.

(Full disclosure: the Revolutionary Exchange is an official sponsor of Esozone)

Bonus: Remastered version of the first episode w/ Antero Alli

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Antero Alli returns to talk about Dr. Christopher Hyatt’s legacy, and how he met Robert Anton Wilson.

Update: The Myspace and Archive.org versions were cut-off at the end. Here is another version, on Google Video.

Direct link to Google Video (download available there)

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Technoccult TV talks to visionary artist Nemo about his art, how he got into the occult, and how you too can make ambidextrous art.

Be sure to visit Nemo’s Revolutionary Xchange. I did an interview with Satoshi Sakamoto over there a couple months ago.

(We’re having some trouble uploading to archive.org, but once it’s done you’ll be able to download a DIVX or iPod format version)

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After discovering the complexity of the different layouts for various situations within the Kolduny Tarot, and finding difficultly in explaining them in a few brief blog posts, Natalia Tikimirov has agreed to walk us through monthly New and Full Moon Tarot readings. These methods were handed down to her from her mother, and her mother before that.

“The date of the New Moon is July 2 or 7/2. Draw the 7th card of the major arcana which is the Chariot and the 2nd card of the major arcana which is The High Priestess. Lay them down. Add 2 plus 7 and pull the ninth card of the major arcana which is The Hermit.

As the Moon waxes it will be governed by The Chariot, a card of drive and ambition, plowing on to reach its goals. Many decks display The Chariot being raced forward by a warrior. The early Visconti Decks however are unique in displaying a woman wearing a crown operating the chariot at a slower pace. This is to remind us that many times the fastest chariot crashes and never finishes. It is important to operate the chariot skillfully, knowing when to slow down for curves, and knowing how to avoid rough spots in the terrain. As the Moon waxes, remember the skill required to operate and maneuver the chariot.

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Update: Part 2 now available

Technoccult TV talks with Antero Alli about paratheater, his films, the 8 circuit model of consciousness, and his plans for the future.

Antero Alli is a paratheater director, filmmaker, astrologer, and the world’s leading expert on the 8 circuit model of consciousness. For more information about his work, or to purchase his DVDs, visit ParaTheatrical ReSearch and Vertical Pool Productions.

And of course, you can see him give a presentation on the 8 circuit model this October at Esozone in Portland.

Special thanks to: Chris Cloke, Bill Whitcomb, and Trevor Blake.

(Watch for more episodes of Technoccult TV, inlcluding part 2 of this interview plus interviews with Paul Laffoley, Nemo, The Red King, and many more)

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It’s no secret that Big Pharma has been providing doctors with special perks in return for prescribing their products. This has been going on for ages. But to get a better grip on why the costs of healthcare have been increasing dramatically we need to understand about the massive networks that Big Pharma is involved in. Believe it or not, Big Pharma is connected to everything. The AMA, the FDA, the financial markets/big business, the insurance industry, law and politics; these are all affected by Big Pharma.

Recently it was reported that there are more Americans addicted to prescription drugs than illegal drugs. An article in The New York Times stated that “An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.” That’s a pretty hefty number. I know quite a few people who became addicted to prescription drugs. Some said tranquilizers and painkillers were harder to quit than illegal drugs. Prescription pain killers have become the “new heroin”, and are increasingly becoming a major problem in the school system.

Not only are the doctors getting “perks” from the drug companies, but the professors and the research facilities of major universities have been the recipient of “special benefits” as well. Recently “three influential psychiatrists from Harvard Medical School seem to have been caught with their hands in the drug-laced cookie jar, and now they’re in big trouble. Two days after it was alleged that the three doctors failed to report a collective $4.2 million in payments from pharmaceutical companies, Harvard and the affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital have launched an investigation into the doctors’ behavior.” Big Pharma = Big Money.

Let me just state for the record that I think research and development in pharmaceuticals is an important factor in saving lives. Not all prescription drugs are addictive or deadly. Many are necessary to keep people alive. But let me also state that many side effects from certain drugs are not discovered until many years later. This can be a “Catch-22”. Also more money is spent on advertising than on R&D. In an article by Science Daily it was reported that “the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spent 24.4% of the sales dollar on promotion, versus 13.4% for research and development, as a percentage of US domestic sales of US$235.4 billion.” Instead of prolonging or enhancing life, getting the word out about their products is of priority.

