Yael R.

Dragwyla First North American rights

Email: Polaris93@aol.com 64,000 words
http://polaris93.livejournal.com/

New Magicks for a New Age

Volume 4: The Notebooks of a Magickian
Book Nine

Subj: Fwd: comet-tary.html

Date: 96-02-15 00:22:27 EST
From: Polaris93

Hi – thought y’all might find this of interest. – yrd

––––––––
Forwarded Message:
Subj: comet-tary.html
Date: 96-02-09 00:13:42 EST
From: bettyb@frugal.com
To: polaris93@aol.com

http://www.idirect.com/oracle/library/comet-tary.html
> Comet-tary Saw this in the idirect.com library. My friend, Robert Morning Sky, says that Hopi
Prophecy tells of two comets, the first with a blue halo and the second following 7 years later. The first
brings great turmoil and the second either salvation or destruction, whichever is chosen by the people.

These prophecies tie in with both the white buffalo calf born last fall and the ever increasing appearances
of crop circles.

And if you are really into prophecy, read up on the Christian prophecy about the beast, the mark of the
beast, and the seven years of destruction. Interesting stuff, this!!!

[From me, after receiving the above, to another correspondent who had told me about the first sightings
of Hale-Bopp:]
 Merlin, you were right! Comet Hale-Bopp 0195 is quite real, and if its current apparent
brightness/size aren’t just the result of temporary outgassing, it may well be one of the biggest, brightest
comets in history, at least as much so as Halley’s Comet was at the latter’s best! (Q.: Why was Halley’s
Comet so disappointingly dim and non-noteworthy at its last passage? – Ans.: When it came back in 1910
to pick up Mark Twain, he cussed it out so bad that he shocked the daylights out of it, and it’s only been
a shadow of its former glory ever since! <g>) This new comet is currently (as of August 8, 1995, the day
Pluto went direct for the last time in Scorpio in our lifetimes, just a couple of day’s after the comet’s
discovery) at a celestial longitude equivalent to 18 h 33 m sidereal time, and a declination of -31° 38’
(i.e., 31° 38’ south of the celestial equator, far South of Sol’s or even Luna’s greatest southern
declination, but not very far south of Pluto’s greatest southern declination). 18 h 33 m sidereal time is
equivalent to about 16° 30’ Capricorn, a little over halfway through that southern Sign. The comet is
now just inside Jupiter’s orbit, and if it is as big as its current brightness indicates, it is over 100 miles
across – about the size of the planetoid/cometoid Chiron, which is a comet by dint of its physical
makeup, but a planetoid because it is in a true orbit around Sol, between the orbits of Uranus and Saturn.
Capricorn’s mundane Lord is Saturn, and its esoteric Lord is Pluto, both Gods of Winter, death,
desolation, and darkness. The Babylonians referred to everything North of the celestial equator as “the
Heavens,” everything South of it as “the Hells.” These Planets – especially Pluto, with His extreme
Southern declination – are thus truly Lords of the Hells, and it is out of their frigid, desolate realm that
this comet comes. At this point, it is only about 7 degrees West of Neptune, also in Capricorn, and thus
technically in conjunction with the Lord of Oceans, and about 11 degrees West of Uranus, Lord of the
Sky, Who is now still conjunct Neptune in Capricorn and sextile Pluto in Scorpio.
Back in Spring of 1984 e.v., when I was still living in Santa Barbara, California, an outstanding
astrologer who had briefly moved there from Oregon and was on the verge of moving right back to
Oregon again (Santa Barbara has had that effect on a lot of people – like me, f’rinstance! <g>), gave a
lecture on various astrological topics. At one point, some dear soul in the front row with too much
money and time on her hands and not much sense asked the lecturer, “Ooooh, what wonderful things will
Pluto in Scorpio bring us, my de-ah?” The astrologer’s answer: “Well, first, by way of background, you
are of course aware that Pluto goes through Scorpio faster than any other Sign, taking just 11 years to the
30 it needs to go through, say, Taurus? – Good. Well, then, I am reminded of a quote from the Book of
Matthew: ‘Save that time be shortened, not one shall be left alive.’ Essentially, as a result of Pluto’s
transits, ‘Everything alive shall live – and everything dead shall die.’ . . . Any questions?” (You could
have heard a pin drop. In that wonderful, totally plastic New Age community, which lived in a reality
shared by nobody else on the planet, that was about like farting in church – “Trouble is only an attitude!
Your mother died because she had bad thoughts! It’s only your karma! So go be here right now – over
there.” For the remainder of her excellent lecture, the atmosphere in the room was, shall we say, more
than a little subdued.)
Well, on top of all that, in 1988, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune were all together in Capricorn, with
Neptune sextile Pluto then as now. Uranus slowly moved to conjoin Neptune in Capricorn, which He did
last year, while Saturn went on into Aquarius, where He was in mutual reception with Uranus, then
Pisces, where He was in mutual reception with Neptune. And now, this comet, while Pluto is still in
Scorpio, Uranus and Neptune are technically conjunct in Capricorn with both sextile to Pluto and Uranus
What does it mean?
Is a Great Dying yet to come before Pluto enters Sagittarius (where, perhaps, He will light the
funeral pyres for the dead of that Dying), something like the Black Plague of Medieval Europe? Comets
traditionally herald cataclysms and great disasters and the deaths of kings – what disasters and deaths
does this one herald? It has the parabolic orbit of a true comet, but is the size of the cometoid/planetoid
Chiron – is this, like Chiron, a refugee from the trans-Plutonian Kuyper Cloud of cometary bodies, but on
a cometary trajectory rather than something that will take up a regular planetary orbit around Sol? If so,
will it herald the sort of woundings that Chiron does, except on a collective scale? Its appearance in
Capricorn, near Pluto’s southernmost declination, conjunct Neptune and, through Neptune, Uranus,
argues that it might well do so.
Every major body in the Solar System has a place on the Tree of Life, at least it does on my 16-
Sephiroth extended Tree of Life (see Vol. 3, Part 2, Chapter 1 of New Magicks, “Magickal Applications
of the New, 16-Sephiroth English-Language Qaballah, for more on same). Where do comets fall on that
Tree? The seemingly parabolic trajectory of a true comet (which in most cases actually has a highly
elongate elliptical orbit with the Sun at one focus thereof that extends far, far out beyond Pluto, perhaps
into the Öort Comet Cloud, 20,000 A.U. beyond Sol, in some cases) argues that perhaps true comets are
associated with Ain Soph, on the of Three Veils of the Negative or Three Zeroes, “Limitlessness,”
“Without Limit,” which is associated with the parabola* – that a comet is a thing beyond the bounds of
our local universe of the Solar System, transcending all our Solar limits, a guide to the Stars and the true
Starry Wisdom, taking us right out of the Tree of Life and into true interstellar space. In the fiction of H.
P. Lovecraft, it was from interstellar space that the true horrors came to Earth, monsters and demons to
which we are nothing more than ephemeral pests – or slaves, or stock-animals. This goes well with the
ancient association of comets with death, horror, destruction, devastation. Will this comet prove to be an
exception?

*In fact, the orbit of a comet around Sol In fact, the orbit of a comet around Sol is normally a vastly
elongated ellipse, described by the equation “k = ax2 + by2,” where a, b, and k are constants and x
and y are algebraic variables. The ellipse, like the parabola (which has the equation “y = ax2”) and
hyperbola (“b2x2 - a2y2 = a2b2”), is a section of a cone obtained by the intersection of that cone with a
plane. But whereas the ellipse is closed, like a circle, the parabola and hyperbola are not. Some
comets may in fact follow parabolic orbits. Such comets are “one-shots,” never to return to the Solar
system again; they fall into the Solar system from outside it, drop into Sol’s gravity-well, fall toward
Him but do not actually collide with Him, pass Him by, and, having done so, exit the Solar System,
going back in the same general direction they came from (though above the plane of the Solar
system if they entered below it, and vice-versa). Qaballistically, the ellipse, like the circle,
represents Ain, Nothing. The parabola represents Ain Soph, Limitlessness (No Limit), and the
hyperbola, Limitless Light (Creation). Out of Ain – Void, in ninpo theory, and Χαοζ (Chaos) in the
Western and Discordian traditions – arises that first impulse of Will, the first Spark of Intention on
the part of God, from whence comes Creation. That potential of that Spark is brought to a peak in
Ain Soph, then readied for manifestation in Ain Soph Aur. Finally it manifests as Kether, Crown of
the Tree of Life, which gives birth to Chokmah, and so on down to Malkuth, the final, physical
manifestation of that Spark that arose in Ain. On the 16-Sephiroth Tree of Life, Ain is associated
with Tubman and Norton, Ain Soph with Lobachevski and Amphitrite, and Ain Soph with
Persephone/Kali and Hera/Durga, Who are closest to Kether (Norton and Tubman are farthest from
it, beyond the Öort Cloud of comets, at the outermost reaches of the Solar System, the stepping-
stones to the Stars). Where do comets fit into this? At this point, I frankly don’t have a clue, and
leave the requisite pilpul for determining the answer to the interested reader. 

