Occultism and Post-awakening Natures:

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Romanticism and the Artist Prophet(s) [Posted initially on 25th July 2021]: We discussed transcending the self with the imagination in the last post. And that if we deny the imagination in society’s central role, it’s an attempt to deny the other. Within this denial also rests self-interest, which the creative process exemplifies. All while realising imagination and ethics are not romantic, in so much as a person with talent is not inherently romantic, they’re at most to have exceptional skills. It’s a way to distinguish healthy imagination from the heroic model. The preference for self-interest takes form in this denial to which a healthy ‘imagination’ is only reticent for a few superior people. Take this quote by Schopenhauer:  

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There are variations to this heroic model: fundamentalists follow the occult of personality. With it comes certain missing truths, insights, and context due to its simplistic framing. Or the belief that imagination is strongest only among marginal or unstable people, exemplified by pure scientists and artists. Related to this is the view of imagination as being fundamentally romantic. Viewing it this way tends to be marginal or even dangerous because seeing the imagination as something wonderful or essential can only be attained among the few. Such as it is, this opens it up to those with no [or minimal] imagination, reducing it or attempting to structure the imagination.          

Therefore, the Romantic Movement in the 19th century was a reaction to the dominance of rationality. On the other hand, this conception is best not perceived as its opposite but instead its tangent appeal. The romantic hero is akin to an adolescent child full of angst, weeping, and perhaps suicidal. It was a reaction to what it opposed; during that era, it was the early industrial landscape. The greater the romantic expression – the more it defines a rational ideal. Romanticism became a way to measure the imagination, but at the same time, imagination is full of uncontrolled emotion. Therefore, has a habit of falling back into or aligning themselves with those without imagination. They are kindly controlling the imagination; they are the rock attached to those who have it. However, one must not associate artists and scientists with uncontrolled emotion because they are ultimately driven by uncertainty. Therefore, these emotions are often regulated by the need for corporatism or the romantic slur of leadership that morphs itself into dictatorships.    

Awareness of these dichotomies is helpful because they can differentiate themselves from their abstract; the imagination is only attained by a few in as much as a belief that specialization implies privileged access to truth. Pure scientists don’t get attention because truthful science is pedantic and time-consuming. You can’t attach a heroic model to something essentially monotonous. And this is why the heroic mechanism is glorified through scientism. While the artist’s heroic model, in essence, is ‘the artist prophet,’ which is an elitist privilege, the artist-prophet is blessed and stands as a priest figure. Their imaginings are deemed mystical, almost religious. They can call up spirits and, therefore, reveal truths. In this assertion, the imagination belongs to the Oracle, the sage or the Sybil. They are the elite, although a marginal elite – the artist as a religious prophet.            

The romantic danger only applies to how you see it – whether you’re more inclined to be romantic or tend to head towards cynicism. We depend on the artist-prophet, but we must not value the elitist privilege so much as we ignore our remarkability. The parallel is the same as being Christian without really knowing [or wanting to know] what the parables are about in the Bible. Imagining the other is denied. Or the imagination is withheld in any varied imaginable situation.

Cynical Danger: Or be it … they allow Christian conspiracy theory to do the imagining for them as they use etymology as a propaganda tool rather than for educational purposes. And there is also a need to implore false-to-fact abstractions of meaning in symbols and images. Conspiracy theorists Christians use etymology as a function through a process to build theories and propaganda. Their motivation is irrelevant here, but the reason and foundation of truth for the ‘word’ is essential. However, will it change the modern meaning of the word? Does the word Satan and its meaning revert to its original context of opposition or the iconographic image of the red beast? Is it going to discern Satan from Lucifer? Is it going to denounce the biblical names of the 12 apostles back to their Middle Eastern titles?         

Christian-conspiracy-theorist’s consensus surrounding Gnosticism and esotericism has always been itemised through a fundamentalist lens, in which an Illuminati cabal is the culprit. Mystery cults were the rebels, the resistance, and the counter-culture to the autocratic state of that time. This cynical way of thinking started in an Evangelical/Conservative group that was overly vocal about their fundamentalist stance. Particularly concerning is Jack T. Chick, a Protestant comic book artist whose name has become synonymous with ‘Chick Comics.’ He used the comic book format to outline his crusade against sin, Catholicism, and rock music and was notably anti-Catholic.

This thinking pattern spread throughout evangelical groups and would be absorbed in the fundamentalist catalogue of ideologies. This thinking pattern approaches the symbol by reducing it to its historical contingency. This means any symbolic image that goes back to its historical origin and is accompanied by visual analogies is enough to explain the symbolism. It needs to be more complex and has many factors outlining a lot of fallacies.   

