DREAM IS DESTINY

by Tara Carreon

(commentary:  Harvey, the 9/11 Rabbit, has come out of his hole.  He is a bad dream made manifest.  But Bush, residing within his labyrinth of lies, the intelligence agent hidden underneath him, and the policeman, pretend Harvey does not exist.  This is a variation on the Frankenstein story, creating reality through dream.  A "thing" that didn't exist has been made real, able to "see."  Death is alive, and dream is destiny. The glasses, of course, are the symbol of the Illuminati.  The labyrinth doubles as a halo for the antichrist Bush.  The philosophical pun is that reality exists, but they call it a hole, i.e., void,, which turns back on itself into a whole, i.e. unity.  It's an ourorbos, but not a paradox.)

George W. Bush meets the Easter Bunny, by Matthew Moore, 3/26/2008

Let it never be said that George W. Bush is taking life easy now he has less than a year left in power.  The leader of the free world spent Monday presiding over the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn.  The roll is "one of the oldest and most unique traditions in presidential history", dating back to 1878, according to the White House website. Eggs are rolled using a spoon or long-handled club.  In between entertaining visiting children with his wife Laura Bush, the president found time to cuddle up to a giant Easter Bunny who had been invited along for the occasion.  White House Easter Bunny, usually a White House staffer dressed in a special rabbit suit, was introduced by Pat Nixon, wife of President Richard Nixon, in 1969.  was not all fun and games. In his Easter message the president paid tribute to US servicemen fighting abroad.  "On this glorious day, we remember our brave men and women in uniform who are separated from their families by great distances," he said.  "We pray for their safety and strength, and we honor those who gave their lives to advance peace and secure liberty across the globe."

George W. Bush and the Easter Bunny

_______________

See "Stephen Crowley -- Illuminati Photography"

See "9/11 Mysteries: Demolitions," directed by Sofia Shafquat (Moniker:  Monica Smallstorm)

See "Waking Life," directed by Richard Linklater

See "Holy Moment," by Tara Carreon and Richard Linklater

See "The Pictorial Language of Hieronymus Bosch," by Clement A. Wertheim Aymes

What does this hare mean?

The hare has extraordinarily fine hearing, shown by his long ears. He is especially alert; it is said that he sleeps with open eyes. He only has a form, no actual home. Wherever he is he is hunted. The following tale was told about the hare in the time of Bosch: If a hare is being pursued and can run no more, another takes his place in the field, and lets the pursuit follow him. One must grasp these essential signs in a more or less super-sensible sense (see other examples in Note 14); they make of the modest gentle hare who attacks no other animal, a very elevated spiritual symbol.

When a man has reached a point in his inner development that is so advanced that he can inwardly hear and see what escapes the attention of others, when eventually he can so love that he gives his own life for his brothers, then he resembles the hare. Thus the hare is the symbol for the ego that is able to love unselfishly, that begins to be fully effective throughout the whole earthly organisation of man. Briefly, it means initiation. The man who has become a hare has no actual home, he must be at home everywhere and belong to all men. If he has reached this stage of selflessness however he always attracts persecution, as in the words of Jesus: (John 15/20) "If they have persecuted me they will also persecute you."

The Buddha appears in the form of a hare. As he rose from a Bodhisattva to become Buddha he sacrificed the last vestige of his own life. Jesus Christ brought the greatest sacrifice of all; for this reason many painters in the 14h and 15th centuries painted a hare beside the child Jesus.

The stage of the hare indicates readiness to die for the ideal.

***

In true symbolism, wherever a mammal is represented, it points to an activity of the human physical body. The hare represents man's ego-activity in the physical body. It is found everywhere as an emblem from the far east to the remotest west, in the north and the south; there is even a constellation called "Lepus" in the southern hemisphere which was already known to the ancient Greeks. The Buddha in the moon was experienced as a hare; the hare appears in Peru and on coins from areas under Greek influence, also in Chinese art. Fairy tales of many lands tell of the hare in old and new languages, illuminating various aspects of his influence, but always the same undercurrent of meaning can be detected: a supersensible being is striving to manifest as thoroughly as possible in physical form on earth, while the good astral forces are helping and evil astral forces are working to hinder this effort. Lurker writes as follows: "In the fairy tales of China the hare is a friendly animal: he sits beside the Cassia tree on the moon and prepares the elixir of life in a mortar. On earlier cult garments that belonged to the emperors of China, the moon was depicted with a hare beside a tree on it."  So we can see that the hare as the emblem of the ego, and the tree of life, belong to these ancient traditions, and that our ideas coincide with insights gained in times long past.

Jung wrote in connection with all that he included under the term archetype "Living in the West, instead of 'self' I should say, Christ, in the Near East possibly Chadir, in the Far East Atman or Tao or Buddha, and in the Far West perhaps 'hare' or 'mondamin', and in cabbalistic language 'Tifereth'.'

Before we go further into the symbol of what is here briefly called "the self" in order to explain its appearance as a hare in Bosch's pictures and those of his contemporaries, we must first consider the question: why should the hare be the representation for the self that is trying to find its way into its human physical organisation? No immediate answer can be expected to this question, but it gradually becomes clear that all the other forms of life that appear in nature must be excluded. The ego of a man living upon the earth exists in the warmth of the blood, so the symbol must be a warm-blooded animal. In the course of life the ego uses up the vital forces, it gnaws at the life-forces, so this creature must be a rodent. So long as the ego has not been taken over by evil forces it is defenceless and harms no-one. Therefore only a vegetarian rodent is suitable. In addition there is ascribed to the hare a trait that further determines the symbol. If a hare is hunted and can go no further, another will take his place in the field. He gives his life for his kind. Further, he has especially sensitive hearing, he is all ear and very alert. It is said of him that the hare sleeps with open eyes, and he imitates the human habit of standing erect. Plutarch says that the Egyptians regarded the speed of the hare and the accuracy of his senses as something divine.