(Personally, I like to think Hale-Bopp is coming here to pick up the spirit of my late friend, Gary
Csillaghegyi, who was an astronomer by training and calling, who loved the Stars his life long – indeed,
his name, translated from Hungarian, means “Star-Mountain.” Comets herald the death of kings – Gary
was a true King, a true Thelemite, soul and spirit, for whom the Valkyries always ride, in the form of the
Aurora Borealis. There should also be a comet for him, as there was for another true American King:
Mark Twain. Halley’s came to pick Mark up again, 76 years after it brought him here as an infant, the
comet he was born under. It would be most fitting if Comet Hale-Bopp 0195 was the great cosmic
Chariot sent to pick up my friend Gary. 

*******

AolMail
Subj: Important Dates
To: SylviaS419

Sylvia –
Have been looking over the proofs you sent me, and have been very gratified at the interview and at
being included with Noel Tyl! Thank you so much!
Something to look for, to share with other astrologers:
I was analyzing the symbolism of the dates of Pluto’s ingress into Sagittarius, Uranus’s ingress into
Aquarius, and Saturn’s upcoming ingress into Aries, in the context of the time from Pluto’s last ingress
into Scorpio and Neptune’s into Capricorn until now and the real-world events and trends that have gone
on since then. What it looks like in that context is this:
 From 1984 until now, especially since 1988 (when Uranus and Saturn entered Capricorn), the evil
seem to have prospered while everyone else has suffered terribly. (Consider the S&L catastrophe, the
aftermath of Operation Desert Storm [all the illnesses among our troops, etc.], Bosnia, you name it!)
During that time, all four Malefics have been involved in a horrendous, ongoing configuration – Pluto in
Scorpio sextile Neptune, Uranus conjoining Neptune in Capricorn, Saturn first conjoining Uranus and
then Neptune, then leaving Capricorn and entering mutual reception with Uranus from Aquarius, then
leaving Aquarius and entering Pisces and mutual reception with Neptune.
. . . Then, last November 10, Pluto left Scorpio and entered Sagittarius. Uranus followed, entering
Aquarius last January 12. And Saturn will go into Aries on the 7th of April, next month. And this
particular configuration of all four of the Outer Planets, including Saturn, apparently isn’t going to occur
again for as long as there are human beings – like us – on Earth (my late astronomer friend, Gary, and I
searched with his astronomy software program as far forward and back in time as the error-bar would
permit with any accuracy, a million years or more in both directions, and we couldn’t find that particular
configuration of those four planets in that range at all).
So: Pluto in Sagittarius – rebirth (Pluto) of ideals and aspirations, not to mention moral fiber
(Sagittarius), is Judgment Day, of some kind. Uranus in Aquarius – freedom (Uranus) from oppression
and evil (Capricorn) – is the sentencing hearing. And April 7, when Saturn enters Aries this year, may
very well be the beginning of the carrying out of the sentence . . .
I’ll be very interested in seeing just what goes down in the world starting the 7th of next month. I
don’t predict a Fundamentalist-style Apocalypse, but there sure should be something, political,
ecological, sociological, economic, you name it.

*******

AolMail
Subj: 4 Horsemen–astrosymbols
To:
Hi –
As you know, I have been very interested in the ongoing configuration comprising all four Outer
Planets, including Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, from 1984 on, especially since 1988. This
configuration is almost at an end; only Saturn and Neptune are still involved in it, and that will end on
the 7th of next month, when Saturn finally goes into Aries (at which time the whole world, I imagine,
will breathe a collective sigh of relief). I have been stuck by how closely the symbolism of the four
Planets involved resembles the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse of the Book of Revelations in the New
Testament: Saturn = Famine, Uranus = War (certainly wars of revolution), Neptune = Plague, and Pluto
= Death. While I am not a Christian, I do believe that Christian mystics such as John of Patmos (who
wrote Revelations) are certainly capable of fore-sensing future events and trends of truly major
importance, since most everyone seems to have flashes of this; and it is possible that so many people
believe in Revelations today because on some level, however dimly or fragmentedly or distortedly, it
foreshadows certain things that really will come to pass. Could John of Patmos and, later, those who
have taken his Book of Revelations to heart, have actually been sensing the terrible series of astrological
transits we’ve been going through from 1988 on? The worst of that series took place between 1988,
when Saturn and Uranus went into Capricorn, and 1995, when Pluto finally left Scorpio and entered
Sagittarius, about 7 years, a number that does have a powerful psychospiritual significance and which
would therefore tend to stick in the collective unconscious’s memory of foreshadowed events.
Given this, what else will be associated with the last of that series, and its end, which comes on April
7, 1996, next month? While I don’t think major events of, say, the next 3 years will be couched in
strictly Christian symbolism, it might be that there will be some major upheavals, catastrophes, and so on
in the world of very rare sorts, e.g., major plagues, violent Tamboura-class volcanic eruptions, etc.
Anyone out there seen work by other astrologers on this idea? If so, I’d like to see it, and would
appreciate info on their work.
Thanks, Yael Dragwyla

*****

Schroedinger’s Sky?

Hi –
 I have often wondered to what extent the asking of a question and the erection and interpretation of a
horary chart to answer it actually determines or helps to determine the outcome of the question.
According to Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, you can measure some parameters of a
phenomenon only by disturbing others – e.g., you can measure the velocity of a particle or its position,
but not both, since measuring one parameter so disturbs the other that no valid result can be obtained for
the latter. And the physicist Erwin Schroedinger showed that, at least on the quantum level (where
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is also most applicable), it is impossible to know the state of a
physical system from outside until the observer makes an actual physical check of the system. According
to Schroedinger, in his famous experiment, in which a chamber is rugged such that it will deliver a lethal
drug or a bullet to a cat also contained in the chamber depending on the outcome of a random selection
process operating on events that take place on a quantum level, that is, on a sub-atomic level, it isn’t
possible to know the outcome until the chamber is physically opened and the cat is checked to see
whether it is still alive. From this, given also Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, he concluded that in
fact the cat is neither dead nor alive until the door of the chamber is opened and the observer checks to
see which is the case. Once the observer checks, the cat is either dead or alive, but not both; until then,
the cat, and the system it is part of, are in a metastable condition that embraces both “dead” and “alive”
as potentials, but not actualities. This is because the experiment depends upon events taking place at a
sub-atomic level in some material or another, e.g., radium, for a yes/no outcome that will determine
whether the cat is killed or not. If some other mechanism were used, one that worked at a macro level,
well above quantum levels, then this wouldn’t be the case, presumably – or would it?
At any rate, the questions which people ask astrologers to answer using horary charts take place first
in the brains of those asking the question. As such, these questions depend upon chemical interactions
taking place in the tissue of the brain which are, at least in part, on quantum levels to become part of
one’s consciousness. Could Schroedinger’s principle apply to them? Could thinking a question, and
getting an astrologer to erect a chart to answer it and then interpret the chart, actually affect the real-
world outcome of the question on a physical level? Could it cause the outcome?
This sounds silly, or else incredibly mystical. But I don’t mean it on either a psychological or a
mystical level. I am concerned with the real, physical mechanics of the process, in terms of the work of
Heisenberg and Schroedinger.
In his wonderful book Gifts of Unknown Things [1976], Lyall Watson discusses the work of physicist
David Bohm, based at Birbeck College, London, which suggests that

all matter, any matter, can be understood as a set of forms, which enjoy a certain
amount of autonomy, but are really based on a process – a sort of universal flux.
Matter is independent enough to be investigated in itself, but only up to a point. You
can discover a particle’s position or its velocity, but not both. Some things can never
be known, because ultimately there are no particles.
So I and the squid, the sea and the reef, and the rocks on which we all rest, are only
relatively stable forms derived from the flux. Anything that can be seen or heard or
handled by scientific instruments is an abstraction unfolded from the invisible,
inaudible, intangible ground of all matter.

Ibid., p. 41

Do the questions asked of astrologers, and the process of erecting charts to answer those questions and
interpreting the charts, at least help to “unfold” a particular outcome out of all possible outcomes,
actually causing, or help to cause, the future to take on a particular shape? If the questions weren’t
answered, or if astrologers didn’t erect charts to answer them and interpret the charts, would the future
take a different course? The work of Bohm, Schroedinger, and Heisenberg suggest that perhaps the
answer to these questions is “Yes.”

*******

Sylvia –
One thing I have forgotten to mention about the period spanning the ingress of Saturn and Uranus
into Capricorn in 1988 to Saturn’s ingress into Aries next month, a span of a little over 7 years, is that the
symbolism of the ongoing astrological transits of the period has an eerie similarity to both the Inferno
section of Dante’s Divine Comedy and R. R. McCammon’s mammoth horror novel Swan Song, which
oddly enough came out for the first time in 1987, just before it all began. Of course, we never know
everything that goes on in the world during any given period of time, so there must have been a great deal
happen between 1988 and the present that we don’t know about of great importance. One wonders: how
much of it was predicted by the symbolism not only of the astrology at the time, but also these two
literary works, wonderful metaphors of that astrology?
I wonder: has anyone else out there read both those books, and, if so, have they noticed a match not
only between the symbolism of those books and that of the astrology of the period 1988-now, but with
that of real-world events and trends, as well? We must remember the events of late August, 1991, during
which the world came within an ace of total thermonuclear war – the vision of the novel Swan Song.
What else has gone on during that period that matched the symbolism of the astrology of the time and
that of these two novels? If anyone has data, I’d love to see it.
– By the way, if I seem to use the term “astrology” the way “ecology” is now commonly used, that’s
an accurate observation. Astrology is just ecology on a cosmic scale. It has no more moral dimension
than does meteorology or ecology, which are earthly analogs of astrology – to predict a thing, after all,
isn’t to justify it, the “karma freaks” and New Agers to the contrary (otherwise, every weather report
would be a moral lesson!). So if we say, “the ecology of such-and-such [a time/place],” why not “the
astrology of such-and-such [a time/place]”?

