Stanley Kubrick Was Right?

Eyes Wide Shut, Jeffrey Epstein, and the Secret Society Hiding in Plain Sight

What if Stanley Kubrick’s final film wasn’t predicting Jeffrey Epstein—but revealing the kind of world that makes an Epstein possible?

In this new SynchroMystique™ video essay, we compare Eyes Wide Shut and the Epstein affair through the lens of Jungian synchronicity, symbolic pattern recognition, and cultural archetypes. Rather than advancing sensational claims, the presentation explores striking structural parallels involving secrecy, elite social networks, ritualized behavior, mutual compromise, and the insulation of concentrated power.

The result is less an investigation into any single individual than a meditation on recurring historical patterns—and why Kubrick’s final masterpiece seems increasingly prophetic in hindsight.

📺 Watch the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEU84JFeux8

📖 Read the fully documented companion article:
https://matthewjbell.substack.com/p/stanley-kubrick-was-right

‘Omicron’: Considered Symbolically

(See the video version of this presentation on YouTube.)

Omicron Lexicology

In May of 2021, when the World Health Organization, or WHO, announced novel naming conventions for the equally novel coronavirus, we were launched headlong into “onamastics,” a field of study that falls under the heading of lexicology, and that Fortean “blogger” Loren Coleman has dubbed “name games.”

In the WHO’s new vocabulary, mutated versions of the original pathogen, called “variants,” will, in the foreseeable future, be designated by letters of the Greek alphabet.

Until the end of October of 2021, the most prominent of these variants was “Delta,” about which letter we will have more to say in a moment.

But, in November, the world was introduced to “Omicron,” which word – itself – means “little ‘o’.” And stands in contrast to the more familiar letter “Omega,” or “great ‘o’.”

To confuse matters, we must also consider the “o-macron,” where “macron” means “long” or “big,” and which appears with a straight bar over the letter.

As Twilight-Language expert Michael Hoffman has publicized, and as a visit to the appropriate entry on Wiktionary.com will confirm, “omicron” has a pair of provocative anagrams.

Although it is possible to imagine percipients rearranging these themselves – whether consciously or subconsciously, I’m a bit dubious about the reliability (or impact) of this.

However, it is beyond doubt that various media outlets have drawn deliberate attention to some of these recombinations – and this exercise sets these anagrammatic possibilities before our minds.

For instance, there’s a widely publicized anagram spelling the word “moronic,” which fits into a broad fool-related symbol pattern that I will touch on here, but further develop in a subsequent video (already in production).

Or again, the letters of “omicron” can be rearranged to create the obscure word “oncomir,” a terminus technicus (it turns out) in genetic medicine.

Straining for credible associations, one might think back to the so-called “Oncomouse,” a rodent mutated for the express purpose of growing cancerous tumors, ostensibly for experimental purposes.

Patents on the little monster were, for a time, the exclusive province of the corporation that, at the time, was known as E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., or just DuPont, for short – a company that will crop up again in part two of this study.

At present, it’s striking that some of the same oncological and genetic key words recur in articles about the coronavirus.

Also of interest is the fact that word “omicron” can be broken down into the names “Omi” and “Cron” which, as this Hoffman Wire points out, summon the specters of two heathen gods, Odin — recently featured as a character in various installments of the so-called Marvel Cinematic universe — and Cronus.

In Greek mythology, Cronus was the pre-Olympian god who castrated and deposed his father, Uranus, resulting in a separation of heaven and earth, only to be dethroned by his son, Zeus.

If you think that this association is far-fetched, I direct your attention to this New York Post headline that unmistakably links the word “omicron” with ideas of deity.

And this provides a segue to a deeper level of analysis. I believe that, when one looks, one finds a Saturnian undercurrent to recent events.

Saturn, of course, is the Roman version of Cronus.

But, before we venture too far down this road, we must address an apparent difficulty. Numerous online sources are at pains to disassociate or otherwise distinguish Cronus/Saturn from Chronos, otherwise known as the god of time.

It is frequently claimed that it is erroneous to identify Cronus and Chronos.

However, whether an errant “confusion” or a justified equation, the fact is, there is ample reason to consider the Greco-Roman Titan to be part of the same symbol set as the figure sometimes designated “Father Time.”

For an obvious reason, we turn to one of America’s so-called “newspapers of record,” the vaunted New York Times, remarks: “…Saturn’s Greek name, Kronos, and the Greek for ‘time,’ Chronos, are nearly identical.”[1]

For a more august source, take a look at the 1st-to-2nd-c. historian and philosopher Plutarch, who asserted: “Cronus is …a figurative name for …Time” – at least, according to a passage in the possibly pseudepigraphal Moralia.

Moreover, the anonymous ancient authority known only “Pseudo-Clementine,” writing sometime around the third century A.D. – give or take a hundred years – declared: “…Chronos, who is Saturn, is allegorically time…”.

To quote the New York Times again: “The myth of Saturn …became an allegory of time: …he devours his children because time also destroys whatever it creates.”[2]

Even Wikipedia can be summoned to the effect that interpreting Cronus a “personification of time” was commonplace in antiquity.

Furthermore, the mammoth Dictionary of Ancient Deities, published by the prestigious Oxford University Press, lists “Chronos” and “Saturn” as aliases for Cronus, regarding these – with all their variant spellings – as synonyms for that deity who is both “God of the World” and “God of Time.”

Incidentally, the phrase “god of the world” appears reflected in the Bible, with 2 Corinthians (chapter 4, verse 4): informing us that “the god of this world” blinds unbelievers.

And an allied concept is picked up by curious late-19th/early 20th-century French thinker, René Guénon whose book “The King” or “The Lord of the World” (transl. of Le Roi du monde),[3] first printed in 1927, is an extended investigation of, and meditation upon, the legendary realm of Agartha.

Suffice it to say that, for purposes of this present symbol odyssey anyway, we will echo the succinct statement of the online mythology encyclopedia, Theoi.com: “Kronos was essentially the same as …Chronos …, the primordial god of time…”.

This association is not trivial. For one thing, some mystery religions, such as Mithraism, placed Chronos at the pinnacle of their often vast and multifarious pantheons. So, he was a pretty important guy.

But, also, the connection ramifies the Saturnian leitmotif – which, to borrow a phrase from the Gospel According to Luke (chapter 21, verse 25), includes “signs” in the heavens.

Who remembers the so-called “Great Conjunction” at the end of 2020?

This rare astronomical event involved the perceived alignment of Jupiter and Saturn. And, despite Saturn’s often dark interpretive profile, was referred to as the “Christmas Star” by some media outlets.

To emphasize the singular nature of this celestial state of affairs, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, underscored the fact that such a close approach of the two largest planets in our solar system hadn’t occurred since the publication of William Shakespeare’s First Folio in 1623 and hadn’t been visible since the Catholic crusade against the Albigensians was carried out in 1226.

With one crucial exception, press descriptions of the 2020 “Christmas Star” were reminiscent of a presentation, titled The Star of Bethlehem, and put on by one Rick Larson, which made the rounds in churches around 2007. The conspicuous difference was that, in Larson’s hypothesis, the original star said to have heralded the birth of Jesus Christ, involved a conjunction of Jupiter with Venus, as opposed to Saturn. And this substitution changes the meaning, astrologically speaking.

Is this Saturnine “Christmas star” announcing the birth of something? Hold that thought.

For, in the discipline known as mundane astrology, Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions are regarded as presaging widespread changes in “society …as a whole.”