All this makes the hare suitable as a symbol for the ego. The selfless ego harms none, springs into action for its brothers, is homeless as the hare, and is always awake. As the lower ego absorbs the world of sense-perception, so the higher ego absorbs percepts from a higher world. It experiences the higher world in the imagination (the inner picture of truth), and inspiration (the inner word). The ego is always active, brings spiritual vision and hearing, and makes men alert. (Goethe in his tale "The New Paris" calls the wakefulness of the ego "Alerte".)

While the hare is a symbol of the ego which has not quite permeated the physical organisation, the rabbit represents the complete permeation. For the rabbit digs his burrow in the solid ground, while the hare only has a form and does not penetrate into the earth. It can be said that the ego-consciousness penetrates into the very marrow of the bones. Early on, the hare and the rabbit were clearly differentiated, but in later times they were often confused.

Now the meaning of the Easter rabbit can become clearer. Many centuries before the Birth of Christ, the awakening of nature in spring was regarded by the people of the north of Europe as the work of the goddess of spring, Ostara (Astarte). She gave the animals and plants new life; the spirit form of all living beings on the earth could gain new life in her domain; these spiritual ego forms were seen as hares which brought the new germs (in other words, the hidden eggs). In later times the feast of Ostara, the rejuvenation of nature, became more or less incorporated into the Christian feast of the Resurrection; it was united with the Resurrection of Christ, and of the heathen goddess Ostara there remained, only her name, Easter, and also her hares which hide the eggs.

Gods & Beasts -- The Nazis & the Occult, by Dusty Sklar

In the years preceding World War I, German anti-Semitism was fed by an underground stream of secret cults running like a sewer beneath Vienna and other cultural centers. Hitler dipped into this stream. He lived in a flophouse in the city's slum area, and his life had all the elements of a scenario for a Charlie Chaplin movie about the Little Tramp. He was twenty when he came to Vienna in 1909, rejected for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts, and according to eyewitness accounts, lonely, shy with women, moody, given to violent outbursts -- in short, even in those squalid quarters where the struggle for existence must have brought out the brutal side of human nature, exceedingly odd. He later wrote in Mein Kampf of this period that it gave him "the foundations of a knowledge" which sustained him for the rest of his life: "In this period there took shape within me a world picture and a philosophy which became the granite foundation of all my acts. In addition to what I then created, I have had to learn little; and I have had to alter nothing."

He spent much of his time studying Eastern religions, yoga, occultism, hypnotism, astrology, telepathy, graphology, phrenology, and similar subjects which often appeal to pursuers of magical powers, who usually happen to be powerless. His penchant for the occult led him to a tobacconist's shop near his lodging where he came upon a magazine, Ostara, which must have drawn him. This strange publication was produced by the mystical theorist, [Jorg [Georg] Lanz von Liebenfels] Lanz, who wrote under the acronyn PONT (Prior of the Order of the New Templars).

Vienna, in those days one of the fastest-growing cities in Europe, was hospitable to the formation of occult groups which sprang up with religious fervor, symptomatic of the irrational atmosphere of the time. Vienna's population went up 259 percent between 1860 and 1900, and the flood of new arrivals sought relief from the frustrations of an overcrowded and expensive existence. The city was deluged by mediums, necromancers, and astrologers who claimed to be occupied with a futuristic science which the scientific establishment was as yet unable to appreciate, since experiments were still unverified. The gullible -- scholars included -- believed that intuition and vision enabled specially endowed natures to investigate phenomena which eluded ordinary people.

Lanz, a defrocked Cistercian monk, started his group, the Order of the New Templars, in 1900. His friend, Guido von List, a somewhat different sort of pseudo-priest, started his group, the Armanen, in 1908. Membership was often interlocking, and there was continual feedback between the cults. Around 1912, a number of members of both cults finally came together under one roof in the Germanen Orden, which prefigured the Nazi party.

Historians are divided on the question of whether Hitler was actually ever a member of either the Temple of the New Order or the Armanen, but it is certain that he was a reader of Ostara and met Lanz several times in that period he later alluded to as providing him with "the foundations of a knowledge" which was to become so important to him.

Writing in an oracular, pseudo-anthropological manner, Lanz took mankind from the beginning of time and divided the species into the ace-men and the ape-men, the first being white, blue-eyed, blond, and responsible for everything heroic in mankind. The second group was the repository of everything vile. According to this comic-book mentality, the heroes -- called variously Asings, Heldinge, or Arioheroiker -- were superior by reason of breeding and blood, whereas the inferiors -- Afflinge, Waninge, Schriittlinge, or Tschandale -- always threatened to contaminate through interbreeding.

See "The Law of Fives," by Robert Anton Wilson:

"It always starts with nonsense," Simon is telling Joe in another time-track, between Los Angeles and San Francisco, in 1969. "Weishaupt discovered the Law of Fives while he was stoned and looking at one of those shoggoth pictures you saw in Arkham. He imagined the shoggoth was a rabbit and said, 'du hexen Hase,' which has been preserved as an in-joke by Illuminati agents in Hollywood. It runs through the Bugs Bunny cartoons: 'You wascal wabbit!' But out of that schizzy mixture of hallucination and logomania, Weishaupt saw both the mystic meaning of the Five and its pragmatic application as a principal of international espionage, using permutations and combinations that I'll explain when we have a pencil and paper. That same mixture of revelation and put-on is always the language of the supra-conscious, whenever you contact it, whether through magic, religion, psychedelics, yoga, or a spontaneous brain nova. Maybe the put-on or nonsense part comes by contamination from the unconscious, I don't know. But it's always there. That's why serious people never discover anything of real importance."

