On the Road to Contact in the Desert

For the upcoming weekend, Tek-Gnostics will be on the road to Contact in the Desert, being held at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center in Sunny Southern California. In the fine tradition of PT Barnum, we will be hawking The Tek-Gnostics Heresies - "Tales of Wonder from the Collective Conscious" ...as well as other associated memorabilia. My cohort, Agent 87 and I, anticipate an amazing time in the Sonoran desert.

In the fall of 2016, we had participated in the inaugural AlienCon. As with that event... and in proper anthropological fashion... we plan to immerse ourselves in the CITD population to further develop a cultural Ethnography. As part of a larger community that we previously identified as Conspiracy Culture International (CCI) we expect this field trip to be very enlightening.

UFO enthusiasts hold a special place within our vision of CCI in that they share a cosmology that assumes sentience and intelligence exist beyond Spaceship Earth. They dare to ask the big, existential questions of life, the universe and everything (god bless you, Doug Adams). Additionally, and conspiratorily... UFOlogists maintain that, not only do extra-terrestrials exist, but there has been an elaborate cover-up… perpetrated by our government… since at least the 1940s. This belief ties into a much more pervasive mistrust of government, which has recently dominated socio-political sentiment, globally. 

Variations on the extra-terrestrial conspiracy include technologies reverse-engineered from the Rosewell saucer crash, clandestine ET meetings with President Dwight D Eisenhower (note: looking forward to seeing Ike's Granddaughter, Laura Eisenhower @ contact!), abduction scenarios, men in black, NASA black-ops and the Babylon Working …just to name a few.

Luminaries of interest include Graham Hancock, Jacques Vallee, JJ Hurtak and of course... Erich Von Daniken.

87 and I expect CITD to be a deeper, more "Sirius" event than last year's AlienCon. We hope to chronicle the state of the UFO community, post-Trump election. In this day and age, there seems to be a cultural acceleration of epochal change, especially after the Podesta/UFO wikileaks data-dump. We'll see what happens.

We will be at Contact in the Desert, booth #23 (of course) for the duration... we hope to see you there!

ÉÍ  'AANÍÍGÓÓ' ÁHOOT' É 

The Cult of Kek & the Law of Eights

As many of you know, the Cult of Kek is an online meme magic cult, prominent on imageboard websites such as 8chan (aka: Infinitechan, as 8 is infinity spelled sideways!). The 8 chan imageboard is composed of user-created boards, each one moderated by its respective creator, with minimal interaction from any site administration. Meme magic is a term used to describe the growing power that internet memes have on the fabric of reality. Interpretations of Meme Magic have ranged from pragmatic use to esoteric dogma to a mutating form of Chaos Magick.

The term meme magic was coined on the imageboard 8chan and soon thereafter gained popularity on 4chan /pol/ board as well. On 8 chan, the character Pepe the Frog is depicted as a modern avatar of an obscure, archaic deity who uses ancient Egyptian meme magic to influence the world, often by fulfilling the wishes of posts that end in repeating numbers.

Oddly, Kekian meme magic was embraced by supporters of 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Tech entrepreneur and Trump supporter Palmer Luckey said that meme magic is real and "We’ve proven that shitposting is powerful.”

The constant memeing of Trump and Pepe is believed (by the adherents of the Cult of Kek) to have awakened the ancient Egyptian deity Kek, that represents Chaos and Darkness. They believe that Kek began communicating with them through GETs, which are numerical stamps, ending in repeating numbers on chan posts. GETs are seen as a good omen within the 8chan community.

Per the Know your Meme website, the Cult of Kek… also known as the Church of Kek… is an alleged satirical religion based around the worship of the ancient Egyptian deity Kek (also spelled Kuk or Keku), an androgynous God of darkness and chaos who is often depicted as a frog or frog-headed man in male form or a snake-headed woman in female form. Practitioners are known to frequently write “praise Kek,” and jokingly refer to the church as a “religion of peace.”