*******

From analysis of a natus

7th House: ruled by Neptune, co-ruled by Jupiter, contains retrograde Chiron in Aries; Chiron
semi-sextiles Saturn

With the ruler of your Seventh-House cusp, Neptune, in the Third House, you could marry your
childhood sweetheart, even literally “the girl next door.” Or you could marry a distant relative, or
someone you meet through a sister, brother, or cousin. Or you could go into a business partnership of
some kind with any such. You work to establish good lines of communication with your partner, with
whom you tend to be philosophically, emotionally and religiously compatible.
(In what follows, remember that Chiron is also in your 7th House, and the following may be true of a
partner rather than of yourself. That is, rather than being your own personal experience in life, the
following may characterize the life-history of a partner or mate of yours, so that you experience it in
reflected, vicarious fashion, through them.) Chiron in Aries gives wounds in one’s sense of identity,
often deeply buried ones. Aries is concerned with the basic feeling of “I exist,” the desire to emerge into
life with conquest, self-assertion and initiative. The “I am,” the inner sense of beingness and primary
identity belongs to this Sign. The native’s physical appearance is described by the Ascendant, ruled by
Aries, as well. With Chiron in Aries, your sense of identity is wounded, possibly on very deeply buried
levels. After all, if you feel that you have no right to exist, then self-assertion and initiative may be
accompanied by the fear of non-being. You may therefore unconsciously feel that you only exist as a
mirror to someone else; you only feel motivated to champion a cause on behalf of someone else, like a
“knight in shining armor,” but with no will of your own. Grandiose displays of bravado and fighting
spirit compensate for the pain, self-doubt, and fear underneath, which could drive you into an endless
cycle of futile and self-destructive endeavors, repeated over and over. You may tend to take action
prematurely, translating emotional tension immediately into action. With this Chiron placement, you
may wound yourself with a militant self-sufficiency, becoming unable to ask for help and support in your
conviction that you must “go it alone.” Underneath, however, there may be despair and an identification
with non-being, a “death-wish,” and a deep fear of doing anything that truly expresses what you want.
Either you don’t know what it is, or you conceal it for fear that it will be taken away from you, spoiled,
or destroyed. One person with this placement of Chiron said, “Where there ought to be a sense of me,
there is an enormous hole and a pain beyond my ability to endure it.”
With Chiron in Aries, your spontaneous expressions of passion, being, or will may have been
crushed in childhood, either subtly or overtly, with stock phrases such as: “I want never gets,” or
“Children should be seen and not heard.” Oppressive methods of child-rearing such as scheduled
feeding, lack of physical contact and mirroring, and premature, systematic toilet-training often
accompany the early wounds of this placement. If the interference with and rejection of your natural
rhythms of life were serious enough, they could have generated deep confusion and the belief that what
you want – indeed, who you are, your core identity – isn’t acceptable, and that you mustn’t reach out to
satisfy your desires. A paralysis of the will would have come about as a result of such a condition, and,
inevitably, a deep, possibly misplaced rage underlying it. Later on in life, if this were the case, you
might come to feel that you must conceal what you truly want out of life, lest it be destroyed by outside
forces. Hence you would find yourself instead getting precisely what you don’t want. Owing up to what
you do want might initially create panic because it touches your wounded areas.
It is possible that your early environment was hostile and full of covert or overt aggression, which
would have compounded feelings of timidity and lack of self-worth and personal rights. In that case,
survival would have become equated with learning how to please and placate others. One native
expressed this as a capacity to “fill the holes” in other people or situations, and stay anonymous herself;
“being seen” was too dangerous. On the other hand, some natives struggle until their will is so inflated
that they seem to be virtual personifications of will, drive, energy, and enthusiasm. A rugged, pioneering
quality may characterize this Chiron placement. Albert Schweitzer, doctor, pioneer, and missionary, had
this placement. So did Jan Smuts, who led the Boer guerrillas against the British and eventually became
Prime Minister of South Africa. Margaret Thatcher has Chiron in Aries in the 6th House of work and
service, and it isn’t for nothing that her nickname is “the Iron Lady” (NB: iron is the metal associated
with Mars, ruler of Aries). But sometimes this powerful energy is as fragile as a bubble. When it bursts,
the native may deflate into a sorry mess of pain and insecurity, and even wish for death. Relationships in
which issue of dependence/independence arise, as an echo of the 7th House, frequently cause this, as do
situations which create feelings of impotence.
With Chiron in Aries, natives may be prone to suicidal fantasies or feelings. Sometimes these are a
response to anger, frustration, or lack of control of a situation; they may arise out of a desire to regain
some sense of power, or a reaction against not being able to satisfy one’s goals. With this placement, a
willful adolescent who brooks no interference with his or her omnipotence often lives side by side with
an uncomfortable timidity, vulnerability, and poignant awareness of the ephemeral nature of physical
existence. One native described herself as living with acute awareness that when she died there would be
nothing left, no trace of her, that she would depart like a will-o’-the-wisp, leaving nothing of herself
behind.
Sometimes, natives with this placement struggle hard to find something they can do which will bring
them the sense of being they lack. They may set themselves well-nigh impossible tasks, loaded with all
the intensity of a search for confirmation that they exist. Often this struggle becomes futile and has to be
abandoned; but this placement is also frequently found in the horoscopes of people who are in fact
original geniuses, unique one-off individuals, perhaps precisely because the inner being has had such a
struggle. Carl Jung had Chiron in Aries; his conflict with Sigmund Freud (a typical 7th-House echo)
spurred him to develop his own original model of the psyche based on his pioneering exploration of his
own inner world.
Natives may project onto their bodies an inner sense of shame and embarrassment over their own
existence. They may feel mortified by features which others don’t even notice, but which to them seem
to be monstrously ugly or misshapen. They feel uncoordinated or awkward, and situations of physical
exposure, such as sport or sex, turn into potential nightmares.
The theme of physical disability or life-changing, initiatory illness is a frequent one for natives of
this placement.* It seems that they are asked to include in their sense of identity their sickness,
woundedness, or disability, and they may have to struggle to resist identifying with it completely,
becoming “the wounded one.” Just as some natives will identify themselves as healers, others will
identify themselves as victims, without realizing that they are caught up in an archetypal pattern which is
blurring the truth of their feelings and their situation.**

*Pluto rules the Underworld, the realm of the Shaman’s Journey, descent into and return from which
constitute attainment of true shamanic powers. This journey is ruled by Chiron, and symbolized by
his story. Pluto, on the other hand, rules transformations; initiations, ruled by Chiron, are the start
of psychospiritual transformation. Oddly enough, the planetoid Chiron, which lies in an irregular
orbit between Saturn and Uranus, may originally have been part of the Kuyper Disk, a region of the
Solar System spanning 200-20,000 astronomical units [one A.U. = 93,000,000 miles or 300,000 km]
outward from the Sun; astronomers believe that the Planet Pluto and His attendant Moon, Charon,
may also have come from there, along with Triton, one of the Moons of Neptune.

**This sort of thing is frequently seen in dysfunctional families in which one or two members become
“identified patients,” treated by everyone as if they were crazy, sent to doctor after doctor, even
 institutionalized for it, the rest of the family remaining “sane.” But the moment the “sick one”
“recovers,” especially if he or she then departs and leaves the family behind, the family falls apart,
its members then expressing their own craziness. In other words, the “sick one” was the one who
was supposed to act as a sort of psychodynamic lightning-rod for the mental dysfunctions of other
family members. As long as he or she is “crazy,” i.e., acting as a grounding-mechanism for the
weird emotional energy of other family members, everyone else in the family is able to function as if
nothing were wrong. When he or she “gets better,” i.e., ceases to be open to that energy and a
conduit for it, even gets out of Dodge and lights out for the territories, as it were, leaving home for
good, the family then falls apart.

