Alex Jones, "Holmies," And Celebrity Doubles: Surfing Down The Chapel Perilous

Alex Jones makes the big-time.

"Chapel Perilous is a stage in the magickal quest in which your maps turn out to be totally inadequate for the territory and you're completely lost. And at that point you get an ally who helps you find your way back to something you can understand. And then after that for the rest of your life you've got this question: Was that ally a supernatural helper, or was it just part of my own mind trying to save me from going totally bonkers with this stuff? And the people I know who've had that kind of experience, very few of them have come to an absolutely certain conclusion about this." 
-- Robert Anton Wilson 

I've stayed away from this blog for a number of reasons as of late, as several things have depressed me deeply and have shook my decision to continue writing this stuff.


The biggest thing on my radar is the Alex Jones meltdown on CNN recently. What a horrorshow. A friend of mine suggested that he was invited to speak on the Piers Morgan program with the producers specifically anticipating that he would go batshit crazy and make everybody else who is interested in fringe subjects also look like loonies; I partially agree with this assessment. It's almost like I can't completely blame Jones, as I think that the way he acted on that program was pretty much his honest-to-God default mechanism -- a mix between feeling paranoid away from his homebase, the adrenaline pumping from being on national TV, and so on.

But you know, a meltdown such as this doesn't help the thousands of people who do have legitimate questions about the status quo -- who desire to have a rational convo on gun control and whatnot. Doesn't help the NRA, doesn't help the cause of Alex's followers, doesn't help, doesn't help, doesn't help. And then Drudge chimes in with more incendiary headlines featuring pics of Adolph Hitler (which pretty much Godwins the entire discussion). I read these comments on Alex's YouTube, see these headlines on Drudge, read these articles like "The New South" on Salon, and I just think this is all a horrible combination, that's ultimately going to result in some Waco-like disaster.

"They are all the same actor"

Along those lines, at the beginning of the week I had an acquaintance targeted on this massive conspiracy site as the "actor-double" of James Holmes. This was a major clusterfuck nightmare, complete with my friend's contact info right on the website. The site -- which is extensive -- pretty much believes that most major events in the U.S. and whatnot have been staged by using celebrity actors. This site believes that Alice Cooper and Steve Carell are the same person. I had to read this site like 10 times to figure out if it was just an Onion-like put-on. It wasn't. And the fact that my acquaintance -- who, unlike most of the people libeled on the site, pretty much isn't even a celebrity (with celebrity-level security)  -- had his life turned upside-down over this was just horrifying.

An example of James Holmes fan art

Then there was stuff like the James Holmes fan club community coming out in full force this week -- which is another post entirely. They have their own conspiracy theories, which dovetails into these new Sandy Hook conspiracies....this Venn diagram of teenage fangirls and hardcore old-school theorists (some of whom believe that no children were harmed in SH and it was all just a Hollywood production)...

All these things and more makes fringe researchers -- or the merely curious -- look like maniacs, and distracts people from the real issues.

Fuck, it is so depressing. Reading some old stuff from Robert Anton Wilson and Tim Leary that's cheering me up a little bit, as well as a Red Ice Radio interview with Drunvalo Melchizedek that at least gave me some new positive ideas -- I mean, I don't buy everything Melchizedek says, but it was a good change of pace with some insights I haven't thought of before. Stench of Truth as usual tries to refocus stuff on the issues. And I got some good synchromystic notes written out that might make some fruitful posts -- or at least research for shits and giggles -- down the line. But this week was rough, with me questioning a lot of stuff.

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Anatomy of A Sync: O.M.A.C., A.R.G.U.S., and All-Seeing Eyes

According to blogger/video-maker Jake Kotze, synchromysticism can be defined as:

"The art of realizing meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance."

Recognizing and recording various "syncs," as they are known, can be a fascinating hobby with some potential for personal growth and a better understanding of the world around us. It also carries with it the danger of entering what Robert Anton Wilson refers to as "Chapel Perilous" -- you might become so caught up in noticing and sussing out the meaning of these various synchronicities that you become utterly obsessed. Because you'll find that the more you pay attention to them, the more they occur.

He has just entered Chapel Perilous, and needs to put the computer away

Also, if you try explaining even one synchromystic happening to an everyday individual, or maybe a family member, you'll often find yourself greeted with an expression halfway between blank and sighting some sort of large blue furry caterpillar on your nose. An expression you might be making right now as you decide this blog is rubbish and quickly click it away.

But if you're still here, let me give you an example of a fascinating series of syncs I had yesterday, all within period of an hour or so.

It all started with an Intention -- I was going to use the bit of free time I had to do some comic reading and take notes for this blog. I was sitting next to my husband, who was playing video games. As I picked up a copy of "Justice League International Annual" #1 to read, my husband switched off the games and flipped to an episode of the old 1980s "Incredible Hulk" animated series. He said there was an episode there that he remembered vividly from when he was a child, "Project Cyclops," and wanted to re-watch it.

Intrigued, I put down my comic and decided to watch the Hulk episode with him. It was about a super-computer situated deep in a mountain called "Cyclops". The computer itself was an eyeball in a pyramid-shaped glass container:

Now this has really caught my attention, because that's the classic "eye-in-the-triangle" symbol -- also known as "The Eye of Providence" -- the one we see on the dollar bill and various other places:

To conspiracy theorists, that "all-seeing eye" symbol automatically = tyranny, "New World Order," various shadowy secret societies, "Big Brother," etc. Strangely, this cartoon seems to mirror some of those concepts, as the "supercomputer" goes crazy and takes over all the appliances and monitors in the United States:

I could do a deeper analysis of the cartoon some other time, but suffice it to say that  the episode is a paranoid's wet dream, with scenes of TV sets and the like featuring that big human-looking eyeball staring at people and watching their activities. In general: a pretty entertaining and intelligent cartoon from that time-period.

Now that the cartoon is done, I go back to my reading, and the copy of "Justice International Annual" #1. And guess what? It is also heavily "ocular-centric," the biggest factor being of course O.M.A.C (who likes to use the word "eye" instead of "I"):

And guess what? A power-hungry, malevolent computer that uses the symbol of the eye also goes crazy. And we also get a scene of the "eye" on all the computer monitors, just like the Hulk cartoon:

Not only do we have O.M.A.C.'s "Brother Eye" in this comic, but liberal mention of the organization "A.R.G.U.S." -- Argus Panoptes being, of course, the Greek giant with a thousand eyes -- panoptes = "all seeing":

Now, what is the symbol for A.R.G.U.S. in the DC Universe?

That's right: an eye in a triangle.

Having quite enough of this High Weirdness and wishing to avoid the Chapel Perilous, I decide to toss my "studies" to the side and just pick up a random old issue of "MAD Magazine" to read. When I open it up, I find this:

At which time, I needed to go to the gym and do a few laps on the treadmill.

The point of this post is not to "suss out" any shadowy meanings attached to any of these coincidences (which, as I mentioned before, took place one-after-the-other in the span of about an hour), but to simply document that they happened at all. 

Syncs: it all might simply be a matter of focus

What happened here? Was it simply all chance? Was there any meaning to the syncs? Was there no meaning, but my intention/attention merely "attracted" similar things? Did my focus on one thing lead to similar things "popping" out for me, things I would have ignored otherwise?

Whatever the case, I think a sense of playfulness about the whole enterprise is key.

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