The Rise of Pop Culture - part two

The following is the second installment of a preview, from my upcoming book project: “The Tek-Gnostics Heresies – Tales of Wonder from the Collective Conscious.” In part one, we explored the rise of modern media and "Pop Culture" in the years following World War II. We focused upon that most pivotal decade... The Sixties. Specifically, we examined the incredibly prophetic works of communications theorist Marshall McLuhan. In the early 60’s, McLuhan predicted that the visual, individualistic print culture would soon be brought to an end via a new electronic media culture. In this new age, humankind would move from individualism and fragmentation to a collective identity, with a "tribal base." McLuhan labeled this new social organization: The global village.

In the second installment, we shall examine converging historic events that were to shape, not only the future trajectory of world politics and a new global economy... but occult forces that were to reshape the very fabric of reality. The normality of post-war earth was about to collide with the new... extra-terrestrial paranormal reality of the 21st Century...

America in the 1950s was at the apex of its global power, prestige and innocence. Psychedelia was only percolating in the minds of a few, such as Aldous Huxley. The struggle for civil rights had yet to tear the fabric of American idealism apart. Protest over the Vietnam War was still to come. The assassinations of Kennedy and King were yet to hurl America into chaos. In 1950s America... everyone was still living in a "Leave it to Beaver" world...

PART TWO

There were, however, strange clues that surfaced after WWII that not only shed light on this emerging global psychedelic culture but also tied in the converging trends of the occult and the paranormal. Again, the evolution that played out in the summer of 1967 was ignited by pressures which began to build at the close of World War II. The Second World War demonstrated the horrors that humanity was prepared to visit upon each other and the planet.

The rise of industry… the industry of war… became a harsh reality in the waging of World War II. Although World War I demonstrated the horrific potential of technologies of modern warfare, such as the use of chemical weaponry, it was the Second World War that proved there was “no going back.” Any hope of a return to a pastoral existence on planet Earth was forever eliminated by the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Mostly hidden by the emergence of the post-WWII industrial war machine, there emerged other “psychic signals” that foretold of a rise in the new paranormal. During the war, reports surfaced of “extreme interest” by Hitler’s elite paramilitary corp., the Schutzstaffel (nefariously known as the SS) …in paranormal artifacts and sacred sites, located around the planet. Rumors spread of their attempts to harness the “psychic energies” of these sites and artifacts.

Other subtle signals took the form of reports of strange flying balls of light that often accompanied allied and axis fighter and bomber planes. These aberrations became known as “Foo Fighters.” Although many strange lights have been reported throughout history, the foo fighters foreshadowed that which was to become the UFO phenomena that would dominate mainstream media for decades to come. These and other strange phenomenon seemed to not only peak, but converge… congeal… in the years immediately following World War II.

The reality that there was no going back to a pastoral existence on planet Earth was evidenced by the abrupt global evolution of Earth’s mythologies after WW II. Suspiciously similar to ancient myths, ala Sumer & Egypt, the earth spirits of farm and field rapidly began to transform into technologically driven celestial deities. Old Earth’s “Leprechauns” were about to meet the “Little Green Men.”

On June 24, 1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed he had spotted a string of nine, shiny unidentified flying objects, flying past the Pacific Northwest’s Mount Rainier. This was the first post-war sighting in the United States of the foo fighter phenomena and it attracted nationwide news coverage. Thus began the modern era of “unidentified flying objects” or UFO sightings. Arnold's vivid description of the objects quickly led to the national press’s coining of the terms “flying saucer” and/or “flying disc,” which quickly became popular descriptive terms for UFOs.

As mentioned above, ancient civilizations such as those from Sumer and Egypt (whose myths informed later cultures) had developed robust celestial cosmologies of humanity’s creation and evolution. In these mythologies, gods would descend from the heavens to impart divine guidance upon humanity. These deities were often portrayed by the ancients as flying or winged sun discs. As such, they are characterized as “solar deities” by modern archaeology.

The foo fighters of WW II and subsequent UFO/flying saucers of the 1950’s abruptly modernized these ancient flying disc mythologies. Emerging rocket science of the Nazi regime brought with it a global faith in the power of technology. Technology quickly replaced magic… scientists and engineers replaced the high priests… extra-terrestrials replaced angels and demons. The winged sun discs of old became metal-hulled flying apparatus or “space ships.”

From the ashes of WW II Nazi Germany emerged modern rocketry and the resulting aerospace industry. These technologies only hinted at before WW II, became a global certainty after the war. Post WW II earth saw an amazing rise in the technologies of modern industry. With these technologies came the unquestioned confidence in earth’s newest mythic religion… Science.

As we shall see, the parallel re-emergence of psychedelic culture during this time, along with renewed interest in the paranormal, suggest that these synchronistic events arose in tandem, or “as if in response” to the rising power of technology. That the realm of the psychedelic would re-emerge in the modern world via the scientific discovery of the chemical compound, LSD-25, only strengthens the mythology that psychedelia re-arose when it did, as a counter-balance to technology. It is as if the ascension of the psychedelic experience arose as a cure or inoculation… to the viral growth of technology…

Part One