See "Cosmic Trigger Volume 2," by Robert Anton Wilson:

The pookah takes many forms, but is most famous when he appears as a giant, six-foot white rabbit -- which is the form most Americans know from the play and film, Harvey. Whatever form the pookah takes, he retains the special ability of his species, which is like that of Thoth in Egyptian legend, Coyote in Native American myth or Hanuman the Divine Monkey in Hindu lore -- he can move us from one universe, or Belief System, into another, and he likes to play games with our ideas about 'reality.'"

See "Thoth," by crystalinks.com

Thoth was the wisest of the Egyptian gods. Thoth was usually depicted with the head of an Ibis. He was the Scribe who wrote the story of our Reality then placed it into grids for us to experience and learn.  He was also called the God of the Moon. He created everything. The name Thoth means 'Truth' and 'Time'. Thoth was the Master architect who created the blueprint of our reality based on the mathematics of sacred geometry.  Originally, Thoth was a god of creation, but was later thought to be the one who civilized men, teaching them civic and religious practices, writing, medicine, music and was a master magician. He took on many of the roles of Seshat, until she became a dual, female version of Thoth. Thoth was believed to be the inventor of astronomy, astrology, engineering, botany, geometry, land surveying. Thoth's priests claimed Thoth was the Demi-Urge who created everything from sound.

Thoth supposedly overcame the curse of Ra, allowing Nut to give birth to her five children, with his skill at games. It was he who helped Isis work the ritual to bring Osiris back from the dead, and who drove the magical poison of Set from her son, Horus with the power of his magic. He was Horus' supporter during the young god's deadly battle with his uncle Set, helping Horus with his wisdom and magic. It was Thoth who brought Tefnut, who left Egypt for Nubia in a sulk after an argument with her father, back to heaven to be reuinted with Ra.

When Ra retired from the Earth, he appointed Thoth and told him of his desire to create a Light-soul in the Duat and in the Land of the Caves, and it was over this region that the sun god appointed Thoth to rule, ordering him to keep a register of those who were there, and to mete out just punishments to them. Thoth became the representation of Ra in the afterlife, seen at the judgment of the dead in the 'Halls of the Double Ma'at'.

The magical powers of Thoth were so great, that the Egyptians had tales of a 'Book of Thoth', which would allow a person who read the sacred book to become the most powerful magician in the world. The Book which "the god of wisdom wrote with his own hand" was, though, a deadly book that brought nothing but pain and tragedy to those that read it, despite finding out about the "secrets of the gods themselves" and "all that is hidden in the stars".

Thoth was a scribe, moralist, messenger, and a Supreme Magician -- later being called Hermes, Merlin, the Trickster. He is a master magician.

See "Hermes," by Ron Leadbetter

Hermes, the herald of the Olympian gods, is son of Zeus and the nymph Maia, daughter of Atlas and one of the Pleiades. Hermes is the god of shepherds, land travel, merchants, weights and measures, oratory, literature, athletics and thieves, and known for his cunning and shrewdness. Most importantly, he is the messenger of the gods. Being the herald (messenger of the gods), it was his duty to guide the souls of the dead down to the underworld, which is known as a psychopomp. He was also closely connected with bringing dreams to mortals.

See "Maybe Logic -- The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson," by Robert Anton Wilson

The Pookah plays the same role as the Holy Guardian Angel in cabalistic magic, or the extraterrestrial in the Whitley Strieber type of experience, or the ghosts of dead relatives speaking through seance in 19th century spiritualism, or Ramtha speaking through J. Z. Knight. These are all different metaphors for basically the same experience. ... That's another reason why I like the giant white rabbit from County Kerry: I'm not going to take him literally. Well, not too literally. Sorry about that, Harvey.

See "Puca," by Wikipedia:

The Phooka (Old Irish), (also Pooka, Puka, Phouka, Púka, Pwca in Welsh, Bucca in Cornish, pouque in Dgèrnésiais, also Glashtyn, Gruagach) is a creature of Celtic folklore, notably in Ireland and Wales. It is one of the myriad of fairy (faery) folk, and, like many faery folk, is both respected and feared by those who believe in it.

Morphology and physiology

According to legend, the phooka is an adroit shape changer, capable of assuming a variety of terrifying forms. It may appear as a horse, rabbit, goat, goblin, or dog. No matter what form the phooka takes, its fur is almost always dark. (its name is a cognate of the early Irish 'poc', 'a male goat', and it may lend its name to Puck, the goat-footed satyr made famous in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream), but it most commonly takes the form of a sleek black horse with a flowing mane and glowing yellow eyes.

If a human is enticed onto a phooka's back it has been known to give them a wild ride. But unlike a kelpie, which will take its rider and dive into the nearest river or lake to drown and devour him, the phooka will do the unfortunate rider no real harm. The Púca has the power of human speech, and has been known to give advice and lead people away from danger. Though the phooka enjoys confusing and often terrifying humans, it is considered to be benevolent.

Agricultural traditions

Certain agricultural traditions surround the Púca. It is a creature associated with Samhain, the third Pagan (Celtic, Wiccan) Harvest Festival, when the last of the crops is brought in. Anything remaining in the fields is considered "puka," or fairy-blasted, and hence inedible. In some locales, reapers leave a small share of the crop, the "púca's share," to placate the hungry creature. Nonetheless, November Day (November 1) is the Púca's day, and the one day of the year when it can be expected to behave civilly.