During this time, the memetic phenomenon took a distinctly dark turn with the appropriation of Pepe/Kek by factions of neo-Nazi fascists who began depicting Pepe reading Mein Kampf, Pepe sipping from a swastika teacup, etc. Who knows what bizarre sequence of events attracted these white nationalist trolls to Pepe… perhaps the malevolent Kek deity, awaking from its primordial slumber, called to those who were susceptible to its manipulation… to its darkness?

In these strange days of high weirdness, the unlikely probability of an ancient Egyptian deity, hoping in… toad-like… from mists of time, from the fringes of reason, to influence the very fabric of reality… is sadly not as outrageously astounding as it would have been even a decade ago… is it?

Before proceeding, Tek-Gnostics dismisses, out of hand, all racist, neo-Nazi stupidity as hateful to humanity and counter-productive to our purposes. We have no time or patience for such tomfoolery.

With that said, when the Cult of Kek first appeared on our radar, we immediately began to notice the synchronistic entanglement between this meme magic cult and the anciently occurring, yet pervasive “Law of Eights” that informs Tek-Gnostics. The first sync to catch our eye was its inception on 8chan. This “8” inference triggered an in-depth investigation by our vigilant R&D team. Digging deeper, the Eights kept coming…

Kek, it turns out, is the deification of the concept of primordial darkness (kkw smꜣw, keku-semau) in the Ancient Egyptian Ogdoad cosmogony. In the oldest representations, the androgynous Kek is given the head of a serpent, or of a frog, dependent on the masculine or feminine form. In the Greco-Roman period, Kek's form was further defined with the male form depicted as a frog-headed man, and the female form as a serpent-headed woman… as were all four dualistic concepts in the Ogdoad.

In Egyptian mythology, the Ogdoad (Greek ογδοάς "the eightfold", Egyptian Khemenu, Ḫmnw) were eight primordial deities worshiped in Hermopolis during the Old Kingdom period in the third millennium, B.C.E. The Ogdoad existed before the emergence of any subsequent beings. They took the stylized form of husband-wife pairs: HUH and HAUHET, the rulers of infinity, KUK and KAUKET, the rulers of darkness, NUN and NAUNET, the rulers of primordial waters, and the secretive AMUN and AMAUNET, who rule hidden things.

One of several associated, anciently occurring creation myths state that a lotus flower emerged from the waters of "the Sea of the Two Knives" (a lake near to the temple in Hermopolis). The petals opened to reveal Re who then created the world. A variation on this myth held that a scarab beetle (Khepri - the symbol of the rising sun) was revealed when the petals opened. The scarab transformed into a young boy whose tears formed the first human beings. The boy is generally considered to be Nefertum (young Atum) but once Re and Horus had been merged as Re-Horakhty the boy was subsequently considered to be the infant Horus.

The evolution of the Ogdoad from prehistoric Egypt, to its association with Horus, illustrates the unbroken chain of ancient cosmologies as their pre-existence moved through Egypt and Babylon, into the Mystery Cults, to more recent religious mythologies, secret societies’ all seeing eye, etc. 

In book one of the Tek-Gnostics series: “The Tek-Gnostics Heresies – Tales of Wonder from the Collective Conscious” we dedicate a couple of chapters to the “Law of Eights.” Here are a couple of excerpts…

“During the development of our intelligence engineering systems, certain synergies, certain commonalities in structure began to emerge. Seemingly divergent disciplines such as philosophy, mathematics, and music demonstrated similarity in descriptive organization. The overarching synchronistic principle that arose, as if of its own accord, is what we term the: “Law of Eights.”

A most profound example of the Law of Eights can be found in the ancient oriental divination system known as the “I-Ching” or “Book of Changes.” At first glance, the I-Ching is simply a book of divination. However, upon scrutiny, deeper, timeless connotations emerge. The text of the I-Ching consists of 64 glyphs or “hexagrams” composed of six stacked lines (configured in two trigrams), either solid or broken, which serve as a binary code system. Each hexagram is accompanied by a concise oracular statement or commentary. This commentary essentially interprets the exact moment in time, wherein the hexagram was generated.