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) is proposing legislation for reporting any payments over $500 paid by pharmaceutical companies to doctors or academic research to be on public record. “If they are being paid, it ought to be reported,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. Grassley is also looking at the money drug companies pay doctors for academic research. He is investigating some 20 top medical schools - including Harvard, Stanford and the University of Cincinnati, for under-reporting the income top researchers are getting from the drug industry. Grassley wants to learn if the money is influencing research.”

I think transparency on this is issue is way overdue. When the absurd “war on illegal drugs” becomes part of a cover for the pharmaceutical companies’ desire to line their pockets, then something needs to be done.

(References: Discover Magazine-”Psychiatrists Who Hid Big Pharma Money Now Face Inquiry”, New York Times-”Legal Drugs Kill Far More Than Illegal”, Science Daily-”Big Pharma Spends More on Advertising Than Research and Development, Study Finds”, Weeks MD “Are Perks Compromising MD Ethics?”, The Providence Journal- “CVS Trial: Celona Tells of Becoming Point Man For CVS” , Campus Progress-” A New Kind Of Addiction”, Wired-”Prescription Drugs: Rock’s New Coke and Heroin?” and a h/t to Dr. Peter Rost’s Pharma Law Blog.)

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Jennifer Stevenson is the author of “Trash Sex Magic”, and most recently wrote a trilogy of sexy, funny, romantic fantasy, the first of which was recently released called “The Brass Bed” (Ballantine Books). She’s been writing for 25 years and lives in the Chicago area with her husband of 30 years and her two cats.

The Brass Bed begins with the heroine, Jewel Heiss, a tough fraud cop investigating a fake sex therapist, Clay, who has been using an antique brass bed to lure his customers. Trapped inside the bed is Lord Randall (Randy), who in 1811 was cursed and turned into an incubus by his magician-mistress for being lousy in bed. The curse was this: satisfy one hundred women or be trapped in the bed forever. Lucky Jewel was number one hundred, and Randy becomes her personal sex slave. The choice: Clay or Randy? This is where the fun really begins.

I don’t usually read much fiction, but found myself flying through all three books (“The Velvet Chair” is the second [coming out in late May], and “The Bearskin Rug” is the third). There’s plenty of humor, sex and magic to keep anyone reading into the wee hours. The ending in the last book (“The Bearskin Rug”) was a bit of a surprise. If you like funny romantic fantasy, you’ll love this series.

I sat down with Jennifer to discuss her new book, and to get some of her views on magic, and sex demons.

See also:

Trash Sex Magic review by Wes Unruh

 

 Jennifer Stevenson interview by Tiamats Vision [13:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Fox News. It’s hard to talk about greatest hits without mentioning their war coverage or their coverage of racial issues. As a political and cultural propaganda machine, there’s little outright funny about Fox News’s persistent distortion of reality. Or, if there is, the jokes on the people of the United States and the world.

But occasionally they have a real zinger. Some “hard hitting” piece of “journalism” where the joke really is on them. Here are Fox’s 5 journalistic masterpieces, after the fold.

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In parts one and two of our interview we discussed the history of the Koldun and their relationship to the Tarot. In this third installment we discuss how to find one’s Tarot Constellation, which form the basis for other Kolduny practices.

TiamatsVision- You mentioned that you use the Tarot Constellation for assistance in helping someone. How does one go about finding their Tarot Constellation?

NATALIA- The process of finding a person’s Tarot Constellation consists of first reducing the birth date down to a single digit. This is the Soul Number. Then find the Tarot card within the major arcana that is associated with that number. Next, you have to find the Persona and Will cards and then the Fate and Path cards. From there you look for the Hidden Influence, Visible Influence and the Inner Teacher cards.

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In our first interview with Natalia and Anton we discussed the history and superstitions surrounding the Koldun. In this segment we discuss the history and relationship of the Tarot that form the center of their tradition.

ANTON- I think it’s important before discussing the tarot constellation that we should first review the history of the relationship between the Tarot and the Kolduny. The last time I checked Tarot scholars are totally undivided as to the origins of the Tarot. Stuart Kaplan, Mary Greer, and Rachel Pollack as well as other Tarot historians all seem at a loss concerning the origins of the Tarot. The Kolduny are not at this loss. It is our beliefs concerning the origins of the Tarot that set us aside from other “Tarot” readers. It is our beliefs concerning the origins of Tarot, which creates the pathology that makes Kolduny Tarot both unique and incredibly powerful.