And, wouldn’t you know it, supposedly astrology is experiencing a surge in popularity unprecedented since the 1970s.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, this boosted prestige is explicable in virtue of a search for guidance and meaning in the midst of a seemingly never-ending pandemic, and in the wake of explosive bursts of populism – e.g., as seen in Brexit and the presidency of Donald Trump.

Whatever the merits or demerits of this ancient subject, the full story story behind increasing demand for the drawing up of horoscopes and related services cannot be told without mention of some of the sociological stage managers operating largely unseen, behind the scenes.

We read that, supposedly, “[t]he year 2020 was a topic of anxious speculation in the astrology community long before Covid-19 became a household word.”

The sympathetic article explains that astrologers interpreted rare conjunctions of Saturn and Pluto and the aforementioned conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter as harbingers of “trauma and transformation”. Is this paragraph to be found on Oprah Winfrey’s website? Or is it embedded in a sales pitch for some astrology “app,” like Co-Star or Sanctuary?

As a matter of fact, it’s an excerpt from an analysis by Dr. Omi Elisha, professor of anthropology at the City University of New York.

Elisha’s “think piece” was posted by the non-profit Social Science Research Council, or SSRC, and is presumably written for academic specialists and industry insiders. But…in what area or field? Just who and what is the SSRC?

Founded in 1923, the SSRC was apparently funded by a veritable A-list of ostensibly philanthropic organizations such as the Carnegie Corporation as well as the Ford, Laura Spelman Rockefeller, Rockefeller, and Russell Sage Foundations. It’s records are housed in the Rockefeller Archive Center in Westchester County, just northeast of New York City.

Dr. Alondra Nelson, who concluded her stint as SSRC president in 2021, is billed as “[a]n acclaimed sociologist” who has past associations with Princeton University’s esteemed Institute for Advanced Study in New jersey.

And I would be remiss if I forgot to mention that she currently serves as Deputy Science Chief to President Joe Biden. So, it seems safe to say that the SSRC does not lack establishment connexions. But, what does it do?

To begin to sketch an answer that question, let’s look briefly at two important figures from the SSRC’s past: Charles Merriam and Harold Laswell.

Merriam was known for combining behavioral psychology with political science.

He sought to create “…a manipulative science that could alter social structure…”.

In case viewers are unaware, the use of “psychological manipulations” aimed at “influencing …opinions and actions” is one of the basic definitions of “propaganda” given by the important 20th-c. French theorist Jacques Ellul. So…the SSRC was essentially founded by professional propagandists.

According to the late political philosopher Sir Bernard Crick, Merriam and his cohorts – such as Lasswell – particularly focused on the creation of propaganda that was characterized by “…the manipulative use of ‘symbols,’ ‘slogans’ and ‘key-words’…”.

Lasswell himself explicitly stated that such a symbolical manipulation of the public was the means by which “…elites …may …be attacked or defended”.

To put it slightly differently, Lasswell believed that “[t]he elite preserves its ascendancy…”, in part, “…by manipulating symbols…”.

Far from being a dead letter, something of this same sentiment was recently articulated by The Matrix Resurrections director, Lana Wachowski, when she stated that “technology …[has t]he power …to trap or limit our subjective reality…”.

That money elites have a deep, abiding academic and economic interest in propaganda and symbolism should be kept firmly in mind when we discover, for instance, that the current wave of COVID has the same name as an obscure, 1963 Italian sci-fi “flick” about a body-invading alien bent on world domination.

This is especially so since it is an open secret that government information brokers and psychological-warfare operators, not least of which include the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, have – for years – had an entrée into so-called “show business.”

Likewise, discovering “omicron” references in video games should scarcely surprise us, for similar reasons.

Namely, there has arguably been a CIA/video-game-company pipeline since (at least) the mid-1990s.

Of course, the cover story is that such a connexion is merely the “entertainment industry” equivalent of former athletes being enlisted as broadcasters for their “color commentary.”

Those who have a bit more familiarity with the history of “psych war” may be forgiven if they are unable to suppress a chuckle.

But unusual and symbolical references are hardly limited to amusements and diversions.

Would you believe that some cases of COVID secondary infection have a physiological presentation dubbed “Rings of Saturn”?

Let us turn, for a moment anyway, from these odds and ends, to a more significant image – the visage of the man nominated “…the public face of the Capitol Riot.”

His semi-nude appearance and horned head reminds this observer of the wild and woolly “fertility spirits” and companions of the god Pan that are known as Satyrs.

Apparently, you don’t need too much assistance locating these fantastic beasts, as they are part of a cluster of mythic figures who are “…not difficult to catch…”…

…as this particular specimen discovered shortly after his odd photo session on Capitol Hill.

Among the myriad remarkable features of this quasi-Satyr, especially in light of the Greek-flavored alphabet soup served up by the doctors at WHO, is the tattoo emblazoned over his left pectoral muscle.

Per a hyperbole-laced article on theconversation.com, the symbol in question – a “Valknut” – is Nordic in origin, and therefore linked to the previously mentioned Odin. But, in any case, consists of a trio of mutually interlocking deltas – which word is, of course, the name of another prominent member of the COVID variety pack.

The triangle-shaped delta occurs in the symbology of Freemasonry, where it frequently is represented with an eye in its center.

Weirdly, as the VigilantCitizen.com noticed, the Greek letter “omicron” developed out of earlier alphabetic characters – such as the Semitic ayin, found in Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Phoenician, and Syriac – that were originally modeled after the human eye. What a coinkydink.     

Some sources claim that the Omicron variant may have “unusual symptoms” that may include “…sore eyes.”[4]

Additionally, the triangle/delta, a supreme Masonic symbol of deity (according to widely cited authority Albert Mackey), is usually drawn emanating various “rays” that are known as a “glory.”

As discussed in our previous video, another name for a “glory” is a corona.

Before we move off of the delta, we shouldn’t forget that at least some of those involved in the events of January 6, 2020 – which will be examined more in depth in part two – would have marched from the Trump rally to the Capitol along the hypotenuse of what is called in Washington D.C. “Federal Triangle.”

In Masonic lore, the hypotenuse of the Pythagorean triangle stands for the issue of a “sacred marriage,” or hieros gamos, between the divine masculine and the divine feminine.

Believe it or not, the symbolism of the Pythagorean triangle isn’t the only sexualized element of this whole sordid affair. First of all, we should note that, according to The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters,[5] not only “Saturn” and “satyr” cognates, they also both derive from the Greek word for the male reproductive organ.

Ancient natural historian Pliny the Elder concurs on the point, saying that the word “satyr” is the namesake of the membrum virile on account of their proclivity toward lust.

This is likely one reason why satyrs are sometimes depicted ithyphallically.

This would all perhaps be an irrelevance, presently, were it not for a bizarre fact.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation entered into evidence, in an official court filing, a photoshopped image featuring the QAnon Shaman adjacent to a lewd picture of a man. Officially, there was no suggestion that the FBI had created the so-called “meme” – merely that some unwitting agent had included it by accident.

As noted in passing already, satyrs are also associated with faun-like god, Pan.

This lusty figure lends his name to the terror-stricken frame of mind termed panic an all-too-familiar modifier in our era of around-the-clock COVID media coverage.

Oh… recall when we asked about whether the “great” Saturn-Jupiter conjunction should be read as a birth announcement? Consider that Arthur Machen, the 19th-20th-c. Welsh horror novelist wrote a book called “The Great God Pan.” The plot?

