Carry On The Apocalypse

The apocalypse seemed to be the flavour of my week.

Hired out the League Of Gentlemen film which of course had an apocalyptic theme and saw The Simpsons Movie which saw an eco-Armageddon coming to Springfield. It's interesting to me the way these film versions of TV programmes have changed... say from the 70's format, where a film version might encompass something like a holiday... like Holiday On The Buses, or the Only Fools and Horses Xmas specials... from road movie to eschatological denouement in 30 years. It be might amusing to recast Rising Damp into some kind of Drowned World scenario, given the current great deluge.

On this theme there was a Killer Cults doc on Sky last night. It covered Branch Davidian, Order Of The Solar Temple, Aum sect and People's Temple. There was quite alot of chilling footage I had never seen. Schlocky but riveting. In keeping with this, perhaps English Heretic shop should start selling Emergency Kits for the coming rapture ... Or maybe it's time to set fire to the web site and create a SAS scorched version of the homepage.

There are a couple of interesting depth psychology books I am reading at the moment:

Archetype of the Apocalypse by EF Erdinger which is a Jungian study of the Book of Revelation

&
Dreaming The End of The World by Michael Ortiz Hill which is a study of end-of-the-world dreams collected by the author from patients etc.

Finally, I had the pleasure of doing an interview for journalist Will Stone's radio show "The Hour Of The Apocalypse" that runs on resonancefm. Hopefully to be broadcast in the next month or so.

Ideal light reading for the summer holidays...

aha... re-published just in time for the summer holidays...
The beaches will be full of people posing with this popular piece of easy reading

at least its sheer size will block out most of the hole in the ojas layer...

I like this correspondence by Bertiaux, especially the "current interests" of his Choronzon Club

(6) a secret method of control of the Quantum mechanic world of physics via fellatio ...

Your passport to the Qliphoth - coming soon...

from English Heretic
Track Listing:
1] Threnody For The Energy Spectres Of Horishima (recorded at Orford Ness) - 24 mins 22 secs
2] Time Outre: London's Qliphoth (recorded beneath Tottenham Court Road)
- Introduction 3 mins 24 secs
- In Parfaxitas 13 mins 52 secs
3] Open The Mithraic Stargate (recorded in Rendlesham Forest) 16 mins 54 secs
4] The Brundish Horror (recorded in St. Lawrence's churchyard, Brundish and at the ruins of Greyfriars Monastery, Dunwich).

Dreams And The Underworld

James Hillman on retardation and punctuality in dreams: (following on from the Bookshop dream and it's ambiguities over time and lack of time - to browse):

"If, as Freud said, the underworld knows no time, then punctuality and retardation do not belong there. Yet, these are common experiences in dreams... These emotions of hurried anxiousness need to be read from the image. Then we learn that the dream-ego is terrified of slowness... We learn that images of punctuality are ideal adjustments to the time of others, fixations on the clock that keep the dream-ego ticking. Dream-punctuality shows a dream-ego in accord with daylight consciousness, and retardation shows a dream-ego drifting into the disorientation of underworld timelessness, despite panicked efforts..."

"If the dream does not unfurl in time because the underworld is timeless, then there is nowhere to go with it, in the sense of goal. We have to abandon our hopes for the future when working on it. The dream stops time, and we have to stop too, else it slips into a story and carries us into the stream of time. We can stop time by not reading the dream as a story. Then the dream has no end. This means both that it is not going anywhere else and that it is always going on. A dream is stuck within itself, its actual imagery, and has to be read in terms of what is going on in it. It is stuck within the limits of its framework, like a painting in which nothing comes first and nothing comes later and which is read by articulating and deepening the internal relations of its image."

"By concentrating upon the image in which time is embedded, part of which imagery is number symbolics, we are stressing the quality of time, as did Artemidorus and other ancient dream interpreters who always asked about the hour when the dream took place... time qualities refer to distinct psychic moments: at breakfast, when school is out, after the late show. They present moments of feeling consciousness, matutinal,post-meridional, toward evening and the close of day..."

"I am trying here to regain a feeling for the differences among the hours. They too are mythical persons (Horae), with distinct personalities. Time in dreams refer to regions of the night, places with qualities, like the twelve subterranean domains traversed by the Egyptian sun God in his ship of the night."

Comment:

Caveat... these quotes come from the paradoxical and insanely tricky chapter "Praxis", in which he warns "Reader beware, this chapter will not tell you what you dreams means..." It also shows Hillman displaying his Neoplatonic side and captures the "feeling" that a dream is essentially about itself.