The Kolduny, believe heart and soul that the Tarot is theirs. Even today when people think of the Tarot, the most common mental image is an Eastern European woman laying cards down. There is a reason for this collective mental image.

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Koldoun, Koldun, Koldun’ya (Russian) - A magician or sorcerer; one having more power and knowledge than a znachar (wizard). - (via the Theosophy Dictionary)

The Koldun are an ancient Pagan sect that has existed in the Russian/Slavic areas for hundreds of years. The teachings are passed down through families orally, and there isn’t much written on them. What little is known is written by scholars in a few texts on Russian magic. I sat down and talked with a couple who currently practice and live in the United States, Natalia and Anton Tikimirova.

TiamatsVision- I understand that you use tarot, astrology, numerology, and herbs in your practices. These techniques are used together for example, in finding a specific herb to use for an ailment or looking into a good day to marry. How does this work?

NATALIA- It is all intertwined, that is what keeps it a formal tradition. It is the frigid pathology of the Kolduny that has kept it so separated from other traditions. Unlike Wicca, which has it’s own beauty in its free flowing way of doing things. Yet with that freedom comes a lot of questions, which is why many who claim to be Wiccan are still seeking to define what Wicca is. It seems anyone can buy a couple of books and suddenly be “Wiccan”. I am not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing for Wicca. But that is for them to figure out. Kolduny practices are far more formal and rigid. A lot of what we do is based upon numbers. Time, is very important to us.

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We’ve been covering conspiracy theory and paranoia a lot lately, so I thought it would be fun to revisit the daddy of ‘em all (the granddaddy have to be Protocols of the Elders of Zion). These aren’t necessarily the most plausible, or the weirdest. Just the best.

5. The Federal Reserve did it: The dweebs behind everyone’s favorite boogy man got their bow ties in a wad over Executive Order 11110 and had JFK assassinated. More info.

4. Joe DiMaggio did it: JFK put the the United States on a decadent path (and had Marilyn Monroe killed), and our nation turned its lonely eyes to Jumpin’ Joe to restore righteousness to our country by killing a man in cold blood. DiMaggio stepped up the plate and, using his extraordinary gift of hand-eye coordination, put a bullet through Kennedy’s brain. More info.

3. Homosexual Thrill Kill: In the words of Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costiner in Oliver Stone’s JFK): “It was a homosexual thrill-killing, plus the excitement of getting away with a perfect crime. John Kennedy was everything that Dave Ferrie was not — a successful, handsome, popular, wealthy, virile man. You can just picture the charge Ferrie got out of plotting his death.” Yeah, that makes sense. More info.

4. The CIA meant to miss but hit: One of the most plausible theories here comes from the Don DeLillo novel Libra: disgruntled former CIA agents meant to stage an assassination attempt to guide the government to war with Cuba. But they missed and blew the president’s brains out. More info.

5. JFK had himself assassinated: I can’t find a web site dedicated to this theory, but here’s the jist of it: dying of Addison’s disease, Kennedy decided to go out like a martyr and had himself assassinated.

(Much thanks to Nick Pell for his help with this article).

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The Invisibles: Say You Want a Revolution.

(Disclosure: this review was commissioned by the R/evolutionary Culture Shop)

The Invisibles is a psychedelic sci-fi series about a team of anarchist freedom fighters who employ time travel, magic, martial arts, and drugs in their battle against the tyrannous Outer Church. King Mob, the group’s leader, explains: “We want to show people how to make their own exits, even if they have to use dynamite… We’re trying to pull off a track that’ll result in everyone getting exactly the kind of world they want. Everyone including the enemy.”

Grant Morrison, a Scottish comic book writer, is fond of explaining that he wrote the Invisibles in response to his alien abduction experience in Kathmandu in the 1994. He also calls it a “hypersigil,” a form of magical fiction. Morrison says that he strongly identified with the King Mob character and found that the by incorporating real aspects of his life in the series, he could make fictional aspects of the series bleed into his own life. When the series was almost canceled, he encouraged readers to use a chaos magic technique to save the series. Apparently, it worked and he was able to finish the series as planned.