Well… let’s just say that it appears to have been one of the principal forerunners – not to say inspirations – for Ira Levin’s 1967 book, Rosemary’s Baby, which was made into a movie the following year by Polish-born filmmaker Roman Polanski.

It is not for nothing that the proprietors of tarot.com bid readers to take note of “…the similarity between the words ‘Saturn’ and ‘Satan’…”.

This connexion is also drawn by Aleister Crowley’s protégé, Kenneth Grant, who links Saturn – and his emasculating sickle – with Satan, Shaitan, and Set.

Yet a further peculiarity stems from the QAnon Shaman’s real name – which, by the way, is prone to vary from article to article. He is sometimes called “Jake Angeli.” At other times, his surname is given as Chansley. And I seem to recall once reading that it was “Angeli Chansley.”

The Online Etymology Dictionary starts us off by registering the idea, dated from 1854, that “Jake” is “…the typical name of a rustic lout,” or country bumpkin.

But, the really juicy tidbit lies in the more usual observation that Jacob means “supplanter.”

Or to be technical, the meaning is sometimes given by the phrase “he takes by the heel” or “he cheats.”

Again, we may turn to the Bible for insight. In the Book of Genesis (chapter 27, verse 36), we read that Esau – son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham – lamenting the theft, by his own brother, of his birthright, exclaims: “Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me…”.

What intrigues me, here, can be gleaned from the offbeat, seventeenth-century treatise Daemonologia Sacra, written by marginal English minister named Richard Gilpin.

Gilpin makes the incisive remark that “…we may say of [Satan]” what “Esau said of Jacob”: they’re both supplanters!

Indeed, Cronus-Saturn was a supplanter, too. After all, he overthrew his father, Uranus, until he was himself overthrown by Zeus-Jupiter.

So, right at center stage, and in the midst of all these Saturnian/Satanic references, we’re presented with a burly character whose name translates to “supplanting angel.”

But, if Angeli is playing a Saturnian role, then where is his sickle?

Arguably, there’s been no more prominent face, lately, than that of Anthony Fauci. He’s dominating the news cycle.

The reason for his celebrity owes to his dual position as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Chief Medical Advisor to the President.

According to the Oxford University’s Dictionary of American Family Names, the surname “Fauci” means, well… Have you guessed it?

Fauci means “sickle.”

Omicron Numerology

But there’s a numerological aspect to all this as well. And, as usual, it’s multifaceted.

For starters, as with Hebrew, Latin, and some other languages, Greek characters lead a double life as both letters and numerals.

Viewers will observe that, considered as a cardinal or “counting” number, omicron is assigned a value of 70. It may be passing interest, therefore, that news reports of late have been seasoned with references to 70s.

For example, until a retraction was issued, we were told that the omicron variant accounted for around 70% of COVID cases (at least, in California).

Omicron supposedly “multiplies 70 times faster than Delta.”

At the same time, it’s around 70% less severe.

Omicron – or a variant cousin – seems to have afflicted 70 medics at one Christmas party.

And one community is summoning an equivalent number of national guard persons to address the associated “surge.”

Or again, guess how many cruise liners have allegedly been “hit by COVID”.

Or, here’s one: what percentage of “immunization coverage” is the WHO aiming at by mid-2022?

If you need a hint, it’s the same name that keeps showing up in reports about January 6, 2020, concerning arrests, guilty pleas, and sentencing.

Even the total (if preposterously large) number of “…Riot …Defendants” is a multiple of 70.

And, coincidentally, it’s also the number of military-connected participants to the so-called “Capitol Insurrection.”

As well as the number of officers who have resigned or otherwise “left the Capitol Police since the January 6 Riot.” Again, stay tuned for the second part of this study where I will be preoccupied with the symbolism specifically surrounding January 6.

But 70 isn’t the only numerical value of interest. For Saturn – by way of it’s 3×3 “magic square” – has a magnetic relationship with the number 15. You will see that every column, diagonal, and row in the diagram sums to 15.

So, I was unsurprised to read that 15% of arrestees have been denied bail.

Or that Omicron was – at the time of writing – found in 15 U.S. States.

And seeing that Jake Angeli was sentenced to a total of 51 months in prison, you will note that “51” is merely “15” with the digits transposed.

To be strictly accurate, Angeli-Chansley’s ultimate sentence was 41 months – though it was unclear to me whether he was given a reduced prison sentence, or whether he was simply given credit for the 10+ months of time he had already served.

Be that as it may, one of the major components of occult theory and practice is the Tarot. So, it is always worth a look to see if there is some relevant correspondence, particularly to the so-called “Trump” cards. In this case, card XV – labeled “The Devil” in both the Rider-Waite and Crowley decks – caught my attention.

According to Aleister Crowley, the 19th-century magus Éliphas Lévi “…[identified The Devil card] with Baphomet, the ass-headed idol of the Knights of the Temple,” also known as the Knights Templar.[6]

Crowley goes on to remark that the “…card …[also] refers to Capricornus in the Zodiac.”[7]

This association is made fairly obvious in Crowley’s version of the card. He adds that: “ …The sign is ruled by Saturn… [And t]he card represents Pan Pangenetor, the All-Begetter.”[8]

It should be noted that Crowley explicitly equates Saturn with the Egyptian god Set as well as with the Islamic Shaitan and Satan.[9]

Crowley concludes his fascinating analysis of the fifteenth Tarot Trump by drawing one final reference to Pan and connecting “The Devil” symbol “…to the letter ’Ayin, which means an Eye.”[10]

And… with that, we come full circle, so to speak, back to the “omicron” which letter, you will recall, also derived from ’Ayin.

We arrive, also, at what is perhaps the most crucial numerological correspondence.

As Edward Burger writes, in the “The Power of Zero,” “[I]n the 2nd century CE, Ptolemy used the Greek letter omicron, which looks like an ‘O,’ to denote ‘nothing.’ So, this is the symbol for zero, the ‘o’ that we see – the circle.”[11]

In other words, one – contested – hypothesis has it that omicron was used since the Greek word for “nothing” started with that letter. Speaking of “nothing,” I seem to recollect seeing that word somewhere.

Oh yes, I remember! Nothing is what we’ll soon own, according to the World Economic Forum. But…we’ll “…be happy.”

It’s part and parcel of the “Great Reset,” of course.

Announced in June of 2020, “The Great Reset” was the “theme” of what the World-Economic-Forum press release termed “a unique twin summit.”

Which also happened to be the 51st meeting of Davos men and women.

The face and founder of World Economic Forum is the dour-looking German-born engineer, Klaus Schwab.

But the Great-Reset initiative was jointly announced by Schwab in conjunction with Britain’s Prince Charles, the Secretary General of the U.N., and the head of the International Monetary Fund.

And it is being undertaken with financial titans from Asia, Europe, and North America – including British Petroleum, Mastercard, and Microsoft.

Subsequently, the phraseology was echoed by other heavy hitters, such as venture capitalist Peter Thiel, author of the book Zero to One.

It’s intriguing to note that one of the primary definitions for the word “reset” is to set back to a zero state.

It seems that “zero” is a buzz word and choice title for numerous projects and schemes, of late.

Does its relation to the “Great Reset” have to do with its mathematical reputation as the “Great Equalizer”?

Any other number, when multiplied by zero, produces zero as a result; and any other number raised to the power of zero becomes 1. On the other hand, adding or subtracting zero has no effect.