For example, a symbol found in the Orthodox Church [whatever that may be] will inevitably be linked back to the Catholic Church. And that very same symbol from the Catholic Church falls in line historically with images from ancient Egypt. Rightly so because it’s coming from the worship of solar-god deities, but because, similarly, it must therefore prove the Catholic Church is Satanic, Pagan and evil. In doing so, separating their symbol [that originated from the Catholic Church] from the Orthodox Church and announced their version of Christianity as pure.  They can identify symbolic analogies between cultures, but a fallacy is present when they decry the other as evil, which is beyond bias. That’s not to say the Catholic Church is without transgression. The most common misdeed is sexual abuse found systematically around the Churches.  

Jack Kirby’s Face on Mars is a Face on Earth: Jack Kirby, a well-known comic book artist, is the opposite of Jack Chick. Chick is a clear fundamentalist who hides his materialism in ‘Prosperity Gospel’ with a coating of gas-lighting. And just like other fundamentalists that came before him, it’s all about setting up strawmen, scapegoats and, in most cases, it’s a Masonic Cabal that’s part of a vast, insidious conspiracy. It sounds more romantic than the Christian white middle class denouncing modernism, secularism, and liberalism. To which they once favoured until global corporate interests no longer favoured their interests. Although the romantic side comes from many conspiracy theories, Chick was a traditionalist. However, this is about the imagination, which Chick had none given his Evangelical filter, which often regulates the intuition to common sense. In other words, intuition is made redundant, but Jack Kirby was free from this ideological setback.                    

Jack Kirby, in many aspects, can be described as an artist prophet given the uniqueness of his storytelling and the imagery he portrayed on paper. And often, it was prophetic, perhaps due to his uncanny ability to predict future events. This ability became evident during his time in the war; this experience led to post-traumatic stress. To which he took psychedelic drugs as a treatment. Often, such mind trips come with it: contact with alien beings. In his storytelling, this explains his psychic-alien contact obsession, interlaced with ancient alien theory. And no one like him has come to pass afterwards.

Christian conspiracy theorists often find significance in coincidences or events appearing in media and the arts before their actual occurrence. For Jack Kirby, a prominent comic book artist, these manifestations appeared in his comic book panels. Real-life events would unfold that he had already depicted in his artwork years earlier. However, for conspiracy groups, this phenomenon is interpreted as evidence of a larger conspiratorial agenda. Additionally, some Christian truthers argue that this is part of an esoteric agenda linked to occultism and its historical context.

One must distinguish imaginative prophetic processes from orchestrated rituals and symbols for conspiracy agendas. The difference between secret symbols and images found in the United States one-dollar bill – to an aeroplane plunging itself towards two high-rise buildings as depicted in the comic-book panels, for an entirely different narrative than a 9-11 event is apparent [or rather Kirby foretold]. However, it’s the symbolic coincidence that makes it intriguing. Nevertheless, traditional Christians are stuck in a linear causality examined in the notion that Arabs are responsible for the crash of 9/11 events. For truthers, that’s not the case, but as a thought experiment, what if it was confirmed in a linear causality rather than a simulated one? What would be the reaction? Both the simulated and linear disturb the order of things, and both ways attack the principle of self. However, one is less severe than the other because it deploys employees for the simulated distribution of labour.

If 9/11 played out in a linear casualty way, it would be less fantastical because the image would not be as pronounced. And this is due to the laws of physics being predominately transfixed. Meaning buildings won’t fall, and only minor devastation exists. However, the opposite occurred; the simulated 9-11 hoax did happen. Hoaxes are similar to the complex structure revealed before and after the event. [Inscribed in the decoding and orchestration rituals of the media, anticipated in their presentation and their possible consequences. – Baudrillard, J]. Linear causality, however, would’ve had uncertainty and authenticity and become apparent. The media’s push for false idolatry and the propagation of the inflated image would be unplanned, and so become legitimate. The simulated hoax itself is more alarming. [More dangerous as it always leaves open to supposition that, above and beyond its object, law and order themselves might be nothing but a simulation. – Baudrillard, J] 

In my conspiracy theory and reason post, I described Kirby’s imaginative prophetic processes through the need to acknowledge that mortality and timelessness exist and that our dreams link us to the collective unconscious. There are many access points to the unconscious, but the most common is the turn-up in dreams. To which synchronicity plays a part, especially in articulating those dreams and insights for understanding? This would also mean understanding variations of synchronicities found in art, stories, music, sounds, and myths and the personage of their actions, courage, fear, and physical nature and relationship to the non-human. Kirby applied animism creatively to reach within the synchronistic whole and inject his awareness through comic book panels.