The first volume begins in modern times, with the Invisibles recruiting Jack Frost - a teenage delinquent from Liverpoor who may be the next Buddha. Frost’s first mission involves accompanying the team back in time to rescue the Marquis de Sade from prison during the French revolution. Later volumes continue to sprawl backwards and forwards in time, with characters’ actions from different time periods reverberating throughout history.

Although the Invisibles begins as a romantic “good guys vs. bad guys” story, the lines begin to blur as Morrison deconstructs issues such as conformity, activism, and violence. Brilliantly complex and inherently mind altering, the Invisibles is a countercultural “must read.”

Buy The Invisibles: Say You Want a Revolution from the R/evolutionary Culture Shop.

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Life Extension - As covered previously here on Technoccult, aspirin is the best life extension drug on the market. And it’s cheap. See: Top Ten Life Extension Drugs.

Intelligence amplification - Mind machines and smart drugs never did live up to the hype, which is probably why you don’t hear much about them anymore. I actually conducted some trials with volunteers using a brain entrainment machine for my cognitive science class in college. The results: the machine didn’t do jack. I was only ever able to experiment with self-medication with smart drugs, but my general conclusion is that some of them work as stimulants (piracetum, vassopressin) but they’re not worth the money.

The good news is, there are some new high tech intelligence amplification tools on the market: “brain fitness” games like Brain Age and Lumosity. I’m not sure how much good it will do, though. See Seed Magazine’s coverage.

Virtual Reality - We’re still waiting on decent immersive VR, but the Nintendo Wii has brought some elements of VR to homes.

Brain Backups - There’s no wetware brain backup, but if you want to preserve your knowledge for all of eternity, you can try posting the contents of your brain on the web. Google and the Internet Archive (backed by Amazon) are both attempting to archive and back-up the entire web.

Space Migration - Like brain backups, this remains vaporware. But space tourism and private space programs are taking off, including one by Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos.

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I started Technoccult as a teenager living in rural Wyoming (Sheridan to be exact) almost 8 years ago as a way to share links and research. Here are the 5 biggest influences on Technoccult, in chronological order:

Mondo 2000 - This one should be both first and last on the chronology. I started reading transcriptions of Mondo articles, mostly interviews with musicians like Nine Inch Nails and Revolting Cocks, way back in the day. I actually saw one of the last issues (the one with Nina Hagen) at a Hastings in Billings, MT. But I could only buy one magazine and decided to get the “electronic music and culture” magazine Interface instead because it said they were seeking submissions. I ended up writing for Interface, which was my first “pro” writing when I was 16. So I guess it was a good decision. But I always also kinda kick myself for not getting that Mondo while I had the chance.

Hyperreal - So I ended up reading about Mondo at places like alt.culture rather than actually reading it. And I started reading about this “smart drugs” stuff, which led me to Hyperreal. Now finding Hyperreal’s drug archives seems to be impossible, they just forward to Erowid. and the archive.org pages are blocked. Anyway, this site gave me a bit of exposure to rave culture, which I basically completely missed.

The Process mailing list - I ended up on this mailing list because I thought it was a Skinny Puppy fan list. It ended up being one of my first exposures to esoteric subjects, though I didn’t really know much of what was going on. I wrote about the Process here.

Anders Transhuman Page - I have no idea how I came across this site, but it was my introduction to the concept of transhumanism. I was particularly interested in the self transformation page. Thanks to this, transhumanism wasn’t just about waiting for a singularity in some distant future, but about enhancing the self in the here and now with what was already available. I’m apparently the only person in the world who thinks this way, so I don’t really identify as a transhumanist anymore.

Disinfo - I got into Disinfo initially for the political and cultural stuff. Technoccult actually basically came about because I really wanted to work on the Disinfo site, but my e-mails to them went unanswered. I wasn’t even into the occult stuff at all when Technoccult launched… it just sounded like a cool name (I hadn’t read the Invisibles yet either, but it’s possible I came across the term “Technoccult” somewhere on the Disinfo site and just forgot about it). But since all the occult material was so present, I ended up exploring that as well. I did eventually end up doing an internship for Disinfo - “telecommuting” during my sophomore year of college.