In a way, zero’s equalizing properties are inescapable.

By the way, the U.S. Army doctor thinks that, in a similar way, “there’s no way” to escape the Omicron variant – “the whole world will be vaccinated or …infected” (or perhaps both).

But we may not need armchair speculation about the significance of the “Great Reset.” For 2021 had been declare “A New ‘Year Zero’” by the same Klaus Schwab whose expressionless visage we just saw.

Schwab is self-consciously drawing a line to the “Year Zero,” or “Zero Hour,” that began in 1945 with the “de-Nazification” of Germany.

According to the relevant Wikipedia article, “Zero Hour” is a synonym for “radical new beginnings” and the eradication of “old traditions.”

And the World Economic Forum program isn’t the only one that is preoccupied with zero-related symbolism.

Environmentalism and “climate-change” doomsayers are as well, as exemplified in this video production from 2019.

In fact, “Net Zero” has become the stated goal of those who wish to eliminate carbon emissions.

Among “net-zero” enthusiasts is former Microsoft chieftain, Bill Gates, who revealed in September of 2021 that he was “launching his own news publication” name “Cipher,” which derives from an old Arabic word for zero.

Symbolically, sifra basically designates a consul, satrap, or viceroy whose authority is delegated to him by the true sovereign.

Cognates abound, and seem to be popular choices for villain names, as evidenced by Le Chifre, in the 2006 remake of the James Bond movie, Casino Royale. 

Or the traitorous, original Matrix character, Cypher, who expresses regret over having taken the red “truth pill,” and eventually favorably quotes the aphorism “ignorance is bliss.”

The English word “cipher” sometimes also referred to something expressed secretly, or in code.

This usage reflects the fact that the concept of zero emanates uncertainty another commonality with Omicron, a variant against which current vaccines provide “absolutely zilch” (i.e., zero) in terms of protection, according to immunologist’s lament, anyway.

As the late historian of the occult James Webb pointed out, “large outbreaks of unreason” often follow fast on the heels on societal catastrophes, such as the “crisis of Zero A.D.”

Notorious global consulting firm McKinsey, which helped construct the now ubiquitous, zebra-striped Universal Product Code, Omicron is ushering in a new “uncertain chapter” in the pandemic narrative.

Is this because of Omicron’s “uncertain origin”?

In Cartesian geometrical terms, of course, the origin is always 0,0.

And division by zero results in a quotient that is variously labeled as “infinity” or “undefined.”

All this is being presented as an ominous portent for the world and the global economy.

And this is despite the fact that, for many weeks, it was said that Omicron was responsible for “zero deaths.”

A claim that even the system-approved “fact checkers” at Snopes.com acknowledged was true.

Yet, the Federal Reserve Bank, known as “the Fed,” has kept interest rates hovering around zero.

You may recall that the initial rationale for the zero percent involved the Fed’s claim that such rock-bottom rates were required to avert market panic.

The word “panic,” of course, takes us back to the god Pan whose name signifies “all” – the exact opposite of nothing – and who may, or may not, be the most ancient of pagan deities. (Appropriately enough, Pan’s origins are uncertain.)

What about Mr. Jake Angeli, whose widely circulated Pan-lookalike images made him the spokesmodel for the Capitol Riot? Prior to January 6, he had “zero criminal history.”

Similarly, the 15-year-old Oxford High School shooter, Ethan Crumbley, had no prior disciplinary infractions before taking the lives of several of his classmates – one of whom was repeated pictured with large yellow-orange “zeroes”  on his jacket.

It is of course vital to appreciate that, in English, the numeral zero and the letter “O” are often used interchangeably.

So much so that a popular 1990s television show, ostensibly the zip code for Beverly Hills, California, 90210, was pronounce “nine-oh-two-one-oh.”

Or again, consider the 2012 movie Zero Dark Thirty, which presented Hollywood’s version of the search for Osama bin Laden. In military jargon, the titular phrase would most often be heard as “oh dark thirty” – which could almost be the opening words of an occultically themed ode.

So, when you see the photograph of the unfortunate Tate Myre, remember that it makes virtually zero difference whether the prominent patch on his “varsity jacket” is a numeral or the initial letter of “Oxford,” the visual impact is arguably the same.

Relatedly, the roundabout outside Oxford High School’s entrance discharges the same, zero-point energy, if I may take a little artistic license.

We were introduced to circular signs during the most recent presidential election cycle, as Joe Biden’s campaign logo featured four of them.

His design may itself have been a takeoff from the emblem previously used by Barack O-bama.

Turning away from circles, for a moment, let us recollect the campaign speech in which Hillary Clinton “…put half of Trump’s supporters into …the basket of deplorables.”

In light of the present study, this is interesting – not least because “deplorables,” in this context, refers to people who are regarded as uneducated, “worthless nobodies.”

Deplorables are people with “no importance or authority” at all – not even as ciphers.

As pointed out in the Handbook on Autoethnography, our familiar, zero/“O” shape would be a fitting shorthand for such people – partly as a throwback to Odysseus’s ploy to outwit the Cyclops in Homer’s epic The Odyssey.

In any case, “deplorables” are contemptuous, undistinguished zeros.

In the 2018 film Vice, Christian Bale portrays George W. Bush’s former V.P., in a stylized take on how Dick Cheney became – in the director’s estimation – one of most powerful autocrats in U.S. history from “…a big, fat, piss-soaked zee-roh” as actress Amy Adams memorably stated it.

The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols builds upon the observation that zeros have “no properties” of their own, by connecting this powerful numeral to “…the initiatory significance of the Fool in the Tarot pack.”

Also called “the Simpleton,” “…the Fool has no number.” Well…no positive number, anyway.

Viewers may wish to ponder a moment the fact, stated earlier, that one of “omicron’s” anagrams is a synonym for the word fool.

Self-proclaimed “libertarian” pundit Kristin Tate drew a direct parallel between “fools” and Clinton’s “deplorables” in her 2020 book, The Liberal Invasion of Red State America.

The cover art is provocative and suggests a possible link with the “Purple Revolution” concept attributed to Bank-of-England “breaker,” George Soros.

The World Economic Forum itself associates the “Great Reset” – or zeroing – with what it labels “the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

And this probably won’t shock attentive observers, since the pervasive Saturnian symbolism has had revolutionary connotations since antiquity.

The Fool tarot card is variously designated “0” and “22.”

Which variance amounts to six of one and half dozen of the other, since – either way – the Fool is said to represent “…a return to zero, like [resetting] a meter…”.

Indeed, used as a verb, “zero” and “reset” are frequently intersubstitutable in the field of electronics.

And wouldn’t you know it? Who else stands for both “end and …beginning”? Why Saturn, of course.

Conclusion

Let’s take stock.

Explicit “time” references have been prominent parts of many recent news items.

Think back, once more, to Jacob Angeli Chansley, the man the media coronated the “QAnon Shaman.” Rolling Stone reports that Mr. Angeli is alleged to have written a note to Mike Pence, warning the then-vice president “it’s only a matter of time; justice is coming.”

For a slightly more sober-minded source, take a look at this tantalizing headline from Scientific American titled “Now Is the Time to Reestablish Reality.”

It includes a juicy quotation from our old friend Alondra Nelson, of Social Science Research Council fame, you might recall.