Those with Chiron in Aries have the capacity to enable and empower others, being so aware of their
own profound powerlessness in the face of the immensity of the universe. Living close to the edge, they
often give the impression of being rather wild and untamable. They are often loners, even if married or
in a long-term partnership. They may also personify qualities for others. Several natives have spent
long, intense years searching for a missing and elusive sense of identity, only to discover that when they
gave up the search and accepted their nothingness, an enormous vitality and sense of being followed –
the spark of being finally ignited.
With this Chiron placement there often comes a knack for timing actions intuitively to seize the
hour. Natives may comprise a unique combination of compassion and appropriate action, an ability to be
highly innovative and take initiative, especially where the welfare of others is at stake. Natives gain
strength through conquest of and struggle with difficulties in life, but they must also learn the lesson of
how to be a “noble rival” to those with whom they compete. If they succeed in treading the narrow way
between the twin pits of succumbing to passive aggression and obliquely acting out destructiveness, they
may come to feel the “will of life” flowing through them. They aren’t omnipotent, and don’t have to do
it all. Whether or not they work as healers, they probably have the capacity to act as catalysts in critical
situations and touch the inner being of others. Though their wound lies in their doubt of their own
existence, they probably possess highly magnetic personalities, and others invariably react strongly to
them.
(The following may also be true of partners.) With Chiron in the Seventh House, relationships are of
prime importance, and Chiron will be met here in all his varying aspects. As a result, natives may walk
into the fire and be hurt many times, especially in one-to-one relationships of any kind, whether
romantic, professional, or otherwise. This frequently reflects the native’s relationship with the parent of
the opposite sex at an early age, and can make him or her believe that relationships are dangerous and
should be avoided, or at least approached in full battle-gear. This may lead the native into sorrow,
isolation, and defensiveness until he or she can recognize the source of the problem. The native’s early
environment may have been characterized by destructive relationships, or perhaps a lack of relationships,
a mask of politeness always worn by the other to conceal hostility, vengefulness, and competitiveness.
As a result, the native may have learned more about how to defend him- or herself than to form
relationships. Matters are complicated by the fact that the enemy is essentially unseen: feelings that are
not expressed can wound the native more than feelings which are openly acknowledged, even when they
are unpleasant. The native may have learned how to please everyone, how to be all things to all people,
how to smooth over potential conflicts. He or she may have an overdose of Libran diplomacy and tact,
leaving him or her fearful, brittle, and defensive. With this placement, the native is more than usually
disturbed by interpersonal conflict, perhaps because of this overt or subterranean conflict in the early
environment. Paradoxically, this may be another example of the wound that is healed by the sword that
inflicted it. With this placement, natives are empowered by learning how to deal creatively with
situations fraught with conflict, how to fight cleanly and trust the relationship through the process.
In the 7th House we also first meet the “other”: both “others” who differ from us and our own
internal “other,” the Shadow or unconscious side of our nature. Qualities represented by Planets in the
7th House are often first met “out there,” projected onto others about whom we experience any strong
emotions. With Chiron in the 7th House, many learning experiences come through recognizing ourselves
in the mirror of others as well as by learning to respect others’ differences and separateness. According
to the Upanishads, “Where there is other, there is fear.” Chiron in the 7th House thus increases any
tendency to react to others as if they are extensions of ourselves. Natives’ emotional reactions to others
may have more to do with themselves than anyone else. Natives could experience difficulties in
relationships where others seem to fight them: in reality, those others are fighting not to be the image
projected upon them by the native. As a result, situations of emotional develop; relationships may
eventually become wounding for all concerned and are likely to self-destruct.
Because in any event Chiron involves an uneasy yoking of irreconcilables, when in the 7th House he
increases the natives’ tendency to act out Chiron-related issues vicariously. For example, the native
might unconsciously cast him- or herself into one of the roles associated with Chiron, such as the
wounded one, the healer or teacher, the apprentice, the outcast, the savior, the hero, or the one who
wounds. The native then attracts to him- or herself people who represent the compliments of those roles.
Indeed, with this Chiron placement, the native learns a lot about him- or herself by observing the sort of
people he or she is drawn to and who are drawn to the native, as if they symbolize his or her own
potentials or weaknesses. For example, if the native always attracts “lame ducks,” it might mean that he
or she is not acknowledging a painful failure of his or her own, or that the native needs such people in
order to feel powerful. If the native always seems drawn to dominating people, it could mean that he or
she is not owning up to his or her own power. If he or she frequently ends up feeling victimized in
relationships, the native needs to learn the mechanisms which bring this about. For if the native persists
in seeing the “one who wounds” as outside him- or herself, he or she may blame others and ignore his or
her own part in the matter, thus leaving him- or herself open to it again and again. An attitude of “I’m
just an innocent bystander, why do these things always happen to me?” doesn’t work very well for those
who have Chiron in the 7th House.
With this placement, there is often one major relationships by which the native is seriously wounded,
sometimes critically, one from which he or she cannot escape, or from which he or she takes a long time
to recover. We meet the archetypal world through other people, and the accompanying emotional
voltage and pain may be a feature of our lives. Although on one level our relationships echo earlier
relationships with our parents, with this Chiron placement, healing often seems to come from a more
primordial level, the archetypal one. For example, one native had Chiron in Scorpio in the 7th; her
mother had Sun conjunct Pluto in Gemini, and had several mental breakdowns during which she would
lash out verbally in storms of abuse over trivial things. Later, this native lived in fear of this happening
with others, and was always on tenterhooks when it came to all relationships, and as a matter of fact she
did indeed have several relationships which included similar episodes of sudden critical outbursts.
During the course of her therapy, she allowed her feelings of fear and outrage to be elaborated through
drawing and painting. An archetypal figure, whom she called the Death Woman, finally emerged. She
referred to this figure as “the enemy of life, who could strike you down without warning, when you least
expect it.” Working with this idea, she realized that she had not yet come to terms with the fact of death.
Death was always something “out there,” personified as her mother, and later others, waiting to cut her
down. Working with this figure over time while transiting Pluto was in conjunction with her 7th-House
Chiron, she began a process of slowly reclaiming her own power.
With Chiron in the 7th House, natives may have unwanted periods of separation and isolation forced
upon them. They may continue in harmful relationships until finally, one day, they reach the point at
which they decide that enough is enough and close the shutters of their hearts, cutting themselves off
from people. Even so, such a withdrawal can also become a creative time if they are able to use the
space behind the barrier to do some soul-searching and discover what is really happening to them. With
this placement, natives have a strong need to be separate, and an equally strong resistance to separation.
Periodically natives need space and distance from others to reclaim what they may have had projected
onto them. They may also tend to displace their feelings and emotions. For example, one native was in a
relationship in which he felt constructed, hurt, and unappreciated. Because confronting the situation
directly was difficult for him, he tended to vent his feelings elsewhere, the “kick the cat” syndrome. His
feelings of rage spread into several other relationships, all of which suffered as a result, becoming
increasingly strained and unreal. He longed to escape them all and be totally alone.
With Chiron in the 7th House, natives learn a great deal as a result of encountering the less pleasant
aspects of relationships, for the Martial qualities of the First House are echoed here. Natives could
become involved in covert power struggles, insisting that all relationships be solely on their terms,
surreptitiously trying to enforce their will on the other. They are very competitive, but perhaps blissfully
unaware of it. They could unconsciously provoke others and stir up conflict in order to divert ourselves
from their own inner tensions. Conversely, natives may also be very afraid of these qualities and foul
afoul of them in others. But with Chiron in the 7th House, natives might need to accept the fact that not
everyone is going to like them if they are being true to themselves, and that having enemies doesn’t
necessarily mean they are bad people. Their sense of individuality need not stand or fall on whether
others like it.
 If someone has a relationship with a native of this placement, he or she needs to learn to take a stand
and not get drawn into becoming the partner’s unwilling opponent, dominator, or victim. Although
natives long to grow through being challenged in relationships, they often make it difficult for this to
happen, because their own wounds and blind spots are in this very area, and their partners are likely to
receive venomous reprisals or stony silences if they come near those wounds. On the other hand, if
partners do not stimulate those same wounds in the native, the relationship may grind to a halt. Natives
are very sensitive to being judged or scrutinized, and may experience the feeling of separateness as an
attack or judge their partners as being cold and detached. Natives have a horror of being irrational and
unfair, and may therefore be overly diplomatic and cautious in expressing their feelings. They are often
afraid of their own negative feelings, which can build up and up and finally erupt in scenes of mutual
accusation. When natives can’t honor the need to be alone, separate and unrelated, they will act it out