Mondo 2000 (again) - In college, Honky Tonk Dragon let me borrow a bunch of his old Mondo 2000 magazines, and I bought several off eBay. This was late 2001, early 2002 when Technoccult had already been around for a couple years, but was really just getting going.

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No offense to anyone left off… these just happen to be the 5 that I find to be absolute “must reads” right now.

Brainsturbator - Of the sites on this list, this one is probably the one of most interest to readers of this site. The occult, mad science, fringe culture. Best of all, this is not a link blog, practically post is a substantive original article.

Election Central - Since Joshua Marshal seems to be mostly dedicated to posting links to other parts of his TPM Empire, the TPM site Election Central has emerged as my favorite progressive blog. Election Central tracks the minutia of not just the 2008 presidential election, but all US elections of note.

Hit and Run - Reason Magazine’s blog has perhaps the best coverage on the ‘net of the ever expanding police state and the erosion of civil liberties. You may have noticed that quite a lot of my links here come from Hit and Run.

OVO blog - a new blog, from Trevor Blake. Trevor’s been publishing the OVO zine for something like 2 decades, and has been blogging on American Samizdat for a few years as well. The OVO blog features extensive coverage of the damage done by religion, and the occasional old school fringe culture gem.

Robot Wisdom - Jorn Barger, the proprietor of Robot Wisdom, coined the word “web log” and his is the first, and possibly still best. Every time I visit I find something worth while. Jorn’s links run the gamut from celebrity gossip to artificial intelligence to James Joyce scholarship.

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I’d love to get some feedback from Klint’s wonderful community and readership here, especially those who happen to have experience in design, marketing, and business. After some discussions with fellow designer, Coe, who himself has an esoteric streak, I’ve been considering some issues that might be keeping the contemporary spiritual movement that is the occult subculture (and its legion of niche cultures and interests) from reaching its potential in North America (and possibly Europe).

First to address is whether being different is something that the members of the occult community thrives on, in and of itself. Personally, I’ve noticed differences between the persons I know involved in the esoteric arts. I’ll call them the Few for brevity’s sake. There are the goth shops that stock the books on magic that I’ll visit if I’m too eager to wait for an Amazon shipment. While the books and knowledge are the factors that draw me to their locale, the people and artefacts that are sold there are of no interest to me and, in fact, sell a stereotype that I find repugnant. (Sadly, the books in my section are the cultural accessories to the majority of wares they huck: clothing, hair dye, witchcraft gobbledygook, incense, shoddy pewter jewellery, and punky goth paraphernalia.)

There’s also the New Age shops that huck their own brand, though with a more aligned focus to the ultimate goal of spiritual exploration: crystals, incense, oils, lame calendars with ooh-ahh paintings on them, CDs, cheesy T-shirts, et cetera.

So all this material would be the halo effect, as it’s referred to in marketing. Unfortunately, goth and witch cultures seem to have let the accessories take the focus away from the core cultural values that spawned them in the first place. Which leads me to wonder what state does the North American occult community find itself.

Now, keep in mind that I’ve worked in design for a number of years and now currently work as a brand consultant. What most people don’t understand about brands is that they are what the people say they are, not what the companies wish to define them as.

This is an interesting point to get across because persons that decide to hate a particular brand are projecting their own form of identity by hating on the brands that rub them the wrong way. The little mental boxes in your mind that you used to define that brand is neurologically linked to other elements that you associate with in your life that you use to define what you’re not. Sadly, by choosing one’s enemies, like I see in these books and posts about “occult warfare,” fans of this thinking do themselves the disservice of filling in all the boxes they dislike. The mental boxes (or mental white space) that remains moulds personal self-identification with the cultural or experiential leftovers that haven’t been already commandeered by others.

Rarely do I see popular subculture movements hijack and infiltrate the mainstream in order to spread their art among the masses. The Few that become self-inflicted prisoners, bound by the things they refuse, begin to wrap these leftover ideas into its own mishmash subculture. Then they get mad when the mainstream adopts and makes it their own. Think of punk culture adopting military garb as their own, or the Barbie girls out there that seem to be standardised with a back-ass tattoo and pierced bellybutton and tongue.