Nelson advises “Biden and his team” that, in order to sell the American public on “a sense of shared reality,” it is necessary to “reset the clock.” The full implications of this are a little, well… uncertain. But Dr. Nelson suggests that it would need to involve the use of “executive orders – likely building upon the Draconian edifice expanded by Dick Cheney.

In line with the SSRC’s raison d’etre, this chronological “zeroing” will involve “behind-the-scenes” “behavioral science” and a liberal dose of denigration for “conspiratorial delusions and paranoid thinking.”

“Science and Technology Now Sit in the Center…” Or, to be more precise, technocrats sit in the center, wearing white lab coats for “photo ops” brought to by their corporate sponsors.

As a final note, let’s consider Marxist-inspired “Critical Theorist,” Walter Benjamin.

In his 1940 essay, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” otherwise known as “On the Concept of History,” Benjamin developed his notion of jetztzeit, or a “…time that is ripe” for revolution.

In Benjamin’s estimation, revolutionary upheaval is precipitated by a moment he calls Stillstellung, sometimes translated as “standstill.”

But the editors at Marxists.org preferred the phrase “zero-hour,” instead.

This “Zero-Hour” sparks a chain of events of supposedly “messianic” proportions and enables the stage-managers to exploit a “revolutionary chance” to reorganize the world.

But, alas, I see we’re out of time.

See part two for an in-depth look at the so-called 2020 “Capitol Insurrection,” including tie-ins to Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the opening scene of which takes place during the joint celebration of Epiphany and the Feast of Fools, January 6, 1482.

***

Notes:


[1] Stephen Orgel, “Saturn’s Revolutions,” New York Times, Oct. 31, 1981, section 1, p. 27, <https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/31/opinion/saturn-s-revolutions.html>.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Paris: Ch. Bosse, 1927.

[4] Felicia Hou and Kylie Logan, “Omicron symptoms: How they differ from Delta, the flu, and a cold, and how quickly they’ll show up,” Fortune, Dec. 27, 2021, <https://fortune.com/2021/12/27/omicron-blindsided-world-symptoms/>.

[5] Jeffrey Weinstock, London: Routledge, 2016, p. 234.

[6] Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth, Stamford, Conn.: U.S. Games Systems, 1996, p. 105.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., p. 106.

[10] Ibid., p. 105.

[11] Edward Burger, “The Power of Zero,” Zero to Infinity: A History of Numbers (Great Courses), Feb. 15, 2017, <https://www.thegreatcoursedaily.com/zero/>.

Sirius Rising: Jim Brandon, J.S. Downard & Synchromysticism

“Something frightful has been going on for a long time.”

– James Shelby Downard, Sirius Rising

Introduction to Sirius

The heliacal rising (i.e., rising along with the sun) of the star Sirius is an annual celestial event bristling with symbolic import. In terms of literal astronomy, this is the time when the Sirius – otherwise known as Canis Major, or the “Dog Star” – is first visible in the night sky.[1] However, this is merely the exoteric level of the Sirius story. There is a veritable cauldron of symbolism bubbling just beneath the surface. S

For Sirius has a rich and layered history in mythology and mystery religion. And it is at this deeper, often hidden – or esoteric – level that has likely brought you to this page.

According to some commentators, Sirius was known, in priestly circles during ancient Egyptian times, as the “power behind the sun.”[2] Sirius is, thus, a sort of emblem for the notion of there being a “secret-sun.” (Put a pin in this idea.) This was quite a distinction at a time when the sun god (Ra, in the case of Egypt) was widely regarded as sitting at the pinnacle of the pantheon.

According to author John West: “Ancient sources declared that the Egyptians regarded Sirius as another and greater sun. Modern astronomy reveals that Sirius is a double star… [I]t may relate to the ‘central fire’ of Pythagoras. …It is possible that Egypt knew what some modern scholars suspect: that Sirius is the greater sun about which our sun and solar system orbits.”[3]

Numerous directions suggest themselves for further study.

Freemasonry

Allegedly, there is a freemasonic connexion in that Sirius is sometimes identified with the “Blazing Star” of the Blue Lodge (i.e., the basic three degrees of Craft Masonry).[4] Or, so writes masonic authority Albert Pike.

“To find in the BLAZING STAR of five points an allusion to the Divine Providence …is …fanciful; and to make it commemorative of the Star that is said to have guided the Magi …is to give it a meaning comparatively modern. Originally it represented SIRIUS, or the Dog-Star, the forerunner of the inundation of the Nile; the God ANUBIS, companion of ISIS in her search for the body of OSIRIS, her brother and husband. …The Ancient Astronomers saw all the great Symbols of Masonry in the Stars. Sirius still glitters in our Lodge as the Blazing Star (l’Etole Flamboyante).”[5]

The association of Sirius with the male god Anubis is interesting, especially since “Sothis[6] is the female form, deified as a goddess, of the dog star, Sirius. …Sothis is depicted as a woman with a star on her head and is also portrayed as a large dog. Shown riding side-saddle on the dog, she is known as Isis-Sothis.”[7]

‘Transsexualism’?

That Sirius should exhibit this sort of – dare I say – bisexuality may appear passing strange to us from our vantage point in the age of transsexualism.

The July 2015 edition of Vanity Fair magazine had Jenner publicly declare: “Call me Caitlyn.”

Note the date. And then observe the following regarding our titular star. “Visible just before sunrise about the time of the summer solstice, Sirius signified the beginning of the sacred Egyptian year.”[8]

In 2015, the Summer Solstice occurred on Sunday, June 21. For those keeping track, that’s roughly nine days before the relevant issue of Vanity Fair would have hit newsstands. This is just the tip of the Synchromystical iceberg.

According to the late “Discordian” guru Robert Anton Wilson: “Celebrations of the Dog Star, Sirius, beginning on July 23, as the origins of the expression ‘dog days,’ meaning the days from July 23 to September 8, when the last rituals to Sirius were performed [in Egyptian culture].”[9]

Was Jenner’s announcement only coincidentally delivered in conjunction with the Dog Days? Was it made “doggy style”? By the way: What is the modern slang term for a female dog? Oh, never mind.

Saturn

I recall reading somewhere that “Saturn” is sometimes used as a code name for Sirius, but I’m too lazy to look it up. There are numerous interesting Saturn-star links.

Dennis Hauck, in his popular-level introduction to alchemy, states: “The shimmering triple ring of rocks and 10 moons …are remnants of [Saturn’s] greedy attempt to attract more mass with its powerful gravity. …Had Saturn been able to attract more mass, it would have transformed into a star, and our galaxy would have had two suns. But now ancient Saturn sleeps in darkness…”.[10]

Here we have another secret-sun symbol. Hauck invites us to compare this astronomical lore against Saturn’s mythological tale, where he “was imprisoned by his father …while still a child. The child conspired with his mother to overthrow his father and ended up castrating him with a sickle.”[11] When Saturn himself was later deposed by Jupiter, the former was relegated “to the darkness of the underworld.”[12]

Just in case this Saturnian “Christ-complex” wasn’t yet plain enough, Hauck finishes by adding that “…Saturn was the most important planet to the alchemists. They equated in with the First Matter and considered it both the beginning and end of the Great Work.” So, the alchemical Saturn is regarded to be “alpha and omega”[13] of the arcane practice of transformation.

In his book, The Sirius Mystery, writer Robert K. G. Temple says of Saturn that it “is known as ‘the star of limiting the place’ …”[14] to the Dogon peoples of Africa, which group is one of the main subjects of his book.