literally: they or their partners may pack their bags and go, when just a little more emotional honesty
might have sufficed to deal with the situation and kept the relationship intact.
Natives often seem to marry or have close relationships with people who work in the healing field.
They may even themselves personify the “wounded one,” in which case a very destructive situation can
come about. Natives with one or both parents who are doctors, priests, healers, or teachers are especially
vulnerable to this. A woman with Chiron conjunct Neptune and Jupiter on the Midheaven in Libra was
the daughter of a lay minister, and she eventually married a man who was a doctor. She was crisis-prone,
with frequent emotional collapses and serious physical symptoms. Her marriage survived for many
years, in spite of its palpably destructive qualities. The career of her husband, the “healer” half of this
“wounded-healer” relationship, flourished as long as she remained the sick One. During her marriage,
she had several intense affairs, in which she was usually the “healer,” or served as a catalyst for her
lover; and such times her husband was submerged in his own woundedness.
Natives have a great deal to offer in areas of healing where the quality of the relationship is a central
factor. Although relationships are important in any therapeutic situation, those with Chiron in the 7th
House excel when the dynamics of relationship are worked with directly and consciously, as, for
example, in situations of transference as encountered in psychoanalytic therapy. This is yet another
example of the wound healed by its cause. There is a version of Chiron’s story in which he took a
wounded Centaur into his cave. Because the second Centaur’s wound had been poisoned with the blood
of the Hydra, it infected Chiron while he was trying to clean it out, and it was in this way that Chiron
received his incurable wound. People with Chiron in the 7th House who work in the helping professions
may find themselves always confronted with their own pain through their clients. This placement gives
the gift of being in touch with both the personal ad the archetypal levels within relationships. The
experience of being truly seen in this way can be very healing, and those with Chiron in the 7th House
have much to offer those with whom they have relationships, both in terms of insight and also in terms of
the ability to “let them have their space.” Ira Pregoff has Chiron in Aries in the 7th House [like
yourself!]. He was the originator (Chiron in Aries) of a system of journal-keeping for personal
psychological growth. Initially trained as a Jungian analyst, he worked within the traditional dyadic
analytic relationship (Chiron in 7th). Later, he came to question to validity of this method; true to
Chiron in Aries, he had to go his own way. His Chiron in the 7th is expressed in his belief that true
spiritual growth could only occur through relating privately and deeply to one’s inner world (Chiron in
the 7th), without dependence upon another person (Chiron in Aries).
In the Oresteia, the Goddess Athena appears as a figure of reconciliation, justice, and respect for
potentially negative forces. Here, She provides us with an evocative image of Chiron in the 7th House.
Athena was as famous for Her prowess in battle as for Her benevolence in peace and Her civilizing
influence. She never actively started a war, but neither did She ever lose one. In the Oresteia, Orestes
slays his mother to avenge the murder of his father, and thus calls down upon himself the wrath of the
Furies, who pursue him relentlessly into exile and madness. Finally he seeks refuge in the temple of
Athena, Who appoints a court to decide his fate. However, the votes are equally divided, and Athena
Herself casts the deciding vote. She sets Orestes free, purging him of blood-guilt, but thereby calling the
wrath of the furies upon Herself. She gradually wins them over with Her respect for them: “I will bear
with your anger. You are my elders.” She assures them that “No house can thrive without you.” She
guarantees them a place in the new order “where pain and anguish end,” and actually begs them to stay.
Eventually their wrath is appeased by Her compassionate persuasiveness, Her frank admission of the
similarities between Herself and the Furies, and Her willingness to include and respect them. So with
Chiron in the 7th House, we might be continually “confronted by the furies” in our relationships until we
learn to include and respect their world without being dragged back into it. Just as the 7th House
represents another important threshold of separation, the Furies of our own repressed desires may
confront those who have Chiron in the 7th House, and Athena’s treatment of the Furies may provide a
useful metaphor for how the native should deal with them him- or herself.
(FYI: I myself have Chiron in Libra (which Sign rules the 7th House) in my First House (ruled by
Aries). My Chiron is at 0 degrees Libra, and thus in opposition to (180 degrees across the sky from)
yours. This is, essentially, a mirror-reflection of Chiron’s placement in your own chart. By doing your
chart, I learn something about my own! <g>)
Chiron semisextiles Saturn: Chiron’s relationship to Saturn implies the breakdown of boundaries and
the possibility of a different attitude to the question of the limits necessary for individual life. Individuals
with Chiron in aspect to Saturn will react to this process of transformation in a variety of ways, but
initially there is usually an either/or to contend with. Either we have too much Saturn, are rigid, fearful,
and judgmental of ourselves and others; or we do not have enough, we feel depressed, insecure, and
unable to function in the world. Here we meet the more severe and forbidding forms of the archetypal
Father – one face of Saturn – usually first personified by one’s actual father. However, Chiron/Saturn
issues involve more than one level of being: the personal, the ancestral, the collective, and the
archetypal. In real life these themes overlap and interweave, but they can be discussed separately.
On a personal level, Chiron/Saturn themes are usually observed in one’s relationship with one’s
father. The father may have been physically or mentally ill, weak or lacking in some way, in need of
healing or redeeming, or extremely abusive and domineering. If we grow up with a wound in the
Saturnian area of limitations, boundaries, and structure, we will feel deeply insecure. Perhaps our normal
adolescent rebelliousness was not checked in a healthy way, or else we suffered from an authoritarian,
domineering upbringing. Either way, we could become old before our time, very serious from a young
age, having had to be our own father for one reason or another. The father can also be the one who
wounds, persecutes, or dominates, leaving a legacy of fear and hatred in the child. As is often true of
Chiron in Capricorn, people who have Chiron in aspect to Saturn often grow up rejecting their fathers;
they may flee far from his neediness, his violence, or the overpowering restrictions he may have imposed,
only to discover that he follows them everywhere, as it were: in relationships with authority-figures and
in personal relationships. In struggling to be different, not to conform, natives may be living out their
fathers’ unlived potentials, unconsciously trying to redeem him by fulfilling his unrealized ambitions or
unconscious desires. With Chiron/Saturn contacts, if a woman’s primary emotional bond was with her
father, she may later fixate on men who appear to be quite different from her father but who, on closer
inspection, manifest her father’s unconscious self. She may marry a man exactly like her grandfather or
even her great-grandfather. Alternatively, she may rebel and become an “Amazon,” seeking personal
achievement and emotional independence. She may reject men, becoming involved only in relationships
with them that “come to nothing,” relationships modeled on her relationship with her father.
The father-issues suggested by Chiron/Saturn are usually wider in scope than the personal father,
often involving one’s psychological inheritance over several generations, one’s collective patterning, and
eventually the archetypal principle of the Father. If one has Saturn in aspect to Chiron, it may be helpful
to examine one’s family tree to discover the life-patterns and psychological characteristics of one’s
father’s side of the family. It may be that the native is blindly following an inherited ancestral path
which could lead to disaster and failure; he or she could be creating life-structures based on choices
made generations ago, thus unwittingly following in his or her father’s footsteps. Some natives feel that
their purpose in life is to redeem a negative inheritance from their father’s side of the family; there could
be burdens, responsibilities, or family skeletons in the cupboard which just do not go away. Some
natives will struggle with these all their lives. Others will have the opportunity (usually during a transit
involving Saturn or Chiron) to let go and recognize that the past cannot be undone. On the other hand,
we can also inherit positive things: feelings connected with the aspirations and values of our forefathers
may bring us considerable comfort and feelings of inner support. The theme of ancestral continuity and a
creative relationship with our extended past is important with Chiron/Saturn contacts, because it deepens
our feeling of participation in history and belongingness in time (Saturn rules time).
The archetypal presence behind Chiron/Saturn aspects is often initially a judgmental and
condemning male figure, like the negative side of the Old Testament God. This God watches over us,
lest we fall into error and sin, and if we so fall He punishes us, sometimes horribly, way beyond what is
actually due or appropriate. Concepts such as Original Sin, the Fall of humanity and our exile from
paradise because of Eve, etc., may bite deep into the sense of self-worth of those with Chiron/Saturn
contacts in their natal charts. If Creation itself is deemed to be blameworthy, we will need to be
redeemed and saved from our inherent “wickedness,” and will constantly engage in self-justification. We
must then cast blame in order to appease our sense of outrage and retrieve the fragments of our self-
worth; others must be punished so that we can remain righteous (or feeling as if we were, at any rate).
This scenario of judgment and blame, if not acted out externally, may go on internally in the minds of
natives, who may damn themselves and/or their creations as a result. Kronos, the ancient Greek God
associated with Saturn, swallowed His children out of fear that one of them would eventually overthrow
Him.* When Chiron is in aspect to Saturn, this theme is frequently encountered. The natives’ control-
mechanisms work overtime, resulting in agonizing periods of creative sterility, depression, and fear.
However, unlike Uranus/Saturn aspects or transits, when Chiron is in aspect to Saturn the possibility
exists of encompassing rather than trying to get rid of this: compassion and grounded creativity may
follow, like the Golden Age of the early days of Saturn’s rule.