This brings up the universal archetype known as the Elixir. In Joseph Campbell’s monomyth one of the necessary traits of a Hero is to enter the underworld and return to the masses with a so-called Elixir. The Elixir is wisdom. And I define wisdom as knowledge + experience.

“It is important that art is produced, but it also has to be consumed. The dynamics of producers and consumers is the motor of art.” Turkish caricaturist Ercan Akyol said that, and it remains true in all elements of life (unless you’re pursuing a Zen-like knowledge of the self, in some cave somewhere, by choice.) But think of art in this case as a the Elixir of wisdom, this knowledge and experience that is being hoarded by one group or the next, but rarely shared across borders. Borders who’re really only being defined by these little, semantic boxes we build in our heads: aka brands.

One of my favourite things that Grant Morrison says during his well-known Disinfo talk has nothing to do with sigils or his writing. It’s that he’s wearing a Donna Karan suit. Then he spills his drink on it and cheerfully laughs, “Fuck it!” The suit is a beautiful piece, and it serves its purpose. It’s Morrison’s mask magic at work. He doesn’t avoid fashion as a vice of contemporary life, but embraces it and uses it as a magical tool in his everyday life—experiencing what a fine garment can elicit in others, and how that attention can be embraced.

Rollo May says, in Man’s Search for Himself, “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice… it is conformity.” Whom among us have conformed to our particular set of friends? Their expectations of us, our subcultures’, or our families’? Why? Like Morrison, laugh out loud, “Fuck ‘em!” I want everyone reading this right now to say to themselves, three times, Fuck occultism, fuck conspiracies, fuck the little boxes in my head that keep me from exploring the things I simply believe I hate.

And on that, as I digress from my initial hope to encourage some feedback to better a conversation I am having with Coe and sometimes with Rev Max, I leave you with two quotes to encourage some thought on this matter. But remember, they apply when you embrace the lifestyle of a Hero yourself. The archetypal Underworld in many a case might just be the very mainstream that so many so-called “occultists” tend to avoid and dismay. It is that very nightmare I encourage you to embrace! Learn to flirt, learn to dress up as much as you might desire to dress down, and truly put Robert Anton Wilson’s and Ramsey Duke’s ideas to work:

“It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.”
—Thomas Sowell

“A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction.”
—unknown

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This week marks the beginning of the “terrorism preparedness” drills Top Officials 4 and Vigilant Shield 08:

VS-08 will be conducted concurrent with Top Officials 4 (TOPOFF 4), the nation’s premier exercise of terrorism preparedness sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, and several other linked exercises as part of the National Level Exercise 1-08. These linked exercises will take place October 15-20 and are being conducted throughout the United States and in conjunction with several partner nations including Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, as well as the Territory of Guam

As usual, the truthers are shitting their pants in anticipation of a false flag terror attack and/or a preparation for the declaration of martial law. Nevermind that these threats failed to materialize during Operation Noble Resolve last August. (Aside: does anyone have a list of times that Alex Jones has “cried wolf” about terrorist attacks and/or declarations of martial law?)

Critics on the war on terror often remark on how our reaction to 9/11 is exactly what the terrorists wanted. We now cower in fear of terror attacks, give up freedoms, and question each other loyalty. I can’t help but wonder if the reactions to these drills aren’t exactly what the police state wants: a constant state of fear and loathing. Besides, “they” don’t have to declare martial law. We’ve been living under martial law since at least the 80s, when Reagan escalated the war on drugs to its current paramilitary status. But even before the effective beginning of martial law in the 80s, the US has had a long history of government repression. The real question is not whether the United States is becoming police state, but to ask if it has ever been a democracy.

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Daniel Pinchbeck, and the fine folks at FutureHi, are starting a project called Metacine: a Magazine for the New Edge. It’s about stuff like Burning Man and, like Future Hi, “new” psychedelic culture.

It sounds a lot like Mondo 2000, a magazine for the new edge that ran sporadically from the late 80s (under the title Reality Hackers) until around 1997. It had articles about Burning Man, raves, designer drugs, smart drugs, etc. and basically spawned the magazine Wired. Burning Man’s been going for nearly 2 decades now. Nothing new there. All the sustainable bio future stuff they’re talking about on the Metacine web site? Sounds like Mother Earth News or the Whole Earth Catalog.