There are many oracular tools that can achieve synchronistic results. However, the nature of the 8x8 or 64 grid that is the I-Ching, functions in synergy with (Leary’s) eight circuit model, incorporated within the Tek-Gnostics system. Like the myriad other eight-based systems, such as the octave musical scale, the Taoist eight Bagua, the classic 64 square chess board and even the DNA genetic code, the I Ching aligns in the eight-fold format. Thus does the “Law of Eights” permeate human philosophic history, as well as inform modern science.

So it is that the new “Law of Eights” mutate and expand, perhaps exponentially, into our shared future. Just as the Buddha rediscovered the noble eight-fold path, so do we rediscover, add to, and pass along these profound tools of consciousness to the next generation. Who knows what form the ancient law of eights will take… the next time around.”

- The Tek-Gnostics Heresies

It didn’t take long for a new mutation of the Law of Eights to emerge… to impose itself upon modernity. The emergence of this strange, viral web-based Cult also demonstrates the potential chaotic energies of humanity’s archaic, unconscious… boiling just beneath the surface of modern normality. It apparently doesn’t take much to tempt these dark energies to rise. The ancient powers, it seems, are not dead and gone… but lurk in wait for the opportunity to re-establish the old, pre-pagan ways... darkness, darkness.  

In a bizarre turn of events, it has been reported that Pepe the Frog, the fictional amphibian that had been possessed by the ancient (and sinister) Kek, has died. Drawn into creation in 2005, he passed away tragically at the hands of his creator, artist Matt Furie, on Saturday, May 6th. An exorcism gone terribly wrong, perhaps? Now that Pepe has met his demise, it will be exceedingly interesting to see what avatar emerges from the digitally primordial ooze of 8chan and other such imageboards.

One final thought on this and other unsettling emergences… manifest universe appears to be a balance of opposites. The whole yin-yang thing. Having been born into this universe, we are obliged to contend with duality. One self-evident aspect of Universe, is... along with light, comes the darkness. To occupy a sentient body in 3-dimentional space-time necessitates that universe be dual in nature: Light/Dark, Yin/Yang, Observer/Observed, etc. It would not be possible to bask in the warmth of light without the contrast of the shadow of darkness.

In these strange days remember… darkness is but a shadow cast by the light.

Life is strange… take it as it comes. There is enduring wisdom within the Law of Eights. This ancient system seems to have withstood the test of time. Embedded within this archaic system, there are clues that help illuminate the dualistic nature of Universe. Thus does the primordial binary system further articulate to an eight-fold template. Whether it’s the 8x8 I-Ching oracular system or the lucky 8-ball… the Law of Eights continues to manifest.

Remember... 8 is infinity spelled sideways!

Göbekli Tepe - Sacred Mountain

More of a mound, really... Göbekli Tepe is situated a few kilometers to the northeast of the modern town of  Şanlıurfa in southeastern Turkey. The tell is situated on the highest point of the Germus mountain range towering 750 m above the Harran plain. With a height of 15 m, the mound, which is completely artificial, is spreading on an area of about 9 ha, measuring 300 m in diameter. This immense ruin hill was formed of the debris of monumental constructions dating back to the 10th and 9th millennium B.C.E.

Göbekli Tepe was first recognized as an archaeological site during a large-scale survey project conducted by the Universities of Istanbul and Chicago in 1963. In his account of work in the Urfa province, Peter Benedict describes the site as a cluster of mounds of reddish soil separated by depressions. The slopes were clustered with flint, and he described what he thought to be two small Islamic cemeteries. The impressions of the survey team are mirrored in early aerial photographs of the site, taken before excavations started. The reddish-brown tell with its height of up to 15m and a diameter of 300 m is the only colorful spot on the otherwise barren Germuş mountain range.

Situated on the highest point of this geological feature, Göbekli Tepe is a prominent landmark at the edge of the Harran plain. The surveyors identified the materials at Göbekli Tepe as Neolithic but missed the importance of the site. Further research may also not have seemed possible because of the assumed Islamic graveyards.