*Kronos was, incidentally, the father of Chiron by the Nymph Philyra, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys.
Chiron’s mother rejected him when he was born, because of his chimerical appearance.
Traditionally, the natal and horary Tenth House, ruled by Saturn, is associated with one’s mother.

Chiron/Saturn contacts often indicate a strong superego which criticizes and belittles, heaping scorn
on everything we try to do. This voice is often unconscious and projected onto partners, parents, society,
or any other suitable hook; we then do constant battle with this external authority. Its effect can be
paralyzing, leaving us continuously depressed and unable to enjoy life or foresee anything better.
Prompted by our wounded sense of inner worth, we may become the “nice guy,” always taking our cue
from others. We could become preoccupied with appearance, prestige, success, and status, but take our
sense of structure and identity from our profession, from organizations, societies, or institutions. The
anger accompanying our struggle to shed this burden of guilt and unworthiness may wreak havoc in our
internal and external life. Order, discipline, law, responsibility, place in society, the ability to achieve
and create through perseverance, the overcoming of obstacles are some of the areas where the native may
have great difficulties. With Chiron/Saturn aspects, our relationship with the entire physical realm could
be difficult. We could experience sudden disasters, dangerous illness, failure, and crippling or impotence
in the areas of life represented by the Houses and Signs involved. However, it is important to bear in
mind what lies underneath. Trying repeatedly to get things working again is frequently doomed to fail if
the underlying issues of self-judgment and lack of self-worth are not gradually brought to light with
compassion.
Natives of Saturn/Chiron aspects have a combination of extreme vulnerability and brittle
defensiveness, finding it difficult to allow feelings of emotional need. They may never approach others
without full emotional armor-plating, even though they feel painfully vulnerable and long for others to
notice this when they are alone. They can appear to be aggressively self-sufficient, capable, and
independent, and still experience period collapse of their ambition, ability to work, or inner cohesion.
They may have difficulty imagining that things could be any different. There are usually highly charged
issues connected with their fathers involved. For example, one native with Chiron conjunct Saturn in
Pisces repeatedly failed exams and spoiled career-aptitude tests, though he had high intelligence. His
father was uneducated, drank a lot (alcoholism is ruled by Pisces), was sullen and uncommunicative, and
had left home when his son was still young. The native was trying to be like his absent father, over
whom he still unconsciously grieved (Chiron in Pisces), and thus was resisting any further education.
The “circle the wagons” attitude is typical of Saturn/Chiron natives. In South Africa, this is known
as the “laager mentality.” In South Africa, Boer pioneers would pull their wagons into a circle each night
to protect themselves from wild animals and hostile natives. Before the end of Apartheid in South
Africa, hard-line Afrikaners, descended from these pioneers, believing their God-given duty and
responsibility to the world was to preserve the white race intact from contamination by other races,
established the institution of Apartheid to fulfill this determination. Chiron/Saturn aspects are prominent
in South Africa, and this “laager mentality” is typical of such a chart.
Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 to 1966, has Chiron in Sagittarius
conjunct Saturn in Capricorn, both in the 12th House. Saturn is conjunct his Ascendant, and Chiron
opposes his Neptune in Cancer in the 6th House. Verwoerd enshrined and institutionalized Apartheid as
an ideal, though it was already operating in practice in his country.
Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, has Chiron in Aries in the 4th House sesquiquadrate
Saturn in Leo in the 9th House. As Southern Rhodesia’s last Prime Minister, he held out against world
opinion through a bloody guerrilla war for fifteen years before independent Zimbabwe was created out of
the ashes of his country. Smith had polio in his youth, and the left side of his face was paralyzed as a
result – he certainly resisted “changing the face” of his country (4th House), as well. But characteristic
of Chiron/Saturn’s positive side, he didn’t flee after his defeat. Rather, he remained to serve in the
government of Zimbabwe for a further seven years.
Margaret Mead was born a few days before Verwoerd, and her Chiron configuration shows how
differently the same themes can be expressed in two different lives. She also had Chiron conjunct Saturn
in Capricorn in the 12th House, with Saturn conjunct her Capricornian Ascendant. She was an
anthropologist who became almost a cult figure as a result of her studies of primitive tribes (a suitably
Chironian subject, since Chiron rules shamanic cultures). Although her work has since been partially
discredited, doubts having been cast upon the objectivity of her research (Chiron in the 12th House), her
descriptions of sexual freedom combined with moral responsibility certainly tantalized public
imagination (Chiron in the 12th). Regardless of the “objectivity” or lack of it of her research, she
definitely gave form (Saturn) to the collective longing (12th House) for redemption of the “primitive”
within us all, that part of us that is not alienated from our community, the natural world, and Mother
Earth. She portrayed a “Golden Age” of healthy and spontaneous expression of the instinctual self, a
healthy expression of Chiron/Saturn influence.
Natives with Saturn/Chiron aspects usually must encounter their own inner fears, rigidity, and
contempt for others as well as their inherited or collective attitudes of repressiveness and ultra-
conservatism; they might feel deeply ashamed when they first discover such qualities within themselves.
They may try to palm these off on others, deny them, or feel righteously indignant. They may blame the
government, the flu, or their horoscope as they struggle against the oppressor within, their own
superegos. However, if they can honestly acknowledge this as a real part of themselves, without making
it worse by demanding change and transformation, they may find that it bestows a measure of inner
freedom and a feeling of being much more at home in the world of form. In the words of Kahlil Gibran:
“And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.”
Although the native might be saddled with a “tyrant” sub-personality, it is still possible to recognize that
this is not all of what he or she is, to carry it with humility and thus not oppress others with it. Blake’s
painting of Nebuchadnezzar could perhaps help illuminate this aspect of oneself with some humor and
compassion.
Sometimes a native of such aspects has a relaxed and natural sense of authority. This isn’t authority
that comes about by virtue of wealth, status in society, profession, or achievement. Rather, it is the hard-
won dignity of someone who has faced the depths of his or her own soul, its darkness and its despair as
well as its hope and joy, who has emerged with a sense of wisdom and acceptance of life, and who is
willing to carry considerable responsibility. Chiron/Saturn aspects may even eventually bring the gift of
a deep acceptance of life, such that the Wise Old Man or Wise Old Woman may in time emerge from a
once-agonizing wound. This archetype, like Pallas Athena, respects tradition and limits but doesn’t
identify with them; its wisdom is gained as a result of full participation in life and the self-discipline
necessary to it rather than withdrawal from it. He or she is truly, in the words of Jesus, both in the world,
yet not of it.
(NB: I’ve got Saturn in the 10th House – the 10th is generically ruled by Saturn – in a close square
to my Chiron. Again, we learn from one another! <g>)

8th House: ruled by Mars, co-ruled by Pluto, contains Saturn

With the ruler of your 8th House in the 5th House, you probably have a glamorous and romantic
sexuality. Your children may play an important part in the way in which you change and transform over
the years, more so than your parents, mate, or career. It is as if you realize what life is all about only
after they are born, and then your entire outlook changes.

9th House: ruled by Venus

With the ruler of your Ninth House in your 3rd House, you will very likely become a writer and/or
teacher. You love to travel, and are always ready to pack and go at the drop of a hat. You have a strong
need to pass your beliefs on to or share them with others, especially those in far-away places, whatever
they may be, and may therefore become something of a missionary, of whatever philosophy or religion.

Midheaven: ruled by Mercury

 With the ruler of your Tenth House cusp in the 3rd House, your career should include some form of
communications activity, e.g., writing or teaching, because you have a very strong need to express
yourself. This is the placement of someone who needs to express himself through a definite statement
about his attitudes and viewpoints on life. Your profession may be dependent upon or involved with a
relative; you may work for a relative, or with one, as a business partner, or have one working for you, as
an employee. Your career may require a lot of commuting and travel.

11th cusp: ruled by Luna (Virgo, 12th), contains Vesta (Leo)

With the ruler of your 11th-House cusp in your 12th House, your aims and goals in life may be
concerned with the medical profession, research, or covert, behind-the-scenes activities (ninja! <VBG>).
Be very careful to choose your friends carefully, for otherwise they may prove to be deceitful, or envious
of you. Though you are strongly socially oriented, you need time to yourself every day to recharge your
batteries and get in touch with yourself.
Luna, ruler of your 11th cusp, in Virgo indicates an exacting, hard-working, pragmatic nature. You
place a high value on neatness and cleanliness in personal hygiene and housekeeping. You are particular
about food and diet, and concerned about health. You are probably a very good cook, but the nutritional
value of your food is at least as important to you as the way it looks and tastes..
You tend to be shy and retiring, and like to work quietly behind the scenes. You pay attention to
detail. You have a desire to serve. You tend not to ask personal questions of others unless it is
absolutely necessary. You are curious, but only in relation to your work or practical matters.
You may tend to be excessively preoccupied with inconsequential detail, or a carping and critical
attitude. Perfectionism about detail may often blind you to more important issues.
Luna in the 12th House indicates that your moods and emotional responses are strongly affected by
the state of your unconscious mind and your past experiences. You tend to be psychic and intuitive to a
great degree. Extreme emotional sensitivity combined with reluctance to communicate your feelings to
others may make you shy and easily hurt, emotionally speaking. There may be neurotic tendencies and
great loneliness, and there may even have been institutionalization or confinement at some point in your
life due to a breakdown or something similar. Hypnosis may be dangerous for you. You may have secret
love-affairs at various times in your life.
Luna conjunct the Moon’s South Node indicates that the circumstances of your life make it hard for
you to synchronize your activities with current trends. You tend to be plagued with bad timing because
circumstances outside your control often keep you from being in the right place at the right time, doing
the right thing in the right way. As a result, you are constantly forced to draw upon your own personal
resources. You can’t depend upon the cooperation of others. You tend to be emotionally alone against
the world, a situation which can lead to depression and a negative emotional outlook which could further
alienate others.
You are capable of disciplined, well-planned, concentrated effort. Your ingenuity in making the
most of meager resources can bring you solid accomplishments and a strength of character which meets
adversity with courage and determination.
Vesta in Leo indicates that you work best when allowed a free rein for applying creativity to your
efforts at anything. You take great pride in your work, which focuses your esthetic senses on your goals.
So brilliant is the quality of your work and your spirit that others around you may become alienated from
you as a result of sheer burn-out from that brilliance. You are highly romantic, and tend to be turned on
sexually by the romantic and admirable. If your basic sexual energies become channeled into creative
work, however, you may become sexually inhibited.
Vesta in the 11th House signifies a dedication to group interactions. There is a need to be part of a
larger whole, which can be fulfilled by working with collectives (e.g., land, business political
movements, lodges, and other groups; ecological studies, etc.). You may experience limitations in
friendships or groups, as a result of which you may come to learn about the importance of others in your
life. You are likely to have a need to define and focus your hopes and aspirations in order to dedicate
yourself to an ideal.

12th cusp: ruled by the Sun, contains Luna, Cauda Draconis (“Dragon’s Tail,” Moon’s South
Node)
 With the ruler of your 12th-House cusp in your 3rd House, your need to communicate your
innermost thoughts to the world is underscored, and makes it even more likely that you will become a
writer. You use your strong sensitivity and profound insight into others to enable others to communicate
with you. You are likely to be a behind-the-scenes operator, speaking and perhaps communicating
through others. You may have secret involvements which will almost certainly ultimately become
public.
Moon’s South Node in Virgo signifies tendencies to be over-critical and over-analytical, sensitive,
and/or sarcastic. There may also be tendencies to hypochondria.
Moon’s South Node in the 12th House signifies a tendency to bottle your feelings up, with
detrimental results for your physical and psychological well-being. There may be some difficulty dealing
with the reality principle. There may be some need for psychotherapy at some point.