Regional variations

In some regions, the Púca is spoken of with considerably more respect than fear; if treated with due deference, it may actually be beneficial to those who encounter it. The Púca is a creature of the mountains and hills, and in those regions there are stories of it appearing on November Day and providing prophecies and warnings to those who consult it.

In the shadowmoor block of the cardgame Magic the Gathering 2 cards are based on the abillity to change identity and named after the Púca.

In the classic Mary Chase play Harvey, the title character Harvey is a pooka, in the form of a very tall humanoid white rabbit. This play has been adapted for film several times, the most famous version starring Jimmy Stewart. There is a humorous scene in which Mr. Wilson, the asylum orderly, reads the definition of pooka in the encyclopedia: "Pooka. From old Celtic mythology. A fairy spirit in animal form. Always very large. The pooka appears here and there, now and then, to this one and that one at his own caprice. A benign but mischievous creature. Very fond of rum-pots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?" This provides the notion that Harvey is real.

In Emma Bull's 1987 book, War for the Oaks, the Phouka is a mischievous but ultimately trustworthy shapechanger who takes the form of a large black dog.

Jenny Gluckstein, of Peter S. Beagle's Tamsin, meets a Pooka when she moves from New York City to a haunted farm in Dorset, England.

In The Spiderwick Chronicles, the phooka is a shapeshifter that resembles a black rabbit/monkey-like creature; he is smarter than his speech can demonstrate.

R.A. MacAvoy's 1987 fantasy novel The Grey Horse involves a horse puca in nineteenth-century Ireland.

In Chynna Clugston's Blue Monday comic, heroine Blue encounters her Pooka, Seamus - a giant, gaseous, kilt-bearing otter who often causes more mischief than anything else.

In the 1959 Disney film Darby O'Gill and the Little People, Darby's horse turns into a pookah. The first time the horse transforms, it frightens Darby into falling down a well, where he first encounters King Brian and the land of the leprechauns. The second time, the horse causes Darby's daughter Katie to fall and be injured, which leads to Darby's final deal with King Brian and the ultimate "happily ever after" resolution.

In the 1985 book Crewel Lye: A Caustic Yarn, the 8th Xanth novel by Piers Anthony, a Pooka befriends the main character. He is a smart, helpful ghost horse with rattling chains and ends up being named "Pook."

In one episode of American Dragon, Phooka influences Haley's dark side with a song.

In the final song of Final Fantasy's album, He Poos Clouds, (The Pooka Sings) the Pooka is depicted as a sort of anti-muse, declaiming the composer (Owen Pallett) for writing about things which he doesn't believe and which "don't exist". At the conclusion of the song, the Pooka flies away, and Owen Pallett puts down his violin; "I leave it down, never again!".

The Magic the Gathering trading card game, features two cards based on pucas: Cemetery Puca and Puca's Mischief.

For specific characters named one of the various spellings of pooka (thus alluding to the creature), see Pooka (disambiguation).

See "Harvey (play)," by Wikipedia:

Harvey is a play by Mary Chase. It won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It is the story of a likeable man and his imaginary friend "Harvey", a 6-foot three-and-a-half-inch-tall rabbit. The play starred Frank Fay and Josephine Hull. The play also had a production in 1949 at London's Prince of Wales Theatre.

It was later made into a film by the same name starring Hull and James Stewart who also played the role of Elwood P. Dowd on stage in London for six months in 1975. There were also a couple of television versions.

Plot synopsis

When Elwood P. Dowd starts to introduce his imaginary friend, Harvey, a pooka in the shape of a six-foot, three and a half-inch tall rabbit, to guests at a society party, his society-obsessed sister, Veta, has seen as much of his eccentric behavior as she can tolerate. She decides to have him committed to a sanitarium to spare her daughter Myrtle Mae and their family from future embarrassment.

When they arrive at the sanitarium, due to a comedy of errors, the doctors commit Veta instead of Elwood, but when the truth comes out, the search is on for Elwood and his invisible companion. When he shows up at the sanitarium looking for his lost friend Harvey, it seems that the mild-mannered Elwood's delusion has had a strange influence on more than one of the doctors, including renowned Dr. Chumley, his medical partner Dr. Sanderson, and the head nurse Miss Kelly.

Only just before Elwood is to be given an injection, Dr. Chumley's formula nine-seven-seven, that will make him, as his taxi driver says, into a "perfectly normal human being; and you know what bastards they are!" does Veta realize that she'd rather have Elwood be the same as he's always been - carefree and kind - even if it means living with Harvey the pooka.

Notes

A pooka is a mythical being that can change shape and appear to certain people, often 'playing pranks,' as in the play.

Wilson, looking up 'pooka' in a dictionary, is greeted with these words; "From old Celtic mythology; a fairy spirit in animal form - always very large. The pooka appears here and there - now and then - to this one and that one. A benign but mischievous creature - very fond of rumpots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?"

See "Shoggoth," by Wikipedia:

Shoggoth (or shaggoth[1]) is a fictional monster in the Cthulhu Mythos. The being first appeared in H. P. Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness (1931).

“ It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congerie of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. ” — H. P. Lovecraft, At The Mountains of Madness

The definitive description of shoggoths comes from the above-quoted story. In it, Lovecraft writes them as massive amoeba-like creatures looking like they're made out of tar, with multiple eyes "floating" on the surface. They are described as "protoplasmic", lacking any default body shape and instead being able to form limbs and organs at will. The size of an average shoggoth measured 15 feet across when a sphere, though the story mentions ones of much greater size.