Between 1983 and 1991 large scale excavations, in fact, rescue excavations in advance of the construction of the Atatürk barrage, were under way at another important Neolithic site in the Urfa region, Nevalı Çori. Under the direction of Harald Hauptmann, a Neolithic settlement was excavated that had large rectangular domestic buildings often similar to Cayönü´s channeled buildings. However, excavations revealed also one building (with three construction phases) that was completely different from anything known before in the Neolithic of the Near East. Not only was a large number of monumental stone sculptures discovered, but the rectangular building itself had T-or Gamma-shaped pillars running along the walls, interconnected by a bench, and a pair of T-shaped pillars in the center. Due to the representation of arms and hands, these pillars could be understood as highly abstracted depictions of the human body.

Nevalı Çori was finally flooded by the Atatürk Barrage in 1991. But one of the members of the excavation team, Klaus Schmidt (1953-2014), wanted to find out whether there were more settlements like Nevalı Çori hidden in the Urfa region, with special buildings and elaborated stone sculpture. In 1994 he visited all Neolithic sites mentioned in the literature. Drawing on the experience gained at Nevalı Çori, Schmidt was able to identify the ‘tombstones’ at Göbekli Tepe as Neolithic work-pieces and T-shaped pillars.

“October 1994, the land colored by the evening sun. We walked through slopy, rather difficult and confusing terrain, littered with large basalt blocks. No traces of prehistoric people visible, no walls, pottery sherds, stone tools. Doubts regarding the sense of this trip, like many before with the aim to survey prehistoric, in particular, Stone Age sites, were growing slowly but inexorably.

Back in the village, an old man had answered our questions whether there was a hill with çakmaktaşı, flint, in vicinity, with a surprisingly clear: Yes!. And he had sent a boy to guide us to that place. We could drive only a small part of the way, at the edge of the basalt field we had to start walking. Our small group was made up of a taxi driver from the town, our young guide, Michael Morsch, a colleague from Heidelberg, and me. Finally, we reached a small hill at the border of the basalt field, offering a panoramic view of a wide horizon. Still no archaeological traces, just those of sheep and goat flocks brought here to graze. But we had finally reached the end of the basalt field; now the barren limestone plateau lay in front of us.

On the opposed hill a large mound towered above the flat plateau, divided by depressions into several hilltops. Was that the mound we were looking for? The ‘knocks’ of red soil Peter Benedict had described in his survey report, Göbekli Tepe, or to be more precise, Göbekli Tepe ziyaret? When we approached the flanks of the mound, the so far gray and bare limestone plateau suddenly began to glitter. A carpet of flint covered the bedrock, and sparkled in the afternoon sun, not unlike a snow cover in the winter sun. But this spectacular sight was not only caused by nature, humans had assisted in staging it. We assured ourselves several times: These were not flint nodules fragmented by the forces of nature, but flakes, blades and fragments of cores, in short artifacts.

Other finds, in particular pottery, were absent. On the flanks of the mound the density of flint became lower. We reached the first long-stretched stone heaps, obviously accumulated here over decades by farmers clearing their fields […]. One of those heaps held a particularly large boulder. It was clearly worked and had a form that was easily recognizable: it was the T-shaped head of a pillar of the Nevalı Çori type.”

- Dr Klaus Schmidt

- the above was taken from: The Tepe Telegrams (News & Notes from the Göbekli Tepe Research Staff)

“The discovery of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey in 1994 has forced us to rethink the origins of civilization. While the site is far from fully excavated, we’ve learned enough to know that it was built well over 10,000 years ago – the earliest Egyptian pyramids are closer to us in time than to Göbekli Tepe. We know that it was huge by all but modern standards. We know it was a ritual site, not a place where people lived. And we know that it was built before the development of agriculture and settled living.