So what’s “new edge” about all of this? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with any of what they’re doing. I’m excited about all of it, honestly. But trying to package it up as some sort of new movement sounds like journalese to me. I’ve been as guilty as anyone else about this. Just look through the Technoccult archives and you’ll find plenty of evidence.

Why this obsession with doing “new” things? Finding the trends, the edge, blah blah blah blah blah. Seems like we’re all still stuck in the past, rambling about sustainable energy and Leary’s 8 circuit model and all that. But is that really such a bad thing?

Then there’s Jason Louv’s attempt to create a new occult ultraculture. Rather than trying to document a new culture, Jason’s trying to will a new one into existence with his book. I admire what he’s doing, and I know he’s doing it for the right reasons. He wants to see a new generation of socially consciousness occultists. It actually reminds me a lot of Terrence McKenna’s stuff though, about the role of shaman as a healer for the community. McKenna called his vision of the future an “archaic revival,” because everything he expected to occur was actually ancient.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for Jason and for the Future-Hi cats, and I’m sure Pinchbeck has the best intentions. I’ll be pre-ordered Generation Hex and will probably be a Metacine subscriber. But I’m worried that an obsession with novelty and “the next big thing” will only hurt all our long term goals, stunt our personal development by making us trend whores, and blind us to realms of less glamorous possibility.

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The word biopunk has been bandied about for some time now. Google already has over 1,000 results for a search on the term. R.U. Sirius wrote a piece in Rolling Stone a couple years ago about the possibility of garage biotechnologists, a movement he called biopunk. But I’d like to throw a new meaning for the concept out there: the near future (already here?) biotechnology black market.

The biotechnology market has already captured the imaginations of the business world. For the past few years it’s been hyped as the next big thing, the new dot-com bubble. For instance, Paul Allen wants to turn a neighborhood in Seattle into a biotech industry fueled urbanist utopia.

Ample private and federal investment is being poured into biotech research, but I expect U.S policies banning cloning research and limiting funding for stem cell research will effectively limit the U.S.’s role in biotechnology development. Less restrictive policies and/or cheaper labor will give Europe, Russia, and Asia advantages in the global biotech industry.

But other factors will drive an underground biotechnology market: the crippling expense of prescription drugs, health insurance, malpractice insurance, and student loan debts.

Chemistry students have been making money manufacturing LSD, MDMA, and other illegal drugs for years. But the demand for black market prescription drug clones could create a new use for the college chemistry lab. Imagine thousands of undergrads manufacturing HIV meds and other expensive drugs for cheap underground resale.

Meanwhile, medical school students, un-licensed doctors, or even licensed doctors trying to keep up with insurance payments will be performing a myriad of unauthorized procedures. Genesis P. Orridge could be at the forefront of a movement again. Sex changes are nothing new, but P. Orridge and Lady Jaye’s sex change as installation art project is on the forefront of the body modification movement, which constantly grows more extreme. Face transplants are about to become a reality. But these black market surgical procedures won’t be limited to weird body art projects. Uninsured Americans will be seeking all types of surgical procedures on the black market, and finding students and doctors to perform them will become increasingly easier.

Of course, those policy restrictions will create another biotech black market: clandestine cloning research labs and illegal human testing projects. Illegal human testing is almost certainly already a reality. And even with recent improvements in the job market, there are still thousands of desperate unemployed people to be taken advantage of.

And let�s not forget R.U. Sirius�s frightening prediction from his Rolling Stone article: garage production of germ weapons.

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This article began in response to Jason Louv’s call for submissions for the coming book “Generation Hex.” However, the current political climate, and the absurdity of writing an anti-corporate monogram for publication by a corporation, forced me to rethink submitting this work for publication. Instead, this piece needs to be preserved in its degrading, uncopyrighted, all rites reversed form. Eris said so.
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When I Am King, the online comic by Swiss artist Demian5, follows a sexually deviant camel and the recently de-pantsed king of Egypt on a quest to find love and trousers. The story is told entirely through pictures and symbols — without a word of text. It’s a wild ride through a desert that includes weird sex, hallucinogenic drugs and dangerous bees.

“About ninety-five percent of [When I am King] I made up as I went along,” Demian5 says. “Some scenes, like the one where the ‘camel’ smokes the cigarette, were in my head before I even started drawing WIAK.”