Although intelligent to some degree, Mythos media most commonly shows them dealing with problems using their great size and strength. For instance, the original one mentioned in The Mountains of Madness simply rolled over and crushed giant albino penguins that were in the way as it pursued the characters.

The shoggoths are considered one of the more terrible things present in the Mythos. The character of the Mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, found the mere idea of their existence on Earth terrifying.

Origin and history

The shoggoths were created by the Elder Things as living bioengineered construction equipment. Being amorphous, they could take on any shape needed, making them very versatile within their aquatic environment. Though able to "understand" the Elder Things' language, they had no real consciousness and were controlled through hypnotic suggestion.

The shoggoths built the underwater cities of their masters. Over millions of years of existence, some shoggoths mutated and gained independent minds. Some time after this, they rebelled. Eventually, the Elder Things succeeded in quelling the insurrection, but thereafter watched them more carefully. By this point, exterminating them was not an option as the Elder Things were fully dependent on them for labor and could not replace them. It was during this time that, despite their masters' wishes, they demonstrated an ability to survive on land.

Within the Mythos, the existence of the shoggoths possibly led to the accidental creation of Ubbo-Sathla, a god-like entity supposedly responsible for the origin of all life on Earth, though At The Mountains of Madness brings up the possibility of the Elder Things being the creators, having made early life as discarded experiments in bioengineering.

Other connections

When the Elder Things retreated to the oceans, they brought the shoggoths with them and eventually let them develop the ability to exist on land out of desperation. In contrast to their failing society, the shoggoths began to imitate their art and voices, taking over the cavern city underneath Antarctica and creating a twisted imitation of the society of their masters.

Aside from their main appearance in the Mountains of Madness story, shoggoths also appear in other Mythos stories, often as servitors or captives to powerful cults and entities. They are known to endlessly repeat "Tekeli-li",[2] a cry that their old masters used.

See "Lies, Inc.," by Philip K. Dick

The thing which he held ceased its horizontal motion. It moved, but in another direction which was neither up nor forward; he had never seen this direction and its weirdness appalled him, because the thing in his hand moved without moving; it progressed and yet stayed where it was, so that he did not have to change the direction of his eye focus. His gaze fixed, he watched the shining, brittle, transparent thing elaborate itself, produce from its central column slender branches like glass stalagmites; in a series of lurches, of jumps forward into the nonspacial dimension of altered movement, the tree-thing developed until its complexity terrified him. It was all over the world, now; from his hand it had jerked out into stage after stage so that, he knew, it was everywhere, and nothing else had room to exist: the tree-thing had taken up all space and crowded reality-as-it- usually-was out.

And still it grew.

He decided, then, to look away from it. In his mind he recalled in distinctness, with labored, painstaking concentration, the THL soldier; he noted the direction, in relation to the enormous, world filling tree-thing, along which the soldier could be found. He made his head turn, his eyes focus that way.

A small circle, like some far end of a declining tube, opened up and unveiled for him a minute portion of reality-as-it-usually-was. Within that circle he made out the face of the THL soldier, unchanged; it stabilized in normal luminosity and shape. And, meanwhile, throughout the endless area which was not the distant circle of the world, a multitude of noiseless, sparklike configurations flicked on and achieved form with such magnitude of brightness that even without focusing on them he experienced pain; they appalled the optic portion of his percept-system, and yet did not halt the transfer of their impressions: despite the unendurable brilliance the configurations continued to flow into him, and he knew that they had come to stay. Never, he knew. They would never leave.

For an almost unmeasurable fraction of an instant he ventured to look directly at one unusually compelling light-configuration; its furious activity attracted his gaze.

Below it, the circle which contained unaltered reality changed. At once he forced his attention back. Too late?

The THL soldier's face. Swollen eyes. Pale. The man returned Rachmael's gaze; their eyes met and each perceived the other, and then the physiognomic properties of the reality-landscape swiftly underwent a crumbling new alteration; the eyes became rocks that immediately were engulfed by a freezing wind which obliterated them with dense snow. The jaw, the cheeks and mouth and chin, even the nose disappeared as they became lesser mountains of barren, uninhabited rock that also succumbed to the snow. Only the tip of the nose projected, a peak presiding alone above a ten-thousand-mile waste that supported no life nor anything that moved. Rachmael watched, and years lapsed by, recorded by the internal clock of his perceiving mind; he knew the duration and knew the meaning of the landscape's perpetual refusal to live: he knew where he was and he recognized this which he saw. It was beyond his ability not to recognize it.

This was the hellscape.

No, he thought. It has to stop. Because now he saw tiny distant figures sprouting everywhere to populate the hellscape, and as they formed they continued the dancing, frenzied activities familiar to them -- and familiar to him, as if he were back once more and again witnessing this, and knowing with certitude that he would, within the next thousand years, be forced to scrutinize.

His fear, concentrated and directed in this one field, superimposed like a dissolving beam over the hellscape, rolled back the snow, made its thousand-year-old depth fade into thinness; the rocks once more appeared and then retreated backward into time to resume their function as features of a face. The hellscape reverted with awful obedience to what it had been, as if almost no force were needed to push it out of existence, away from the stronghold of reality in which it had a moment before entrenched itself. And this appalled him the most of all: this told him dreadful news. The merest presence of life, even the smallest possible quantity of volition, desire and intent was enough to reverse the process by which the eternal landscape of hell made itself known. And this meant that not long ago, when the hellscape first formed, he had been without any life, any at all. Not an enormous force from outside breaking in -- that was not what confronted him. There was no adversary. These, the terrible transmutations of world in every direction, had spontaneously entered as his own life had dwindled, faded, and at last -- for a moment, anyhow -- entirely shut down.