We’ve always assumed that after people begin farming, building cities, and generally settling down, religion evolved from tribal religion to what would become the organized religions of Sumer, Babylon, and Egypt, and eventually into their classical and modern offshoots. Göbekli Tepe tells us that’s wrong. Instead, organized religion came first. Then, because people gathered together, they began looking for ways to feed everyone. Necessity was the mother of the invention of agriculture… and of brewing. Göbekli Tepe has our first evidence of large-scale beer production.”

- John Beckett - from a review of Gordon White's: Star.Ships: A Prehistory of the Spirits

“The ancient einkorn wheat, found in the hills surrounding Göbekli Tepe, just happens to be the single genetic ancestor of every strain of wheat grown and eaten across the earth. People gathering at a temple on a hill to worship ‘heavenly beings’ were like passengers in an airport during a pandemic. Wheat, and what to do with it, spread to every corner of the land.”

“The discoverer of Göbekli Tepe and its chief excavator, Dr Klaus Schmidt, famously warned against what he called ‘Holy Land Syndrome,’ which is the propensity for archaeologists to head out into the field with a spade in one hand and a Bible in the other. Holy Land Syndrome precludes the finding of something you didn’t already expect to find.”

 “The twenty first century offers us a new Holy Land Syndrome. There is still the spade in one hand, but the Bible has been replaced with a very selective reading of ‘On the Origin of Species.’ Science does not consider itself an ideology, as it claims to only deal with what is real. This is, of course, what every ideology thinks of itself.”

- Gordon White @ Rune Soup

At Göbekli Tepe we can find depictions of creatures like armadillos, wild boars and geese animals not indigenous to the region. What is interesting is that located less than 350 Miles from Göbekli Tepe is the site many biblical scholars believe to be the resting place of Noah’s ark, so the animal carvings of Gobekli Tepe suggest a time in the region’s history when the indigenous animal population may have been of a totally different anthropological origin. Could Göbekli Tepe and Noah’s ark be connected in (some) way?

Some researchers theorize that the events of a cataclysmic flood and a story similar to that told of Noah’s ark was recorded on the stone pillars of Gobekli Tepe. If true, that would push the date of the great flood back to the end of the last ice age, far earlier than the biblical period. There are some incredible things about this mystical place but we still do not know the answers to some of the most important questions like, who built Göbekli Tepe? to what purpose? and how was Göbekli Tepe preserved until today?

Researchers point that Göbekli Tepe was “carefully” placed underneath the sand, the whole site was actually buried. Why would the builders bury such an incredible site? To protect it? to preserve it? Göbekli Tepe is regarded as an archaeological discovery of the greatest importance since it could profoundly change our understanding of a crucial stage in the development of human societies. “Göbekli Tepe changes everything,” says Ian Hodder of Stanford University. David Lewis-Williams, professor of archaeology at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, says that: “Göbekli Tepe is the most important archaeological site in the world.”

- from an article appearing in Ancient Code

Conspiracy Culture International

"Picture a bright blue ball just spinnin', spinnin' free... dizzy with eternity" - John Perry Barlow

Now that the “shock and awe” of recent frenzied political machinations appears to have desensitized public perception to a point of numb acceptance, it is clear that the proverbial paradigm has indeed shifted. What we once typified as a spy vs. spy world, has not only been verified, it has rapidly surpassed the post-9/11 Top Secret America surveillance standard and morphed into a bizarro alt-reality. The consequent supplanting of political “business as usual” continues to spin out of control. Just as one crisis comes into focus, two more are taking shape on the periphery, while four more are incubating in the wings.

In an earlier post, we explored a recent global shift toward an extreme right-wing or Alt-Right social and political posture. We postulated that this socio/political phenomenon was but one example (albeit an extremely unsettling one) of a more profound shift in consciousness of first, second and third world populations. The deeper transmutation appears to be a waning of the mainstream and a waxing of the Fringe. Middle or mainstream moral and ethical sensibilities are rapidly being replaced by fringe thinking… or what we at Tek-Gnostics call: “High Weirdness.”

