Not long ago, the Occupy Wall Street movement seemed poised to largely fade from the national conversation with few concrete accomplishments beyond introducing its hallmark phrase, “We are the 99 percent.”
Then Hurricane Sandy struck. In its aftermath, Occupy Wall Street protesters rushed to apply their rabble-rousing hustle to cleaning out houses, clearing debris and raising more than $1.5 million for relief efforts. In some minds, Occupy members had become less a collection of disaffected class warriors than a group of efficient community volunteers. Occupy Sandy, as the effort came to be known, became one of the most widely praised groups working on the storm recovery.
As Occupy members around the country planned the movement’s annual May Day protests, a central question has emerged: whether Occupy Sandy represents a betrayal of the Occupy movement, or its future.
Once-secret documents reveal the FBI monitored Occupy Wall Street from its earliest days and treated the nonviolent movement as a potential terrorist threat. Internal government records show Occupy was treated as a potential threat when organizing first began in August of 2011. Counterterrorism agents were used to track Occupy activities, despite the internal acknowledgment that the movement opposed violent tactics. The monitoring expanded across the country as Occupy grew into a national movement, with FBI agents sharing information with businesses, local police agencies and universities.
"How does one fashion a
book of resistance, a book of truth in an empire
of falsehood, or a book of
rectitude in an empire of vicious lies?
How does one do this right in front of
the enemy?"
- Philip K Dick
Did the essence of… the force
or power behind what is commonly
known as the “Roman Empire” survive it’s apparent demise
in antiquity? Did the dark spirit of all that is empire, simply “go underground” as Nero watched Rome
burn? Did it go dormant, biding it’s time, only to reemerge time and time again
throughout history? Did this force rise again to rekindle the fires of
imperialism in step with the rise and fall of emerging nations? Is it with us
today?
The expression or sentiment that “The Empire Never Ended”
…along with the term “Black Iron Prison” …is no doubt familiar to connoisseurs
of High Weirdness, as well as to fans of science fiction great, Philip K. Dick.
However, there are many of us who have just come across these esoteric
concepts. The fact that an introduction of these ideas is finding its way to a
wider audience is somehow comforting.
One aspect of “The Empire Never Ended” suggests that since
the dawn of time, a battle between primal powers has repeatedly, if not
continuously, been waged upon our planet. These powers that have been locked in
eternal conflict can be typified as the struggle between light and darkness.
“The Empire” has come to be associated with aspects of the darker powers. More
specifically, the Empire has come to represent the aspects of humanity that
utilizes and exploits greed, pride and fear (you can insert any of the 7 deadly
sins here) …or worldly powers.
Within this context, the Empire and the equally enigmatic
concept of the “Black Iron Prison” was eloquently expressed by the American
novelist, Philip K. Dick (December 16, 1928 to March 2, 1982), back in the 1970’s and 80’s, to
wit…
On February
20, 1974, while recovering from the effects of sodium pentothal
administered for the extraction of an impacted wisdom tooth, Dick received a
home delivery of medication. When he opened the door, he was struck by the
beauty of the delivery girl and was especially drawn to her golden necklace. He
asked her about its curious fish-shaped design. "This is a sign used by
the early Christians," she said. Dick recounted that as the sun glinted
off the gold pendant, the reflection caused the generation of a "pink
beam" that mesmerized him.
Dick came to believe the beam imparted wisdom and
clairvoyance; he also believed it to be intelligent. In the ensuing weeks, Dick
began experiencing strange hallucinations…
"I experienced an
invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind, as if I had been
insane all my life and suddenly I had become sane."
Aside from the "pink beam", Dick described the vivid
hallucinations as consisting of geometric patterns. Dick referred to the
"transcendentally rational mind" as "Zebra",
"God" and "VALIS". Dick wrote about the experiences, first
in the semi-autobiographical novel Radio Free Albemuth and then in VALIS, The
Divine Invasion and the unfinished The Owl in Daylight (known as the VALIS
trilogy).
(Wikipedia)
VALIS (Vast Active
Living Intelligence System) has been described as one node of an artificial
satellite network originating from the star Sirius in the Canis Major
constellation. According to Dick, the Earth satellite used the "pink laser
beams" to transfer information and project holograms on Earth and to
facilitate communication between an extraterrestrial species and humanity. Dick
claimed that VALIS used "disinhibiting stimuli" to communicate, using
symbols to trigger recollection of intrinsic knowledge through the loss of
amnesia, achieving gnosis.
Drawing directly from Platonism and Gnosticism, Dick wrote
in his Exegesis: "We appear to be memory coils (DNA
carriers capable of experience) in a computer-like thinking system which,
although we have correctly recorded and stored thousands of years of
experiential information, and each of us possesses somewhat different deposits
from all the other life forms, there is a malfunction - a failure - of memory
retrieval."
(Wikipedia)
In the excepts of the Exegesis reworked
into the "Tractates Crytptica Scriptura" that close the novel VALIS,
Dick expresses the MIT computer scientist Edward Fredkin's view that the
universe is composed of information. The world we experience is a hologram,
"a hypostasis of information" that we, as nodes in the true Mind,
process. "We hypostasize information into objects. Rearrangement of
objects is change in the content of information. This is the language we have
lost the ability to read." With this Adamic code scrambled, both ourselves
and the world as we know it is "occluded," cut off from the brimming
"Matrix" of cosmic information.