He had died.

But he was now again alive.

Where, then? Not where he had lived before.

The THL soldier's face, customary and natural, hung within the diminished, constricted aperture through which reality showed, a face relieved of the intrusion of hell-attributes. As long, Rachmael realized, as I keep that face in front of me, I'm okay. And if he talks. That would do it; that would get me through.

But he won't, he realized. He tried to kill me; he wants me dead. He did kill me. This man -- this sole link with outside -- is my murderer.

He stared at the face; in return, the eyes glared unwinkingly back, the owl eyes of cruelty that loathed him and wanted him dead, wanted him to suffer. And the THL soldier said nothing; Rachmael waited and heard no sound, even after years -- a decade had passed and another began and still no word was spoken. Or if it was he failed to hear it.

"Goddamn you," Rachmael said. His own voice did not reach him; he felt his throat tremble with the sound, but his ears detected no change, nothing. "Do something," Rachmael said. "Please."

The soldier smiled.

"Then you can hear me," Rachmael said. "Even after this long." It was amazing that this man still lived, after so many centuries. But he did not bother to reflect on that; all that mattered was the uninterrupted realness of the face before him. "Say something," Rachmael said, "or I'll break you." His words weren't right, he realized. Meaningful, familiar, but somehow not correct; he was bewildered. "Like a rod of iron," he said. "I will dash you in pieces. Like a potter's vessel. For I am like a refiner's fire." Horrified, he tried to comprehend the warpage of his language; where had the conventional, everyday --

Within him all his language disappeared; all words were gone. Some scanning agency of his brain, some organic searching device, swept out mile after mile of emptiness, finding no stored words, nothing to draw on: he felt it sweeping wider and wider, extending its oscillations into every dark reach, overlooking nothing; it wanted, would accept, anything, now; it was desperate. And still, year after year, the empty bins where words, many of them, had once been but were not now.

He said, then, "Tremens factus sum ego et timeo." Because out of the periphery of his vision he had obtained a clear glimpse of the progress of the brilliant light-based drama unfolding silently. "Libere me," he said, and repeated it, once, twice, then on and on, without cease. "Libere me Domini," he said, and for a hundred years he listened, watched the events projected soundlessly before him, witnessed forever.

"Let go of me, you bastard," the THL soldier said. His hands grasped Rachmael's neck and the pain was vast beyond compare; Rachmael let go and the face mocked him in leering hate. "And enjoy your expanded consciousness," the soldier said with malice so overwhelming that Rachmael felt throughout him unendurable somatic torment which came and then stayed.

"Mors scribitum," Rachmael said, appealing to the THL soldier. He repeated it, but there was no response. "Misere me," he said, then; he had nothing else available, nothing more to draw on. "Dies Irae," he said, trying to explain what was happening inside him. "Dies Illa." He waited hopefully; he waited years, but no help, no sound, came. I won't make it, he realized then. Time has stopped. There is no answer.

"Lots of luck," the face said, then. And began to recede, to move away.  The soldier was leaving.

Rachmael hit him. Crushed the mouth. Teeth flew; bits of broken white escaped and vanished, and blood that shone with dazzling flame, like a flow of new, clear fire, exposed itself and filled his vision; the power of illumination emanating from the blood overwhelmed everything, and he saw only that -- its intensity stifled everything else and for the first time since the dart had approached him he felt wonder, not fear; this was good. This captivated and pleased him, and he contemplated it with joy.

In five centuries the blood by degrees faded. The flame lessened. Once more, drifting dimly behind the breathing color, the lusterless face of the THL soldier could be made out, uninteresting and unimportant, of no value because it had no light. It was a dreary and tiresome specter, long known, infinitely boring; he experienced excruciating disappointment to see the fire decrease and the THL soldier's features re-gather. How long, he asked himself, do I have to keep seeing this same unlit scene?

The face, however, was not the same. He had broken it. Split it open with his fist. Opened it up, let out the precious, blinding blood; the face, a ruined husk, gaped disrobed of its shell: he saw, not the mere outside, but into its genuine works.

Another face, concealed before, wriggled and squeezed out, as if wishing to escape. As if, Rachmael thought, it knows I can see it, and it can't stand that. That's the one thing it can't endure.

The inner face, emerging from the cracked-open gray-chitin mask, now tried to fold up within itself, attempted vigorously to wrap itself in its own semi-fluid tissue. A wet, limp face, made of the sea, dripping, and at the same time stinking; he smelled its salty, acrid scent and felt sick.

The oceanic face possessed a single multi-lensed eye. Beneath the beak. And when it opened its toothless mouth the wideness of the cavity divided the face entirely; the mouth separated the face into two unconnected equal parts.

***

Something looked at him. With its mouth.

It had eaten most of its own eyes.

Within its bow-shaped mouth the half-chewed eyes lay, rolling on the surface of its greedy, licking tongue. Those not completely eaten, those which still shone with luster, regarded him as they rolled slightly; they continued to function, although no longer fixed to the bulbed, oozing exterior surface of the head. New eyes, like tiny pale eggs, had already begun to form, he perceived. They clung in clusters.

He was seeing it. Not a deformed, half-hallucinated, pseudo-image, but the actual presence of the underlying substrate-entity which inhabited or somehow managed to lodge itself in this paraworld for long periods of time -- possibly forever, he realized with a shudder. Possibly for the total, absolute duration of its existence.