Note: our esteemed colleague Recluse, over at the "Visup" Weblog, has done a wonderfully comprehensive series on this topic, titled: Fringe: The Strange and Terrible History of the Far Right and High Weirdness. The discerning reader can find part one of this series by following the above link. This is highly recommended reading.

In these unsettling times, the giving way of the middle to the fringe, the “Widening of the Gyre” to employ Yeats’ overused metaphor, instills a palpable angst within the shifting paradigm. 

So how did Mainstream transform into High Weirdness?

Specific to the US of A, the mainstream has been closely associated with the middle-class. In our parent’s lifetime, the middle-class steadily grew, expanding economic and educational opportunity to larger segments of the population. This opportunity was labeled: the American Dream. In our lifetime, the expansion of the middle-class slowed, stopped, and is now in decline. The turnaround did not happen overnight. It took decades, beginning with the Reagan regime’s “trickle-down economics,” for the American Archons to systematically dismantle such a robust society.

A hallmark of the American middle-class was a hearty moral and ethical sensibility that honored liberty, equality, decency, fairness, hard work, and most importantly, a “live and let live” attitude. An attitude exemplified by: “I may not agree with your opinion, but I will defend your right to express it.” In return, the middle-class work ethic was reciprocated with an expanding economy. These were the principles that made (capitalist) America great.

With the demise of an expanding middle-class, a pervasive sense of scarcity… a fear of “not enough to go around,” began to erode the American “live and let live” generosity. With perceived scarcity, Capitalism got meaner… we quit caring for each other. Out of fear, generosity was replaced by greed. Working toward a common good was replaced with a self-centered “winning” mentality. Now, it just so happens that a “win at all cost” attitude aligns nicely with a “divide and conquer” attitude of the American Archons.

The erosion of the middle… of a “common good” identity left a void in American’s self-identification that was filled by a corporate identity, similar to the Japanese Saleryman culture… hence the demise of Middle America and the rise of Corporate America.

So it was that the decisive component, driven by corporate profit (read: greed) was a Capitalist form of globalization that exploited the uneven value and compensation of labor. Why pay laborers x when we can pay them 10% of x overseas? Americans aren’t dummies. We saw all this going down and began to, first recognize, then comment, then shout the alarm… wake up! All these societal changes seemed planned… coordinated… and hence the conspiracy theorist was born. It became clear that capitalist globalization was designed to obscenely benefit the American Archons… or as they have been identified in pop culture… the 1%. 

The above is an over-simplification, but you can see the pivot.  

The void created by the attrition of the middle has been filled by that which once occupied the periphery… the Fringe. Additionally, those whose sensibilities once occupied the middle, have re-aligned their thinking to fringe-thinking… an understandable attitude of suspicion, given the above. The danger in the current societal environment resides in over-reacting, devolving into a nationalist (read: fascist) ideology. This would play to the hand of the American Archons, a classic divide and conquer manipulation.

The fear-driven angst over the attrition of the middle leads us to our current quandary… the periphery has supplanted the middle. This cultural metamorphosis is fast becoming the predominant paradigm. Per part one of this series, we identified this perceptive transformation as: Conspiracy Culture International. Our use of the moniker: “Conspiracy Culture International” not only encompasses a much broader cross-section of world populations than does the Alt-Right, it focuses on the shared, intrinsic consciousness shift within these emerging cultures of the fringe.

Conspiracy Culture International is a massive, diverse, globally intact phenomenon. Rather than being identified by genetic heritage or nationality, its ethnicity is composed of those who subscribe to the multifaceted principles of high weirdness. Conspiracy Culture International (CCI) embraces the seemingly divergent communities that monitor or adhere to not only conspiracy & Deep State theory, but alt history, ancient alien & alien abduction narratives, PSI phenomena & the paranormal, psychedelia, occult & new age philosophies, neo-religious beliefs, astrology & magick... even cyberpunk, transhumanism & singularity.