Interestingly, last year at the John Dee day event hosted by Atlantis bookshop, a "living" alchemist called Gary Nottingham gave a talk on spagyrics, from an entirely "practical" point of view. I asked if he found carrying out all these experiments helped in a psychological way in "dealing with reality". He looked a bit taken aback and said when he was working with a plant "that became his reality." Coincidentally there is a chapter in Nottingham's book "Ars Spagyrica" also called "Praxis".

At the beginning of the chapter is the quote from Paracelsus:

"Let the stars heal the stars".

So perhaps you could say more generally "The Work is about itself". Rather than Jung's "alchemy is like the process of individuation" it might be closer to the truth that dreaming and alchemy are synonymous. The word 'individuation' to me has the etymologically calcified reek of a neologism, a jargon barnacle encrusting the soft matter of the soul.

"The insidious and pathological use of prescription words brings upon a demyelination of the myth making system, a degenerative process ultimately leading to the sclerosis of psyche's potential".

Agrippa's Dictionary of "Word Diseases".

The Word Made Flesh – A Hillmanesque Rebuke.

In hurriedly and lazily making all those inferences with the Bookshop dream of the previous post, I fell into a classic trap that Hillman points out. I made my inferences based on the waking mind’s perception and desire to codify the image… stick with the images dummy. So to relive the dream in the form of a Q and A.

Q: There was a choice of books in the dream, what were the books like?
A: There was a book with a gaudy purple and yellow cover and another with a black ,white and red cover. The black, white and red book was thinner than I expected.
Q:Why did you choose the gaudy purple and yellow one?
A: I don’t think I did, but I already had a number of books by the same author with red,black and white covers, so I thought the purple and yellow cover would be more interesting. Unable to choose I decided to ask about the Vampire Book.
Q: What was the pig like in the Vampire book?
A: I can’t really recall, all I can remember really is the zebra. It was lying on the ground with a great big wound in its side.
Q:Describe the wound.
A: An almost triangular shaped wound, a large chunk of the abdomen had been taken out. There were flies on the wound,
Q: Was the wound fresh.
A: Yes, glistening.

Q: Describe the bookshop proprietor
A: Dark hair, younger than myself, with a beard, not a thick beard, he has glasses on. An earnest look about him.
Q:How did he speak?
A: Quietly, though quite assertive when telling me the shop was closing. I was surprised because it was still early.
Q: What made you think it was early?
A: I am not sure, I had the clear impression it was two thirty
Q:Was there a clock then?
A: Again I am not sure, It was light outside, overcast, no shadows.

Q:Where was the boy in the dream?
A: My Son was standing by the entrance to the shop
Q:Why do you think the boy in the dream was your son?
A:He was called David
Q:Did he look like your son?
A:I think so, he had fair hair. He had fair hair and was called David.

Q:Who was the co-author of the book?
A: I can’t recall. All I can remember of the text on the title is that there were two author’s names separated by an ampersand on two lines. David Ashton (if that was his name) was on the lower line.

Q:Describe the layout of the shop.
A:Single story, or possibly not, there looks to be a spiral metal stairwell at the back of the shop. The books that I was originally looking at were on a low shelf opposite the counter. This shelf seems to separate the shop into 2 halves. The other half of the shop seems to have pamphlets; it’s quite untidy, musty. Some of the pamphlets and documents seem to have perished.

***

So no great message here, no great revelation, but this is entirely the point of working with the image: the image is its own revelation, no qabala, no complexes, no hyperlinked or copy and pasted quotes from esoteric sources. However, I feel I should point out the entirely natural flow from the red, black and white book cover to the wounded zebra: white and black striped, with a fresh red wound…. “The word made flesh”.

Mr Benn's Necronomicon: The Vampire In Nature

Last night following the Heuristic Catalogue post I had an interesting recurring dream.

I was in an independent bookshop on the outskirts of a Northern steel town. I had found a number of Kenneth Grant books including "Beyond The Mauve Zone". I couldn't make up my mind which one to buy, but was particularly taken by the cover of BTMZ which had a gaudy yellow and purple colour scheme. When I got to the counter, I remembered a book about vampires that I had recently seen advertised. In fact it was an offshoot coffee table publication from a David Attenborough type wildlife series concerning vampiric animals. Asking the proprietor about the book, he answered somewhat surprised.

"Off course we have"... Immediately in front me on the counter was a pile of books called "The Vampire In Nature". The book was co-authored, one of the authors being David Ashton. Browsing through the book, I recalled seeing the first episode of the television series which concerned African vampire pigs. There was also some photos of zebras which had been attacked by vampiric animals (hyenas?)