That might be a time-span of such magnitude as to smother any rational insight; he intuited that. The thing was old. And it had learned to feed on itself. He wondered how many centuries had passed before it had encountered that method of survival. He wondered what else it had tried first-hand what it still resorted to, when necessary.

There were undoubtedly a number of techniques which it could make use of, when pressed. This act of consuming its own sensory-apparatus ... it appeared to be a reflex act, not even consciously done. By now a mere habit; the creature chewed monotonously, and the luster within the still-watching half-consumed eyes was extinguished. But already the new ones expanding in clusters against the outer surface of the head had begun to acquire animation; several, more advanced in development than the others, had in a dim way discovered him and were with each passing second becoming more alert. Their initial interchange with reality involved him, and the realization of this made him sick with disgust. To be the first object sighted by such semi-autonomous entities --

See "Follow the White Rabbit," by Clyde Lewis:

Bye, baby bunting
Daddy's gone a hunting
To get a little rabbit skin
To wrap his baby bunting in

I remember that when I had investigative reporter Kurt Billings on my show he played the audio used at the Waco siege. It was an audio assault trigger to trigger the followers of David Koresh to give up. In it there were backwards messages in a Nancy Sinatra song (And the White Knight is talking backwards) and the sounds of Rabbits screaming as they are being killed.

See "Noise Annoys," by Iain Aitch:

For me, it is a given that coach travel is unpleasant. The lack of air, inability to move around and jerky motion all conspire to make me nauseous. The experience is not made any more tolerable by having jumpsuited security staff bawl at you or separate you into male and female groups, ordering you onto different coaches that are headed for an unknown destination.

So begins the latest piece of work by artist Rod Dickinson. 150 of us have gathered at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) on the Mall for a magical mystery tour that will take us to an undisclosed venue outside of the capital to witness his one-off re-enactment of the infamous 1993 Waco siege in Texas. 39-year-old Dickinson has previously re-enacted part of the Jonestown massacre, where 914 cult members downed cyanide-laced drinks, as well as Stanley Milgram’s behavioural experiments, in which members of the public were encouraged to administer electric shocks to strangers so that Milgram might find out how easily people follow orders. Re-enacting Waco was the next logical step for an artist fascinated by mind control and fringe belief systems.

Those on the coaches are, of course, aware that the jumpsuited, shaven-headed goons are all part of the show, but their presence, stares and the echo of death squad tactics in the separation of the sexes serves to subdue us. When the men’s coach draws away from the car park at the rear of the ICA we are all sat upright and silent, our seat belts buckled as we are told.

As the coach travels along the north bank of the Thames, heading east, my fellow passengers relax slightly and speculation begins as to where we are heading. Rock venues and football stadia are mooted, though industrial estates and factories start to look more likely as we hit the A13. One passenger thinks that we are headed for Dagenham, or maybe City Airport.

Just to ensure that we don’t get too cosy a guard wanders up and down the bus checking our seat belts and then handing out disclaimer forms for us to sign. The re-enactment will revolve around the psychological operations used by the FBI to try to oust David Koresh and his Branch Davidian followers from their Mount Carmel compound at Waco, so we will be subjected to loud noises and must sign to say we understand that this could reach 110 decibels, the equivalent of a chainsaw at close quarters.

The loud noise is one reason we are speeding out towards Essex. Many London councils didn’t want the noise or the dubious pleasure of an artist re-enacting an event that saw 80 die, most of them in the fire that consumed the Branch Davidian’s headquarters after the 51-day-long siege. Dickinson came across similar problems with his re-enactment of the Jonestown massacre, having to rethink his idea of a ‘die in’ when he couldn’t find a public park that would allow him to stage then event.

Speaking before the event Dickinson tells me it took a year to find the venue. “I had a few aborted meetings with councils,” he says. “Anyone concerned with community issues did not want it to happen in their location.”

Questions of taste may have been a problem for local authorities, but those travelling to the event seem to have no such qualms, agreeing with Dickinson’s premise that his work is more about learning than any taste for the macabre. He calls it ‘experiential education’.

“I vaguely remember it from the news,” says Sajeel Kershi, an IT worker. “I was surprised to hear that it was 51 days, for some reason I though that it was over relatively quickly. I wasn’t aware that psychological techniques were used. I guess that it will get people to start thinking. So it is a good thing.”

We pass Dagenham, bringing into view the huge supermarkets, leisure complexes and ‘big box’ retailers that dominate this strip of retail heavy A-road. It resembles the outskirts of an American city. If England were to have its own Waco then surely it would be somewhere out here in the hinterlands of Essex.

We pass the Lakeside shopping centre before turning off the main road. We have arrived. Our Waco is to be at the Arena-Essex Raceway, a stadium used for speedway and banger racing. I am just grateful that we have completed the journey without the need for me to lean over a brown paper bag. Perhaps it was the fear of what our guards might say.

We disembark into the darkness, with guards issuing brusque instructions. I stick close to those in front of me so that I can see where I am going before my night vision kicks in and I can see my feet.

Once inside the stadium we are ushered to the centre of the track, where we stand huddled closely, not sure what to expect next. After five minutes the lights go up. Spotlights pointing inwards from the perimeter fence to replicate those shone onto the compound at Waco each night. Then the sound begins as speakers around the stadium play helicopter noise. Many instinctively look up as the sound shifts around us. Such is the realism of the sound that I almost expect to feel the down draught from the rotor blades.