Modern media has covered the recent socio/political changes we label Conspiracy Culture International in such a way as to focus merely on emerging Alt-Right faction. This is a disservice to the extent of change that we are currently experiencing. CCI is a big tent. It houses right, left, and centrist thinking. It accommodates both the Alt Right and the Noö Left. The Alt-Right may have generated recent headlines, but a much more profound change is taking place. Again, there is an inherent danger in over-emphasizing the Alt-Right faction of this phenomenon. 

To quote (strangely enough) from a recent podcast from the Kali Tribune: "Fringe culture has gone mainstream… The emerging political archetype of a center (vs) fringe relationship is symbolized for many people by the figure of Donald Trump, the "anti-establishment" establishment man. Does a call for being anti-establishment necessarily mean the nudge to be pro-freedom? Or could it really be a veiled invitation toward an anti-social society? The emerging zeitgeist seems to point into an ominous direction of the second option."

Make no mistake, Trump is part of the establishment, not the fringe… the American Archons did not lose w/ Trump’s election.

Again, from the Kali Tribune: "The movement toward the fringe represents a shift in the perception of power… a shift in consciousness from center to extreme (right or left). Alt-right Fringe is anti-social but is sold as anti-establishment. Fringe=freedom, Center=establishment... Fringe good, Center bad" (in the words of George Gershwin: "It ain't necessarily so" - Ed).

The Fringe’s Alt right underground (aka Alex Jones, et al) is a scary element of the Fringe & it exploits the rise of CCI. Neo-Nazism embraces the Fringe’s alt-right, as it gives permission to knee-jerk fascism. Anti-ethnic vitriol is a poisonous mind-virus that is triggered by fear… fear of “the other.” It is fear… not Presidents… that build walls. It is fear that allows walls to be built.

So we need to keep an eye on such tom-foolery, but not give it any more energy than it has already siphoned. The rise of Conspiracy Culture International, despite its unsavory elements, holds great potential for creative, cooperative, expansive evolution, moving into our Brave Noö Future. CCI’s strength resides within its diversity of populations. CCI’s vision of globalization is inspired by the “Blue Marble” image of the Earth, taken by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft. Yeah, we’re all in this together.

So… as card-carrying members of Conspiracy Culture International, let’s celebrate our diversity. Let’s draw strength and sustenance from our differences. Since CCI is such a big tent, let us all find our particular corner of high weirdness and nurture it. As we have said before… it’s fun being weird… you should try it sometime! To quote that great Tekgnostic Saint, Gary Snyder: "Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there."

I strongly suspect that the muses are not finished with me on this subject. The ever-discerning reader of this blog may expect future installments on Conspiracy Culture International. In the next installment of CCI, we'll take an in-depth look at the often ignored community of neo-progressive, post-activist, millennial mind-fuck, rascally tricksters that we call the Noö Left. Stay tuned.

- J♥

Psychedelia Update – LSD shown to raise level of consciousness...

Scientists claim to have found the first evidence that psychedelic drugs create a “higher level of consciousness.” LSD-25, the drug ketamine and psilocybin (the active ingredient of magic mushrooms) were all found to increase the tiny magnetic fields produced by the brain.

Professor Anil Seth, co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at Sussex University, said: “This finding shows that the brain-on-psychedelics behaves very differently from normal. During the psychedelic state, the electrical activity of the brain is less predictable and less ‘integrated’ than during normal conscious wakefulness – as measured by global signal diversity.” 

In this regard, less predictability may equate to increased creativity... ie: higher functioning.

“Since this measure has already shown its value as a measure of ‘conscious level’, we can say that the psychedelic state appears as a higher ‘level’ of consciousness than normal... but only with respect to this specific mathematical measure.” This is used to create a mathematical measure of the complexity of brain activity... as with people who are asleep having a lower level than people who are awake.

Dr Robin Cahart-Harris, of Imperial College London, said: “Rigorous research into psychedelics is gaining increasing attention, not least because of the therapeutic potential that these drugs may have when used sensibly and under medical supervision. The present study's findings help us understand what happens in people’s brains when they experience an expansion of their consciousness under psychedelics.”

The findings of the study were reported in the journal Scientific Reports.