WIAK reads like a textbook example from Scott McCloud’s Reinventing Comics. The whole comic was created and published electronically — Demian didn’t take any notes or do any sketches on paper. He used mostly Adobe programs Photoshop, Illustrator and ImageReady to draw the comic and create animation. He freed himself of the restrictions imposed by printed page dimensions and used the web’s “infinite canvas” to convey a sense of space. The reader mostly scrolls left to right, following the characters activity along the landscape, but in a few scenes the reader scrolls down, following falling characters. Animation is used to highlight emotions and convey a sense of motion rather than as a storytelling tool. In fact, WIAK deals more with emotions and experimentation than plot. The story in WIAK is only background — what’s really important is what the characters are feeling and how it’s expressed to the audience.

Demian’s new project, Square Stories, is published weekly in the print version of Zurich Express and will also be published online in America. Demian says he finds Square Stories confining “mostly because of its small, weekly-one-gag form. I’m still trying to find the perfect way to do them. Contrary to WIAK it will also contain words sooner or later, and as it is published in a very widespread official newspaper it is aimed at a larger, more average audience. It is also forbidden for me to offend real people and to offend religious feelings.” He adds, “I wonder if I will ever have trouble with that.”

Although the strips look much like Demian’s other work, hiring Demian to work for a mainstream newspaper is like hiring David Lynch to take over Peanuts. WIAK features a camel performing sexual favors for humans. But Demian, a self-described “poorly disciplined vegetarian” defends his work saying “I don’t want anyone to do anything with animals, just be friends with them. There is also a symbolic aspect to the sodomy parts of WIAK. It is not sodomy because the creatures in WIAK are neither really human nor are they real animals — they all have about the same amount of intelligence, and they don’t really exist. They’re just symbols. Glyphs.” (”I wasn’t planning to do so much symbolism when I started WIAK,” he admits.) He adds, “It’s not about animal rights, though I think we should care about them.”

When Demian5 began serializing the comic on his site in 2000 it was an immediate hit, even without much advertising. “I submitted my link to some search engines and I contacted a few other comic creators like Scott McCloud to find out what they think about my work,” he says. By the time the series reached its conclusion Demian was being mentioned alongside comics legends like Jim Woodring and Chris Ware, and has since been favorably reviewed in Wired and Spin. According to Demian’s “complicated system of counters” nearly 50,000 people have read his comic so far.

Despite the popularity and critical success of his comic, Demian is still not able to live off it. PayPal donations and merchandise sales help him out, but they’re not paying his rent yet. Demian admits he would be content working a day job and continuing to post his comics online if he had a job he enjoyed. “Somehow I like the spirit of free online comics, because money is always a threat for artistic freedom and for diversity. But then, I want to earn a living with something I like to do. Like everyone. So I wouldn’t say no to a virtual dollar. Or to a virtual euro.”

In the meantime Demian continues to freelance in the advertising business and receives part of his income from Square Stories. He describes himself as a normal and boring person who spends his time thinking deep thoughts. Amongst other things he has been enjoying the online comics Pay Your Reality Tax and Nichtlustig. Demian’s influences for his surreal comics range from artists Woodring and Ware to the Great Gianna Sisters and Wipe Out 2097 videogames to the music of Radiohead (WIAK is named after a line in the Radiohead song “Paranoid Android”) to anime to his training as a graphic designer.

Demian is currently working on a new online comic, as time permits, which contains “no dialogue, nice creatures, big emotions.” He says “The style will be a bit more organic and the perspective a bit deeper than in WIAK, but it will be less colorful than Square Stories. It will also contain another form of storytelling, still without words, but… You’ll see.”

(Originally published at http://www.shift.com/content/web/405/1.html September, 2002)

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I’m sitting in front of a sound stage in the middle of a horse pasture watching robotic kids shift and rotate to electronic music. A computer thumps out crunchy, mechanical melodies over the funky beats oozing from turntables. Neon drawings float under the black light from the plywood dance floor. Off to the side of the stage, a guy sits cross-legged and meditates. I’ve been up since 6:30 in the morning, it’s 2:30 at night now, I’m freezing, and have no plans of going to bed. Fatigue has given way to fascination. I feel great.
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