Although there is a safe version of hero-worship, the kind that is not about unhealthy adoration of inspiration and embodiment, I tend to accept a secure version of romanticism, aside from the awareness that romanticism sits in the shadow of rational methodology. Here, it tries to be open and inclusive to others but is only thwarted by its logic and becomes exclusive and closed off. The kind of effect that produces megalomania and totalitarianism. Although Coleridge [in 1808], at the height of the Romantic Movement, argued that creative imagination was part of the ‘balance-loving nature of man’, a sentiment instantly consolidated ‘as a single unifying force within all creative acts.’ To which it would be ‘the one power of the imagination.’ There was backlash amongst intellects because this was undoubtedly an attempt to reduce the imagination to be defined as one power. The imagination is more like the unnameable Dao. Of course, this differs from denying or resisting oneness or denying the Monad. This safe version of romanticism, I’m claiming, is the kind that the New Age promotes, and that is of love and trust.  

Scientism acts as a filter for the heroic model in an attempt to grasp uncertainty. Therefore, akin to believing secularism will inevitably lead to enlightenment. Of course, it will lead to its opposite, ‘materialism,’ a romantic ideal hidden in reason. In light of the scientistic institute apparatus becoming undone, so do most of its imaginative babblings. Which often parallel science-fiction storytelling – the distinctions, however, are in the authors – between the scientism’s hyper theories portrayed as facts vs. artist-prophets and their insights as entertainment?

Kirby finely moulded both or flawlessly mixed his obsession with a materialist/reductionist worldview and his obsession with aliens, UFOs and ancient astronauts. However, our new normal upholds a resistance to satellite cosmology because other simulated constructs are obligated to play along with its simulation. The difference is about the levels of fiction you’re willing to accept: NASA and ancient astronauts. Within a mythical base, ancient astronauts can fit technological Atlantean brethren whom the indigenous people recognised as a cargo cult, which bears more truth because of its myth than NASA–astronauts simulating space in an underwater pool for factual propaganda. Kirby also had an interest in paranormal phenomena, and after his death, people came to recognise he tended to predict future events in illustrative form.       

Notably, his insight about a mysterious hidden planet between Mars and Jupiter, [in a Sitchin setting] this planet is Nibiru or Planet X, or [in a theosophical sense] Tiamat. However, Kirby had made this notion of a mystery planet two decades before Sitchin. Kirby’s allegorical Face on Mars [often inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs – ‘Warlord of Mars’ who himself was inspired by theosophy] depicts a team of astronauts landing on Mars and discovering a large monument equal in size to a large building but aesthetically shaped like a Face. An astronaut finds his way inside through the eye and finds himself in a breathable atmosphere and a civilised landscape home to giant humanoids. He then witnesses a briefing amongst the giants indicating a space-militant force coming from a hidden planet. To which the giant humanoids [Martians] decide to destroy it with a doomsday bomb. The hidden planet [Tiamat] was destroyed, and it later became known as the asteroid belt [our asteroid belt, as it were] between Mars and Jupiter. Mars would become barren and lifeless.   

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Regarding his depiction of giant heads, these stories from ‘The Face on Mars’ and ‘The Great Stone Face’ explored comic book imagery of massive stone heads. These comic-book depictions were inscribed decades before the authentic, satellized images of Cydonia’s face on Mars. During that time, people were amazed by this – although this was a time when most people believed in moon landings. We were enamoured with futurism, and space travel was just several years away. However, given the new normal, we know it is fiction. Images relating to Cydonia may be bogus and perhaps made by a NASA employee. In light of this, it doesn’t make Kirby less prophetic; it’s merely shifting semantics.

Kirby’s fascination with Giant heads signifies his fascination with historical mystery regarding ancient civilisations [and aliens]. Easter Island and its giant carved stone faces are reminiscent of this fascination. Let’s ask, what if a similar Face found itself on the hyperreal planet Mars? Hyperreal space is just an extension of Earth’s sacred Centre and its mysteries. Life’s creation and drama are centred on the Centre as a gateway to the gods. This drama takes the play in the backdrop of the Pleroma [both lower and higher Pleroma], to which hyperreal space is a symbol.

Also, Easter Island itself would be the start and end of a circular topographical sacred site journey that spans most of the ancient sites on Earth. An alignment that is equal to the equator; all seems too evident to be just incidental. Just place these historic sacred sites of credible intrigue among the backdrop of hyperreal space and other planets. [Given our hyperreal heliocentric model, the preciseness of this equation is left uncertain]. In my speculation, planets represent geometric morphing fluid states as a gateway to another bardo or dimension.  And what these other planes of existence are like, I leave that to your imagination. It also marks a spot or a step further in a spiritual journey towards a higher spiritual hierarchy – to the Trinity to oneness [to God].           

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Michael Keefe.

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 [I’m going to continue with ‘occultism and post-awakening natures’, especially regarding artist-prophets because there are a lot more artists who are prophets out there to discover. However, for now, it will have to continue later. I’m trying to finish this fundamentalism section, which is almost finished.]  

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