Downard suggested that the 200-inch Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory in California might sometimes have been pointed at Saturn. The details are a little murky, but Downard’s story has it that a person (or persons) unknown would actually climb into the telescope’s built-in viewing area and then allow themselves to be “irradiated” by the celestial “rays” that would stream through the massive optical device.

What these individuals may have been doing while in this energy-bathed state is anybody’s guess. But the whole thing has a palpable sexual aura to it.

And it is this just this elaborate and variegated tapestry of symbolism that has been hinted at and showcased by Fortean journalist and writer Jim Brandon in his Sirius Rising redux.

Introduction to Downard

Jim Brandon is the pen name of the author of the hard-to-find and much-pirated Weird America: A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States[15] and The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit.[16]

The original Sirius Rising (SR) recording has attained something of a buzz among Synchromystics and aficionados. Originally, recorded in the 1970s on reel to reel, SR is based upon a series of interviews with Synchromystic chieftain James Shelby Downard.[17]

Downard, who died in 1998 at the age of 85,[18] is as enigmatic as he is inimitable. The broad contours of his life have been somewhat unriddled by Richard Spence, professor of military (and other) history at the University of Idaho. Spence’s serious research draws upon his wealth of academic and research experience tracking down individuals who are trained to obscure their personal histories.

As Spence puts it: “…I spend an unhealthy amount of time delving through passenger lists, census records, investigative files and similar databases trying to piece together the movements and associations of spies and kindred shady types. …Using the same techniques, I decided to see what I could turn up on Downard.”

I won’t spoil for you the experience of following along with Spence as he recounts his investigative journey. And I won’t reproduce much of the good doctor’s work, here – save for this.

In a paragraph summarizing his tentative conclusions, Spence opines: “Shelby James Downard was unequivocally real. However delusional or exaggerated his adventures may have been, they are woven around a framework of real places, people and events. …There is …a multitude of puzzling coincidences, perhaps signifying some larger reality we cannot see or understand, perhaps signifying nothing.”[19]

I highly encourage interested readers to search for “Searching for James Shelby Downard.”

The Sirius Rising (SR) recording

Brandon’s newly revamped SR has two foci.

On the one hand, there is the centerpiece symbol: Sirius. As I already noted, Sirius’s various layers of meaning and interconnections with other areas of research are endless fascinating.

On the other hand, though, Downard himself is magnetic and captivating. Shelby, as his friends apparently knew him, is something of a hidden “power” behind the work of multiple, contemporary researchers and theorists. In this way, Downard himself is a Sirius symbol. He’s the hidden sun behind the brighter lights of Forteans and Synchronmystics including Michael Hoffman, Loren Coleman, and the SR interviewer himself, Jim Brandon.

For more on Downard and his unique œuvre, see HERE.

A rough outline of the SR presentation – which is actually part 1 of a series – is as follows.

  1. Introduction: There is a secret society in America
  2. Three assassinations (Two Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr.)
  3. The ‘Killing of the King’ (Alchemical Rite and the trail leading to it: The ‘Journey of Death’)
  4. Destruction of ‘primordial matter’ – The ‘Trinity Site’
  5. The moon trip – Jules Verne & Cape Canaveral
  6. The Palomar telescope (Saturn, ‘mystic rays,’ and the folks who ‘tune-in’ on them)

Along the way, Brandon and Downard explore such themes and topics as:

  • The 33-degree latitude line
  • Alchemy
  • Androgyne and hermaphrodite symbolism
  • CERN
  • Cape Canaveral
  • Freemasonry (Egyptian & Scottish Rites)
  • The Hellfire Club
  • The Jornada del Muerto
  • Kern Gate
  • The Knights Templar
  • Ley Lines
  • Loch Ness
  • Mount Palomar
  • The Ordo Templi Orientis
  • The Pentagon
  • Phoenix lore
  • Ritual murder
  • Sex Magic
  • The Symbionese Liberation Army
  • Vacaville
  • Washington D.C.

And mentions such personalities – whether notable or virtually unknown – as:

  • Fidel Castro
  • Elizabeth Chudleigh
  • Franklin Cover
  • Aleister Crowley
  • Sir Francis Dashwood
  • Donald David “Cinque” DeFreeze
  • Henry Flagler
  • Dion Fortune
  • Leslie Groves
  • Tranchell Hayes
  • Patty Hearst
  • Edgar Hoover
  • Lyndon Baines & “Lady Bird” Johnson
  • Carl Gustav Jung
  • John Keel
  • John F. & Jacqueline Kennedy
  • Jack Parsons
  • Albert Pike
  • James Earl Ray
  • John D. Rockefeller
  • Jack Ruby
  • Georgia Tann
  • Jules Verne
  • Allan Witwer

To obtain the CD domestically, try emailing Loren Coleman: LColeman [@] maine.rr.com.

Last I checked, the recording was selling for $17, postpaid.

Notes:

[1] The Ancient Egyptians referred to this star as “Sothis,” and it was reputed to be the star of the Goddess Isis.

[2] For example, Kenneth Grant alleged that occultist Edward Alexander (“Aleister”) “Crowley identified the heart of the Thelemic current with one particular Star. In Ocuclt Tradition, this is ‘the sun behind the Sun,’ the Hidden God, the vast star Sirius, or Sothis, which opened the zodiacal year of 365 days as well as the Great Year of approximately 26,000 years,” The Magical Revival, London: Skoob Books Publ., 1991, p. 50. This has been echoed all sorts of places. “The first major symbol to discuss is the point within the circle or the symbol of the Sun. …The point within the circle also represents the All-Seeing Eye that means a watcher of this world which is Typhon and Sut. …The point within the circle has yet another meaning. This point within the circle represents two suns.  Our normal sun that’s visible in daylight, and the sun behind the sun, which represents Sirius.” At least, according to an alien enthusiast calling him- or herself HiddenLight777 in an article titled “Extraterrestrial Symbolism,” Ja. 25, 2009, <https://hiddenlight777.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/extraterrestrial-symbolism/>. The “extraterrestrial” angle is not limited to dark cyber oubliettes. For a more mainstream exploration, see Robert Temple’s The Sirius Mystery, originally published by Futura (London, 1976) and cited elsewhere in this article – though, in a later edition.

[3] John Anthony West, Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt, Wheaton, Ill.: Quest Books, 1993, p. 97, <https://books.google.com/books?id=0S1qpP7By9IC&pg=PA97>.

[4] Elsewhere, the Blazing Star has been put forward as a symbol of the alchemical quintessence. See Timothy Hogan, The Alchemical Keys to Masonic Ritual, Morrisville, N.C.: Lulu, 2007, p. 22.

[5] Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, Richmond, Virg.: L. H. Jenkins, 1946, pp. 14-15 and 486. Cf. Craig Heimbichner and Adam Parfrey, Ritual America: Secret Brotherhoods and Their Influence on American Society: A Visual Guide, [Port Townsend, Wash.:] Feral House, 2012, p. 158. (CAPITALIZATIONS in original.)