Instead, we are under the sway of the "Black Iron Prison," Dick's
terms for the demiurgic worldly forces of political tyranny and oppressive
social control. Rome is the eternal
paragon of this "Empire," whose archetypal lineaments the feverish
Dick recognized in the Nixon administration.
(Wade Inganamort)
The Black Iron Prison is a concept of an all-pervasive
system of social control postulated in the Tractates Cryptica Scriptura, a
summary of an unpublished Gnostic exegesis included in VALIS. The Empire is a
psychological as well as a military state. It exists as a mental construct, as
a psychopathic state of mind, as a system of control. It exists in all of us.
All of us are infected with this thought-form virus. This is the true meaning
of "The Empire." It's what Philip K Dick means when he says, The
Empire Never Ended.
(CJ Stone)
Further research on this most fascinating topic is highly
encouraged. The newly acquainted can simply “google” the phrases “Black Iron
Prison” or “The Empire Never Ended” …for hours of entertaining investigations
into the realm of high weirdness. All of the works of Philip K. Dick are a
highly recommended read. It is no coincidence that Dick’s vision has become increasingly
popular within the film industry. Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990 &
2012), Minority Report (2002), Paycheck (2003) The Adjustment Bureau (2011)…
all explore facets of the Black Iron Prison phenomenon.
As awareness of the millennia old “Empire Energy” continues
to grow, fostered by the success of these films, a larger segment of the
general population… wakes up to the horror that they too are prisoners within
the Black Iron Prison. Occupy and Anonymous are but two real-world examples of
the evolving resistance to our intangible incarceration. Ultimately, a “critical mass” or tipping point may be
reached, where this nefarious Empire will no longer be able to hide in the
shadow of obscurity. But until that day…
What if all of the major television network’s coverage of
the debate over gun control, and all of the hullabaloo over the (supposed) attack
on the American public’s second amendment rights… by some “liberal cabal” …was
in fact, an insidious smoke screen?
Our deep-cover operative, Jack Heart, over at BigTime
television’s Network 23, asks this and other questions in BTtv23’s
second youtube episode entitled… “False Flag.”
During the golden age of archaeology, circa 1900 through
1930, many figurines of what appear to be an amply endowed and likely pregnant
human female, were unearthed during archaeological excavations. One of the most
famous of these figurines, the Venus of Willendorf, is believed to have been
carved somewhere between 24,000 to 22,000 BCE.
These estimates would place the creation of the Venus figurine in the Upper
Paleolithic or late Stone Age. It is widely believed that these figurines
represent a fertility or mother goddess.
These most ancient depictions of a mother goddess further
suggest a more sophisticated and global view of the deity as a creator goddess
or Earth Mother. This “Earth as Mother” motif is found in many mythologies
around the planet. The goddess figure embodies or personifies a fertile earth.
She is seen as the creative force, often giving birth to a myriad of other
deities, or to universe itself.
Sumerian mythology depicts earth goddess Ki (cuneiform ki is
the sign for earth) as the consort of Anu, a sky god. It is the incestuous Anu
and Ki who give birth to the infamous Anunnaki, recently made popular by
proponents of Ancient Astronaut Theory.
The notion of a earth mother and a sky father conjures up vivid imagery for the
likes of Erich von Däniken, et al.
Mut or Maut is the ancient Egyptian mother goddess. Mut was
known as the “primal mother of all who was not born of any.” As a creator deity,
Mut was revered as the mother from whom the cosmos emerged. She is associated with
the waters from which everything was born through parthenogenesis, a form of asexual
reproduction in which the development of embryos occur without fertilization…
shades of the virgin birth mythos?
Egyptian deities evolved over time. As the old kingdom gave
way to the middle kingdom, Mut was transformed into Hathor, and ultimately Isis.
It should be noted that the Ancient Greeks identified Hathor with the goddess Aphrodite
(foam-arisen) and the Romans
as Venus. Both Aphrodite and Venus were considered goddesses of love, beauty, sex,
fertility, prosperity and, through association to Rhea, Earth Mother.
Just as Aphrodite is portrayed as emerging from the sea upon
a scallop shell, so is the ancient title for the Blessed Virgin Mary the Star (Polaris
or the north star) of the Sea. With Mother Mary, the virgin birth motif is
carried into Christian mythology. Although modern Christianity does not necessarily
view Mother Mary as an Earth or Mother Goddess, early Christian sects, circa
300AD did.
Modern western culture has multiple representations of Earth
Goddess. Most widespread is the Mother Nature motif. Another popular and more
recent representation of Earth Goddess is Earth
as Gaia. The ancient Greek earth goddess Gaia has in modern times become
the name for Gaia Theory, where it is postulated that organisms interact with
their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a self-regulating, complex system
that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.
An intriguing psychedelic and shamanic mythology for mother
nature is personified in the south American Mother
Ayahuasca motif. Mother Ayahuasca is a benevolent and loving entity
encountered by shamans, both traditional (Ayahuasqueros) and neo (tourists),
participating in ayauasca ceremony, where the hallucinogenic brew is ingested. Encounters
with Mother Ayahuasca become more prevalent as North Americans seek the wisdom
of South American Shamanism.
Perhaps our recently increasing encounter with “mother earth
energies” is a timely synchronistic event. In our modern world of climate
change and renewed pressures placed upon our precious natural resources, a
deeper understanding of “goddess” or mother earth based philosophy is vitally
important. Let us not forget that our shared Mother Earth is but a tiny speck in the
vastness of space.
On this day where we celebrate “Earth Day” …let us
remember the old sixties advertising slogan… “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!”