I paid for the book and wanted to browse some more, but the owner told me they were closing early and had been doing so recently, during the "off-season". I left to join my son David who was standing outside, bored that I had been in the shop too long.

Inferences:

I have always tended to consider these dreams which happen in book/record shops to be deficit dreams, so it's interesting to have one immediately AFTER constructing an imaginary catalogue. There is also something quite Mr. Benn about them, the shop keeper has a distinctly guru role about him.

The Vampires in Nature reminds me of a strange documentary film about the Argentinian Vampire Bat. It was a black And white, possibly even a silent film, that I recall seeing on a double bill with Les Yeux Sans Visage - an equally bizarre French horror film, about a face transplant.

http://www.boxofficeprophets.com/hyde/lesyeuxsansvisage.asp

Ironically, recently French plastic surgeon's performed the first successful face transplant... another case of Science following horror.

The vampire pigs call to mind Kenneth Grant's extrapolation on Chozzar - a flesh eating pig in Atlantean lore ... allegedly. Apparently the term Rozzer for a policeman comes from Jewish slang... chazer being pig in Hebrew. The vampire pigs might also allude to the disturbing Wild Bores that terrorise the house, in William Hope Hodgson's nightmarish "The House on The Borderland".

The vampiric hyenas may also from Grant's Nightside of Eden and his discussion of the Cult of The Spectral Hyena - associated with the tunnels guarded by Zamradiel and Parfaxitas.
Interesting qabalastic stream between David Attenborough, David Ashton and my son David (who's middle name is Andrew).

Heuristic Catalogues 1

While visiting Orford Ness, I was amused by how some of the signs around the buildings could be easily manipulated into hackneyed post industrial album art. It was quite obvious that with the smallest effort you could construct an imaginary discography for some terrifyingly earnest military obsessed record label, specialising in Cold War music. What would the label be called and what ridiculously over codified concepts would their roster of bands (sorry "research units") dish out . Well below are some only so slightly doctored photos from Orford Ness that have been used to construct the latest catalogue from the "Delmer Institute" record label.

The Delmer Institute Catalogue 2007.
About us... The Delmer Institute is named in commemoration of the Great British Black Propagandist, Sefton Delmer. Operating from a renovated WWII decoy site in Norfolk, England, we are global specialists in the manufacture and distribution of Cold War Music. Leading up to our annual "Horishima Day" festival at Orford Ness, we are delighted to provide our comrades the opportunity to purchase the following items from our renowned roster of Research Units.



Control Room - Space Time Ritual (CD)
Legendary UK, psych death noise unit, Control Room return with a live recording at Nagasaki, on 8th August 2005. Comes with a 12 page sermon by chief "propaganda priest" for Control Room, Brian Lam, in which he states: "This event was a chemico-magickal (re)aktion carried out by Control Room, with the intention of reversing time to August 1945, in order to prevent the dropping of the atomic bomb". With copious photographic documents, musically influenced by the ancient Buddhist Madhyamaka Sect of Bhutan and Hawkwind.



Prohibited Area - Forbidden Photography and Sketching: Music for Blue Danube(CD)
Controversial self-styled Nuclear missile fetishists, Prohibited Area, were commissioned to provide the soundtrack for "Blue Danube": a hardcore pornography film set on location at Orford Ness. A blend of Erotic Funk and samples from 1950's U.S Nuclear propaganda documentaries, Prohibited Area, once again show themselves to be at the fore front of the Cold War music scene.



Information Building - Throat songs from the Terminal Wards of Pripyat. (CD)
Information Building present a heartbreaking album of Mongolian Throat songs, performed by a choir entirely composed of patients at a Sanatorium near Chernobyl Nuclear power plant. All victims of terminal thyroid cancer brought upon by the disaster of 1986, the songs mix together liturgical texts concerning Wormwood and Revelations along with bleak minimal electronics taken from Geiger Counter readings at the infamous "Red Forest" in the immediate vicinity of the reactor. First 66 copies come with a vial of soil samples from Chernobyl.



Testing Environmental - The Wreck Of The Rainbow Warrior (2XCD)
Anarchist Circus Troupe, Testing Environmental, follow up their acclaimed release "Songs And Cabaret of The French Resistance", with a musical concept album, concerning the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, in 1985, by the French Secret Service. Mixing Polynesian Sea shanties with Funeral Doom, Wreck of The Rainbow Warrior weaves together the history of nuclear testing on Pacific Atolls with Lovecraftian themes of a sunken city of Rl'yeh. Each copy comes with a stylish Beret adorned by a hand stitched "Testing Environmental" logo.