[6] The name “Sothis” also crops up in Gustav Davidson’s A Dictionary of Angels – Including the Fallen Angles (paperback ed., New York: The Free Press, 1971, p. 278), where we read: “Sothis (Sotis) – angel of an hour. [Rf. H.D.’s poem ‘Sagesse’; Ambelain, La Kabbale Pratique].” Also, on page 219: “Pahaliah – an angel invoked to convert heathens to Christianity. He rules theology and morals and is one of the angels bearing the mystical name of God Shemhamphorae. Pahaliah’s corresponding angle is Sothis. [Rf. Ambelain, La Kabbale Pratique, p. 264].” The reference to “Christian” proselytism is somewhat laughable. The so-called “Shemhamphorae” – or Shem ha-Mephorash, or Shem Hamphorasch, etc. – means the “ineffable name” and designates seventy-two alleged “mystical” names of God, divined through the application of Sod (esoteric interpretation) to the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel (specifically, chapter 14, verse 19-21), and part of Jewish Kabbalism.

[7] Patricia Turner and Charles Russell Turner, “Sothis,” Dictionary of Ancient Deities, Oxford: Oxford Univ Press, 2000, p. 438.

[8] Turner and Turner, “Sirius,” op. cit., p. 433.

[9] Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger Volume I: Final Secret of the Illuminati, 23rd printing, Las Vegas, N.V.: New Falcon Publ., 2011, p. 87.

[10] Dennis Hauck, p. 118.

[11] Ibid., p. 119.

[12] Ibid.

[13] In the New Testament biblical Book of Revelation, Jesus is referred to as the “Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Revelation chap. 22, verse 1. See also Rev. 1:8, 1:17-18, and 21:6-7. These references hearken back to the Old Testament Book of Isaiah (see 44:6 & 48:12) where Yahweh is described as speaking of himself in similar terms.

[14] Robert K. G. Temple, The Sirius Mystery, Rochester, Vt.: Destiny Books, 1987, p. 29. Researcher Peter Levenda relates: “If we are to believe Robert Temple, for example (and there is no reason why we should not), then the US government was extremely interested in his research into the African Dogon tribe — the primitive tribe that knew of the existence of both Sirius A and Sirius B, including having much detailed information about the physical and chemical composition of both, as well as an accurate calendar of the double star’s movements — and attempted  to keep Temple from publishing his results in The Sirius Mystery, an attempt that obviously failed. Whether or not the attempt was a genuine, albeit half-hearted, effort on the behalf of the CIA to stop Temple from publishing, or was itself part of a disinformation campaign or some other psy-war experiment, is not known. What is known is that the CIA knew in detail of Temple’s research long before he had gone to press.” Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft: Book Three: The Manson Secret, Walterville, Ore.: Trine Day, 2011, pp. 273-274.

[15] New York: Dutton, 1978.

[16] Dunlap, Ill.: Firebird Press, 1983.

[17] Jim Brandon distributed the original SR recordings as a set of cassette tapes. Some correspondents received one cassette. Others received more than one. Only a handful possess the original set in cassette format. More recently, a few copies of SR recordings have made the rounds as audio CDs. But, for the most part, the recordings have remained inaccessible.

[18] Born March 13, 1913 and died March 16, 1998.

[19] Richard B. Spence, “Searching for James Shelby Downard.” The publication history of this article is somewhat complicated. I first encountered it, with an introduction penned by Fortean Adam Gorightly, on the website ForteansWest, dated June 2012, <http://forteanswest.com/lowfi/editorials/richard-b-spence-june-2012/>. Spence’s article had also been picked up by Paranoia magazine, and published on pages 20-24 of issue #52, Summer 2012. The ForteansWest link became nonfunctional sometime around 2015. That same year, Spence revised and expanded his article. Though, I am unaware whether this longer piece has found a home online.

*********************************

“Sirius”

“When sweet-eyed spirit round the windows hover,
At the first breathing of the gloaming grey,
And the soft shadows of the evening cover
The sins and sorrows of the dying day;

“Then the sad moon, in nightly penancy dreary,
Crosses the pathless desert of the sky,
And hastes, with pallid face and footsteps weary,
A soul that may not rest and dare not die.

“But when she sinks beneath the rim of Ocean,
And hastens to her home afar from earth.
To hide her silent glitter with a fresher mirth.

“They look on us with glances true and tender,
Piercing our spirits with the sleepless eyes;
And one among them shines with tenfold splendour,
Brighter than all the children of the skies.

“O Prince of all the gleaming sons of Heaven!
O Leader of the glad celestial host!
Thous art to me the dearest joy of even;
Thou art the friend my spirit longs for most.

“I know that thou canst hear my vainly calling,
In that undying heaven where thou art;
I know that thou canst see my sad tears falling;
I know that they keen sight can read my heart,

“Wilt thou not speak to me, O child of glory,
And tell me why my heart so yearns for thee?
I know that thou canst tell me all our story,
All that we knew ere earth began to be.

“Thou wilt not speak! And yet I love thee, spirit,
More than I love children of this earth;
And when I shall, in my last days, inherit
The dim great halls of him who knows no mirth,

“Let me be laid where, in the flower-strewn meadows,
Over my head the long lush grass shall wave,
And do thou come with the soft midnight shadows,
And look upon me in my silent grave.”

(Alexander Richard Eagar, “Sirius,” Prometheus: And Other Poems, Dublin: E. Ponsonby; London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., 1877, pp. 48-49, <https://books.google.com/books?id=OQlLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA48>.)

SynchroMysticism and ‘Twilight Language’: Michael A. Hoffman II

Michael A. Hoffman is as controversial a contemporary researcher and writer as one can find. But with around eight diverse and original titles to his credit, he is an imaginative and intriguing thinker.

Often tackling religious topics, he has authored several books that are concerned with Roman Catholicism. One such offering, hot off the press (May, 2017) is The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome. Historically, the Renaissance and the Reformation (and pre-Reformation) are connected. Hoffman excavates some of the history, with an emphasis upon how neo-platonic and occultic sub-currents within the Catholic Church converged to create a stream that is arguably diabolical.

So-called “Traditionalists,” or “Trads” (among others), will also find much of interest in the 2013 Usury in Christendom. As the subtitle (“The Mortal Sin* That Was and Now Is Not”) makes clear, this volume takes the Church to task concerning its changing teaching on lending money at interest. (For other offbeat Catholic writers, see Michael Davies, Solange Hertz, E. Michael Jones, and Robert Sungenis.)

(* In Catholic parlance, a “mortal sin” is held to be “a grave offense against God’s law, which brings spiritual death to the soul by depriving it of its supernatural life, sanctifying grace.”)

Hoffman has also penned a provocative, 1,100-page tome on Judaism: Judaism Discovered. This 2008 work delves into such mystically charged topics as goddess cults, moon worship, and sex magic -all within Judaism. For a more accessible introduction to these (and other) subjects, see Judaism’s Strange Gods which, in its 2011 edition, is a condensed version of the longer treatise. (Book collectors, take note: The original, 2000 edition of Judaism’s Strange Gods may eventually be prized as a rare find. Other writers in this genre include Johannes Alzog, Joseph Barclay, Isidore Bertrand, Johannes Buxtorf, Luigi Chiarini, Gustaf Dalman, Johann Eisenmenger, Theodor Keim, Heinrich Laible, Martin Luther, Raymond Martini, Alexander McCaul, Bernhard Pick, Peter Schaefer, and Johann Wagenseil.)