Part of Fortune

Part of Fortune in the Third House:

You are interested in all aspects of travel, including short trips, long trips, even trips to the Moon and
beyond. You have a healthy interest in literature and the dissemination if knowledge. When it comes to
wisdom and knowledge, you can’t help but spread it around to anyone and everyone who needs or asks
for it. You have no time for game-playing, intrigue, or instigation, because you want the “real facts”
about everything. Once you have them, you then immediately rush out to dispel falsehood – as you see
it! You may work in public relations with or for a relative. You may idolize a close relative or surrogate
relative, and make that idealization the foundation of your life.
You have a drive to teach large groups of people via writing, speech, art, the media, or Internet. You
can do well in the sciences, advertising, travel, and being a friend-in-need to neighbors because you know
how to leave the latter alone when you aren’t needed by them. Emotional release comes to you via long
journeys and abstract reasoning. You are very versatile, and can handle many projects at the same time.
Your family and neighbors may demand help from you, but give none in return. They may even ride
and badger you, claiming you are incompetent and unable to take proper charge of your own affairs.
There is some danger that you will become too versatile, and spread yourself too thin. You may develop
an obsession with communication as a one-way channel, which could easily become thwarted, or skewed
into malicious gossip.
Money comes to you through use of your mind, mental pursuits, writing, travel, or arranging trips for
others. You may be able to borrow money from neighbors, receive cash as a present or legacy.
Satisfaction comes to you via the exercise of your mind and the expression of ideas. Relaxation is more
satisfying with relatives or with close family friends. You are happiest in occupations involving
communication and/or travel.
Be careful to avoid intellectual vanity. You need outlets by which you can share the treasures of
your mind with others. This can’t be done selfishly or egotistically, as a means of binding others to
yourself.Eventually you must realize that the riches of experience can transcend the treasures of the
intellect, especially because the latter tends to become escapist. You must test out all ideas and
assumptions in the laboratory of day-to-day living.

Part of Fortune in Sagittarius:

You persevere at work, have great integrity, are well-organized personally and professionally, and
are able, slowly but surely, to build security for yourself in the areas of neighbors, communication,
writing, teaching, travel, appliances, and conveyances (such as automobiles). You could do well in
public office, as a member of the board of trustees of an institution of higher education, as a publisher, or
as a clergyman or priest. You are certain to win the respect of your superiors because you instinctively
guard your superior’s reputation and security. Fortune may come to you in the areas of real estate, rental
property, schools, and theatrical ventures. Guard against a fear of loss, which could prevent you from
enjoying the gains you make in life.

Numerological accents:
 The following numbers were accented by a higher-than-average frequency in your chart, as degrees
or portions of degrees of positions of House cusps, Planets, etc. You may find these associations to be
significant and important in your life:

11: A prime number. This is the number of Magick. It is the number of the Path connecting Kether
(Sephirah 1, Crown) and Chokmah (Sephirah 2, Wisdom) on the Tree of Life. It is associated with the
Hebrew letter Aleph; the Alchemical Element Air; the Planet Uranus; and Tarot Trump 0, The Fool. It
is the atomic number of sodium, the metallic half of a molecule of table-salt (NaCl, sodium chloride). It
is the sum of the letters in the Hebrew words for “Where?”, “island,” “feast,” “gold” or “golden,” and
“arrogant.”
The Mystic Number of the Sephiroth of the 11th Path is 1 + 2 + . . . + 11 = 66. The value of ℵ
(Aleph) is 1. It means “ox,” and it is spelled Aleph-Lamed-Peh, whose values are respectively 1, 30, and
80, adding to 1 + 30 + 80 = 111 = 3 x 37.
The chemical element sodium, whose atomic number is 11, is very light and extremely active. It is
used in nuclear reactors as a thermodynamic (heat) transformer.
The colors yellow and sky-blue are associated with Path 11.

17: A prime number. It is the number of the Path connecting Binah (S. 3) and Tiphareth (S. 6). It
corresponds to the Hebrew letter Zain, and thus to the number 7, for which that letter stands, and the
astrological Sign Gemini (May 19-June 20). According to Crowley, 17 represents the “masculine unity,”
the trinity of Aleph (1), Vav (6), and Yod (10) (thus: 1 + 6 + 10 = 17). It is the atomic number of
chlorine, the halidic half of a molecule of table-salt. It is the sum of the value of the letters in the
Hebrew words Giedi, or “young goat,” which is also the name of the Sign Capricorn as well as of a bright
Fixed Star in the Constellation of the same name; Tov, “good” (as in Mazel Tov = “good Star,” “lucky
Star,” a colloquial phrase meaning “good luck”); and the 1st and the 49th Names in the Shem ha-
Mephorash, respectively Vehu (1st decanate or 10-degree section of the Sign Leo) and Vaho (1st
decanate of the Sign Aries). It is considered to be an unlucky number by Erisians, unless you honor the
Goddess Eris, in which case She brings you good fortune by creating bad fortune for bad people. 
(Honor Eris by promoting freedom, which you do anyway, no problem.) (For more on Eris, read the
Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, found in any good, large bookstore, even
used bookstores, everywhere.)
The value of Zain is 7. It is spelled Zain-Yod-Nun, whose values are 7, 10, and 700 (final “N”),
adding to 717. It means “sword.” 717 adds to 15, which adds to 6, the number of the Tarot Trump (The
Lovers) associated with this Path. 717 = 3 x 239. The Mystic Number of the Sephiroth of this Path is 1 +
2 + . . . + 17 = 153; 153 adds to 9, and is equal to 9 x 17.
Chlorine, the chemical element with this atomic number, is an extremely active gas, one that is
highly toxic. It is useful as a bleaching agent.

27: 3 raised to the 3rd power = 3 x 3 x 3 = 9 x 3. It is thus lucky for ninjas, and is a number of great
power, especially with respect to Taoism and LaVeyan forms of Magick, since it is associated with the
3x3 Magick Square of Saturn. It corresponds to the Path between Netzach (S. 7) and Hod (S. 8), and is
associated with the Hebrew letter Peh (value 80) and the Planet Mars. It is the atomic number of the
metal cobalt, which is used to make a dark blue dye, and has a particularly long-lived and viciously
radioactive isotope (there is a type of nuclear device which employs a cobalt-coating around a hydrogen
bomb, a very deadly machine). It is the sum of the letters in the Hebrew word Zak, meaning pure, clear,
transparent, and Yeyaz, the 40th Name in the Shem ha-Mephorash (corresponding to 4 Aquarius).
The Hebrew letter Peh is spelled Peh-Heh, the value of which is 80 (Peh) + 5 (Heh) = 85 = 5 x 13.
The Mystic Number of the Sephiroth of Path 27 = 1 + 2 + . . . + 27 = 378, which adds to 3 + 7 + 8 = 18
= 2 x 9. 378 = 2 x 7 x 27; 2, associated with Neptune and Chokmah, is a number of ninjas, and 7 is a
holy number. Peh means “mouth.” Since so much of Magick is done by means of vocal Calls and
commands, speech is inherently a Magickal operation, and the mouth is thus a Magickal organ of great
power. This Path thus is one of enormous power. It represents the opening of the Third Eye, or
maturation of the pineal gland, and consequent development of psychic and Magickal powers.

*******

[From exchange with friends via Internet:]

Dale & Teri –
I called S–, the nutritional consultant who works at K–– in Santa Barbara, and asked him his opinion
of my symptoms, e.g., fluid constantly filling up the lungs, etc. He suggested I try “an old Adelle Davis”
trick, to wit, taking about an eighth of a teaspoon of salt and an equal amount of baking-soda in water
and observe the results. If it helped at all, then at least some of the problem was due to a sodium
deficiency.
I tried it, and guess what? There was a sudden, sharp drop in the fluid in my lungs, sinuses began to
clear up, I suddenly felt far more alert and “together,” and there were other sudden improvements in
everything from my physical well-being to my “psychology.” Steve had said that a) most of my
symptomology fit perfectly with the profile of adrenal exhaustion; b) the adrenals require sodium to
manufacture adrenaline and cortisone; so c) sodium in the form of salt should have helped, with
noticeable effects almost immediately. Which was the case.
So I’ve been adding small amounts of sea-salt to everything possible I ingest (well, not ice-cream!
<g>) ever since, over the 10 days or so. The holes in my aura are clearing up, the fluid in my lungs has
been steadily decreasing, I’m far stronger and more alert, my muscle-tone is far better, my sense of
balance is improving, my eyesight is getting better, I sleep far more soundly and fall asleep with far less
trouble, and in general everything is better. The only problem is that my water-balance is of course
shifting as the level of sodium in my body increases, so that from time to time I get that pooling of fluid
at ankles, my hip-joints, the back of my neck and shoulders, and so on that has given me so much pain in
the past. But now these episodes are very temporary, and as long as I take the Natura-Bio homeopathic
tablets for menopausal problems, they go away quickly and don’t really cause any big problems.
I don’t take much salt at a time, and I always use sea-salt, so that I get the entire spectrum of mineral
salts the body needs in a balanced and buffered material, not just NaCl. So far, no problems.
As much coffee as I drink, coupled with the fact that for years I ate as little salt as possible, never
salting my food, apparently I worked up one **** of a sodium deficiency! While not everyone who did
this would develop this problem, some of us excrete more salt than others, and since physiology and
metabolism are always idiosyncratic, no two individuals ever having exactly the same needs,
requirements, genes, or personal history, certainly this sort of thing isn’t impossible. It may even be that
my low-level glaucoma is linked to sodium deficiency – if so, that’ll show up during my next
ophthalmological exam as lowered pressure in the eyes. My thyroid function may also pick up – sodium
is a necessary nutrient for the entire neuroendocrine system, especially the high-demand parts of it like
the brain, thyroid, and adrenals. So there may be other improvements. Since I have Saturn (salt)
conjunct Luna (water) in Cancer (water) in the 10th, this may have something to do with a tendency to
excrete salt; with my Sun at 0° Aries (ruled by Mars, ruler of the adrenals), Virgo rising, Mercury (ruler
of Virgo and of the central nervous system) in Aries in the 8th in mutual reception with Mars in Aquarius
in the 6th, there would be a tendency to have a higher-than-average demand on adrenals, nervous-
system, and thyroid, which also means a higher-than-average need for salt. Add to this the fact that I
drink a lot of coffee, that I got into the habit of avoiding salt like the plague a couple of decades ago, and
that shit never stopped happening as long as I lived at HydroTech, some 7-8 years or so, and it becomes
clear that it would be almost certain that I’d develop a sodium deficiency! And according both to Steve
and the Merck Manual, the collection of symptoms I was throwing, from insomnia to fluid in the lungs,
certainly fits the profile for adrenal exhaustion, which will develop if the adrenals don’t have the sodium
they need to make adrenaline. So . . .
While I don’t think this solves all problems, it certainly seems to have helped, and helped fast.
Since Mars rules combat arts, this seems to be something I thought might interest you. I’ll keep you
posted.
Take care, love,