The next segment is a recording of David Koresh talking with an FBI negotiator. These recordings of telephone conversations were played back at the compound by the FBI to ensure that Koresh could not hide any facts from his followers. The conversation is bizarre, with Koresh and the FBI man discussing the bible. Koresh is clearly delusional, though, as Dickinson explains, the Branch Davidians thought the FBI were equally unbalanced.

“I spoke to Clive Doyle (one of only nine survivors of the fire),” says Dickinson. “He said that they couldn’t understand it. They thought that the FBI were crazy, which seems a reasonable assumption to make. For me it is a great working example of the conflict of belief.”

After ten minutes of telephone conversation a loud, bass-heavy recording of Tibetan prayer chants is played, at which point some of the affects of psychological warfare become apparent. Within a minute of the chant beginning about 50% of the crowd move towards the whitewashed tyres at either side of the central area and sit down on them. Some shut their eyes, others put up hoods against the night air, which is turning cold.

As more conversations with Koresh are played audience members get up and start to amble counter-clockwise around the race track, looking like extras in a zombie film or prisoners in an exercise yard. Then comes the earplug moment.

As a highly amplified recording of a telephone left off the hook is played members of the audience put their hands to their ears, some drop to their haunches and others stop in their tracks. I fumble around in my pocket for my earplugs. Elsewhere, other members of the crowd do likewise or grab a pair from an assistant who has a bag full of bright green foam-rubber nuggets. The earplugs reduce the noise, but the effect is still akin to standing next to a car with its alarm sounding.

A recording of Koresh being badgered by the FBI negotiator to allow members of his church injured in earlier skirmishes to receive medical attention comes as a blessed relief. The Branch Davidians had to put up with dentist’s drills, white noise and rabbits screaming played for hours at a time to deny them sleep and speed their surrender, but five minutes of high frequency noise is enough for most of us.

By the time that Nancy Sinatra’s rendition of These Boots Were Made for Walking is being played through the multiple speakers a quarter of the audience are already up and striding around the track. Those still at the centre smile in relief and mock dance moves whilst couples embrace or sway in time with the music.

When Nancy sings “start walking”, those on the track unconsciously speed up. Then the music is slowed right down and distorted, so that “these boots are gonna walk all over you” is delivered as a threat. People slow down again, or stop altogether. The same track was played at Mount Carmel, where the boots came in the shape of pyrotechnic CS gas canisters backed up by armoured cars, in what some claim was a massive over reaction by the FBI.

Dickinson’s management of the performance highlights this point perfectly without the need to resort to narration. It is impossible not to consider what conditions and emotions must have been like inside the compound and of those, 21 children amongst them, who perished in the fire on the 19th of April. Whether the fire was, as the FBI claim, set by Koresh or ignited by the CS gas, as some survivors claim, seems irrelevant.

As the performance draws to a close Koresh and the FBI negotiator are once again locked in theological discourse, with Koresh talking about the name of God being pronounced by your very breathing and the fact that you must therefore utter this word with your last breath.

“Unless you are blown to pieces everybody does it,” says Koresh presciently.

Then silence.

The lights go out and we are once again left in the dark, in the middle of a speedway circuit in Thurrock. My ears ringing and there are goosebumps on my arms. It could just be the cold, but I think that I may have just been experientially educated.

All content copyright © 2007 Iain Aitch

See "Winter Soldier," by Winterfilm, Inc.

JOSEPH BANGERT: If I can get back to the Vietnamese woman I saw that was mutilated so horribly, it didn't really shock me because I think I talked about my first day in Vietnam.

You can check with the marines who've been to Vietnam. Your last day in the states, staging battalion at Camp Pendleton, you have a little lesson, and it's called "The Rabbit Lesson." where the staff NCO comes out and he has a rabbit.

And he's talking to you about escape and evasion and survival in the jungle, and he has this rabbit.

And in a couple of seconds, after everyone practically falls in love with it -- not falls in love with it, but they're humane -- he cracks its neck, skins it, disembowels it, just like I testified that this happened to the woman.

He does this to a rabbit, and they throw the guts out into the audience. And you can get anything out of that you want, but that's your last lesson you catch in the United States before you leave for Vietnam.

See "Molehunt," by David Wise

Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby had joined MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service, in 1940, and by the end of the war he had risen to chief of the Soviet section of MI6, which meant that Moscow knew everything of importance that the British secret service was doing or planning to do against the Soviet Union. In 1949, Philby was assigned to Washington as the MI6 liaison with the CIA. Angleton dined regularly with Philby at Harvey's, a downtown restaurant in the capital also much favored by J. Edgar Hoover. The CIA's ace counterintelligence chief never once suspected that the man sitting across the table and exchanging secrets with him was in fact a dedicated  Soviet agent from the start.

See "Orders to Kill -- The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King, by Dr. William F. Pepper

Just about the time that the staff meeting was heating up in the motel, less than three hundred feet away a man calling himself John Willard was registering for a sleeping room in the rear of the South Main Street rooming house whose back faced the Lorraine. Also during this time, one of the SCLC's senior field organizers, the Rev. James Orange, went off to do some shopping, driven by Invader Marrell McCollough. On the way back to the motel they picked up James Bevel at Clayborn Temple.

About two hours later, J. Edgar Hoover was about to have the first of his predinner martinis at his usual table at Harvey's Restaurant in Washington. The fact that he attended Harvey's for dinner as usual on that day would be cited by defenders of the FBI as indicating a lack of knowledge of the events that were to take place in the next half hour.
 

See "Valis," by Philip K. Dick

No wimpy hype passed muster before Kevin's eyes. He considered himself the hawk and the hype the rabbit.

See "Story of the Day:  A Brief Moment of Context on Memorial Day," by Brad Jacobson, mediabloodhound.com

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