Whereas, Peter Levenda and Christopher Knowles appear generally left-leaning, socially, Hoffman is (on many issues), plausibly fairly classified as a staunch rightist. (Loren Coleman, whatever his personal sympathies, seems to try to stay politically neutral and uninvolved. )

Nevertheless, in contradistinction to many self-professed “conservatives,” Mr. Hoffman sides with Israeli critics such as Uri Avnery, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Paul Findley, J. William Fulbright, Philip Giraldi, Baruch Kimmerling, Alfred Lilienthal, Victor Marchetti, Ray McGovern, John Mearsheimer, Victor Ostrovsky, James Petras, Israel Shahak, Israel Shamir, Yoav Shamir, Stephen Walt, Alison Weir, Philip Weiss, and others. His middle-eastern investigations issued in a condemnation of what he termed Israeli “war crimes and atrocities.” His The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians was co-written with one Moshe Lieberman and was published in 2003.

An earlier effort, They Were White and They Were Slaves (1991-1992), was recently magnified in importance when its titular thesis was roundly denied by various media outlets, including the Huffington Post, the New York Times, and Slate.

For purposes of this weblog, Hoffman’s principal book of interest is his Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare. Originally released in 1989, it was subsequently reissued in a substantially updated edition in 2001 – just prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11.

In this publication, which in some circles has achieved a kind of cult-classic status, Hoffman discloses arcane notions such as the occultic roots of modern Catholicism and Protestantism, “serial murder” as a species of psychological warfare, electronic methods of “programming” people both individually and collectively, and much else besides. Along the way, he discusses Alchemy, Freemasonry, and Satanism.

As one of James Shelby Downard‘s two main protégés, Hoffman also expends considerable effort expanding upon Downard’s penetrating conception of “mystical toponomy” (that is, the SynchroMystic aspect of place names). However, he also explicates his own thoughts concerning an ancient and little-understood argot called “Twilight Language.”

Loren Coleman‘s readers will already be well-familiar with this latter term, since Coleman co-opted it as the title of his weblog. In Coleman’s lexicon, it seems to be a “catch-all” for any “name game” or SynchroMystical connection – whether mystical-toponomical, numerological, or what have you.

Hoffman writes: “There is a dark poetry to ritual murder, to twilight language, to the fantastic convergences known as coincidence [i.e., synchronicity]. Most ‘conspiracy researchers’ miss these. The best investigator – of the occult or of almost anything else – has a childlike sense of curiosity and wonder about the seemingly mundane things.”

In a footnote, he adds: “In the secret societies, ‘twilight language,’ was advertised as the ‘Adamic language,’ the language Adam learned from God in Eden, ‘the key to divine knowledge.'”

SynchroMysticism Applied: Loren Coleman

Loren Coleman is far and away the most prolific and well-known SynchroMystic on the web today. With over forty book titles to his credit, many of which are on the subject of cryptozoology (i.e., the study of alleged “hidden animals,” like “Big Foot” and the famed “Loch Ness Monster”), Coleman looms large on (what we might call) paranormal wavelengths.

For an introduction to the fascinating possibility that the world’s fauna include more species than those so-far cataloged and on display at your city menagerie, Coleman is the go-to guy.

Among his cryptozoological print offerings are Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America (New York: Paraview, 2003), Cryptozoology A to Z (with Jerome Clark, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates (with Patrick Huyghe, New York: Anomalist, 2006), Monsters of Massachusetts (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2013), and Mysterious America (Kindle Edition, 2007).

He also maintains the cryptozoologically dedicated weblog, CryptoZooNews, and is curator of (and, presumably, docent at) the International Cryptozoology Museum at Thompson’s Point in Portland, Maine.

Of primary interest to us here, however, are the industrious Mr. Coleman’s other, more Fortean and SynchroMystical, researches.

Prominent in this regard are his innumerable posts on the Twilight Language weblog, which boasts well over 4 million total visitors.

The site’s name is a reference to an obscure, symbol-infused “language” that has apparent connections with various, Eastern, religious concepts – especially in certain Buddhist sub-traditions. (See here.)

In his 2004 book, The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow’s Headlines (New York: Simon and Schuster), Coleman wrote:

“Twilight language” concerns, from psychology, the hidden significance of locations, dates, and other signs; from religious studies, the hidden symbolism that lies in the texture of the incidents; and, from criminology, the profiling insights that have revealed the ritualistic nature of certain crimes and violent incidents.

In Coleman’s estimation, these “hidden significances” are largely discovered (or masked) in “Lexi-Links” (from the Greek léxis, meaning “speech” or “word” and the English “link,” which obviously has to do with the component parts of a chain) or what he elsewhere calls “name games.”

By “name games,” the prodigious Coleman seems to designate odd name-related patterns, or synchronicities, that crop up in newsworthy events from election results and political happenings to school shootings, serial murders, and suicides. The latter seem to occupy a conspicuous place in his thinking, due to a past, personal tragedy. (Incidentally, Coleman identifies 18th-19th-century German writer and Freemason Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe’s 1774 The Sorrows of Young Werther, available in a Dover Thrift Edition, as something of a locus classicus for suicide “copycatting.”)

These bizarre interconnections are perhaps best illustrated as opposed to merely described. The best advice for a person just dipping her toes into this unconventional territory is to simply learn by meditating upon Coleman’s various examples, embedded in his books and online posts.

Coleman seems less concerned with speculating about the possible, metaphysical foundations of “synchronicity,” and more focused upon engaging in and writing about examples of SynchroMysticism. This is evident in his above-mentioned “blogging” activities, which treat faithful readers to a steady diet of curious associations lying beneath interesting, and often world-historic, news events.

To date, Loren Coleman’s major, written statement on these matters is contained in the engrossing, and previously cited, The Copycat Effect, to which interested visitors are referred for further information. Happy reading.

SynchroMysticism

Is there an esoteric undercurrent to contemporary life? In the 21st century, the mundane monopolizes our attention. It is an understandable reaction. Banalities brutalize our senses, and the ordinary appears to tower over us like an unimaginative skyscraper in Anyplace, U.S.A. But appearances, as they say, can be deceiving.

Succinctly put, synchromysticism is postulation that below the surface of the commonplace appearance of modernity (or beneath the freakish artificiality of post-modernity), exists a vibrant network of hidden – dare we say “occult” – associations. Unremarkable interstices are punctuated at intervals by dynamic nexuses, identified – to those with eyes to see – by signs and words.

Synchromysticism can be approached as practice or theory or both. As an activity, it consists in the “reading” of culture (for example, its art, history, and socio-political goings on) to draw out latent connections – as one might scour an optical illusion looking for the picture within the picture. It’s not always clear whether we search for the big picture, as it were, or the little one. Theoretically, it might be held that the most significant aspects of the world are mise en abîme, “relegated to an abyss.” Whether this is by agency and contrivance, chance, or necessity is an open question.

~ Abramelin (7/29/2017)

In this project, which we term Synchromystique (or “Analytic SynchroMysticism”), we explore such people and topics as: alternative epistemology (e.g., in William James), archetypal analysis (per Carl Jung), Arthur Koestler, Carole Cusack, conspiracy culture, cultural semiotics, esoteric interpretations, esoteric worldviews, Forteana (named after Charles Fort, and expanded by James Shelby Downard, Jim Brandon, and others), hermeneutics (in the sense of Hans Georg Gadamer), hidden patterns, interpretive frameworks, Jason Horsley, meaningful coincidences, metaphysical inquiry, modern mythologies, myth and meaning, mythopoetic thinking, occult symbolism, pattern recognition, reading culture, Steven Sutcliffe, symbolic analysis, symbolic thinking, synchronicity (again, Carl-Jung-style), SynchroMysticism (as coined by Jake Kotze), Twilight Language (à la Michael A. Hoffman II, and as picked up by Loren Coleman),