*******

[From exchange with a friend via Internet:]

Her:

In reference to sodium deficiency: although it does occur, it is very rare and generally occurs only when
the body is induced to excessive perspiration, as occurs in very hot climates or during extended periods
of strenuous exercise. The body receives sufficient sodium even without added NaCl if the diet includes
kelp, olives, celery, carrots, dried fruits, cheeses, watercress, cured meats, MSG, or parsley, which are all
very rich in sodium. Fresh meats, eggs, and dairy products also contain significant amounts of sodium.
The symptoms generally associated with sodium deficiency are dehydration, muscle cramps, fever, heat
stroke, and loss of appetite. This just doesn’t sound like what you described. Because of the dangers
associated with sodium, it would be prudent to be tested before you begin any sodium therapy.

Me:

It’s rare, but not unknown, for this to occur in other situations. First, I drink a lot of coffee, have for
years. And for 20 years I’ve gone out of my way to eliminate salt from my diet, including avoiding
salted potato chips, anything like that. Between the two, I’ve apparently built up a deficit. In addition,
the symptoms I’ve had are clearing up slowly but surely again, now that I’m adding a little salt to my
food every day. Finally, I have no medical coverage, and no money to pay for medical work. There is
no question of being tested. If I can get the Washington Basic Health Plan insurance, which charges
according to income, and/or get more from my adoptive mother’s estate, I’ll be able to go to a doctor. In
the meantime, I make too much money to get back on SSI or qualify for Medicare any other way, and
too little to afford a doctor. I have to do all this myself – otherwise, I’m out in the cold. On the other
hand, I hate the taste of salt, so I can’t eat a lot of it at a time, or even very much of it, in any form. So
there’s not much danger of overdoing it.

Her:

Another salt that you might look at is potassium chloride (in sea salt), which does not elevate the blood
pressure as sodium does. Potassium deficiency occurs more commonly than sodium, and particularly
in people who eat limited amounts of raw fruits and vegetables, who are taking diuretics or cortisone,
who have diabetes, epilepsy, or some heart or kidney problems, or also if too much salt, sugar, caffeine,
or alcohol is consumed, or if the person is under stress. As a homeopathic remedy, potassium chloride is
indicated for “congested conditions, respiratory disorders, coughs and colds.” Symptoms of potassium
deficiency include fatigue, muscle weakness, high blood pressure, poor circulation, cramps, irritability,
and digestive problems. Potassium is plentiful in oranges, bananas, whole grains, and dried fruits. It is
suggested that potassium chloride be taken in alternation with iron phosphate.

Me:

The problem is that I have far more than enough potassium in my diet, but not enough sodium.
Potassium won’t do some of the critically necessary jobs sodium does for the body, including certain
aspects of endocrine functioning.

Her:

Symptoms of insufficient iron are paleness, listlessness, shortness of breath, depression, irritability,
brittle or lusterless hair and nails, and swollen ankles. Good sources of iron are meats, eggs, dark green
leafy veggies, cooked pulses, dried fruits, wheat germ, wholegrain unrefined cereals, and molasses.
Vitamin C helps with the adsorption of iron and should be taken in conjunction with iron, as an excess of
iron can deplete the body’s supply of vitamin C.

Me:

I get plenty of iron, lots of calcium and magnesium, plenty of iodine, all from various sources.

Her:

They function as a trio: potassium, iron, and C.

Me:

I know.
*******

Sylvia –
I think I’ve discovered a major reason for a lot of the physical problems I’ve been having, as well as
some “mental” ones associated with the physical ones. Yesterday I called a nutritional consultant I
know, an old
friend, and asked him why all this fluid in the lungs. He asked me if I’d tried the “salt test,” an old
Adelle Davis trick, of taking about an eighth of a teaspoon of salt and see what happens. I said no, I
hadn’t – I should have thought of it myself, though, because it’s something which high-school chemistry
and biology should have suggested. So I tried it – and the fluid in my lungs began to clear out! Last
night, before bed, I tried it again – and I had one of the soundest sleeps I’ve had in two years, with no
fluid at all in the lungs.
For over a decade, I’ve never used salt on my food, and all I’ve had has been what has come to me in
canned or otherwise preserved food, or in food prepared by others (and I’ve always asked, “Hold the salt,
please”). Now, while too much salt is well-known to do all sorts of horrible things, such as boosting
blood-pressure and otherwise tearing up the body, what most people don’t realize – and I didn’t think of,
and should have – is that like anything else the body needs to function, too little of it can also do
enormous damage and, finally kill. We live between extremes, just as a man walking is really falling
from one foot to the other and never quite losing his balance. Go too far in any one direction, and . . .
Salt, sodium chloride (NaCl), is associated with Saturn, the “Great Malefic.” Traditionally, Saturn is
head of the Left-Hand Pillar of Severity on the Tree of Life as Sephirah 3, Binah (Understanding). This
Pillar also includes Mars, as Sephirah 5, Geburah (Power, Strength) and Mercury, as Sephirah 8, Hod
(Brilliance). Mars and Mercury, like Saturn, are also considered to be Malefics. Yet, just as Saturn rules
salt and the metal sodium, which is absolutely necessary for certain functions of the body, especially for
preserving the integrity of cellular membranes and insuring that their selective permeability doesn’t
become too selective (too much salt/sodium), or lose its selectivity (too little salt), Mars rules iron, an
integral part of the hemoglobin molecule in red blood cells which is involved in transport of oxygen
around the body, and Mercury rules oxygen. Iron and oxygen are poisons in high concentration, but
without them, we can’t survive. So even though these Planets are astrological Malefics, they are also
integral parts of life. They teach us that there can be too much of a good thing – but there can also be
too little. Too much oxygen can blind us, even burn us up alive from the inside out – too little, we
strangle. Too much iron will poison us – too little, and we become so anemic we die. Too much salt
can drive our blood-pressure into orbit, then poison us to death – too little, and we drown in our own
cytoplasm, leaking out from our broken cells, whose membranes have become fatally weakened due to
lack of sodium.
Functionally speaking, the functions of Sephiroth which may be considered to be a group because of
certain similarities among them, e.g., all the Sephiroth on one of the (vertical) Pillars of the Tree of Life,
or those in a Triad, etc., and their associated Planets are all synergistically interrelated. I.e., they all
interact, on a functional level, in the same way that every cell, tissue, organ, and organ-system in a living
organism and every organism and everything else in an ecosystem interacts with all the others in the
organism or ecosystem: they are part of one whole living system, body, soul, and spirit, all of the parts
of which are therefore dynamically, organically interrelated. Otherwise, the system would fall apart and
cease to live, QED. At any rate, in this way all the Sephiroth on the Left-Hand Pillar of Severity of the
Tree of Life – 3, Binah; 5, Geburah; and 8, Hod – and their associated Planets, respectively
Saturn/Uranus, Mars, and Mercury, are all functionally interrelated, as are the parts of the body they
govern. Which is where my problem with salt comes in.
The adrenal glands require sodium for their proper functioning, not too much, not too little. Too
much, blood-pressure sky-rockets as the body retains more and more water in the wrong places; too
little, and the adrenal glands are not able to manufacture adrenaline and cortisone, the result of which is
adrenaline exhaustion, inability to heal properly, potentially deadly allergy reactions, and a depressed
immune function, leading to frequent and increasingly dangerous infections and other illnesses and, if it
goes on long enough, death. Likewise, sodium – the right amount – is needed if the ovaries, testes,
pituitary, and other endocrine glands involved in reproduction and the sex-drive are to be able to do their
thing. All these are associated with Mars, but salt is ruled by Saturn. So here we see the
interrelationship of Binah/Saturn and Geburah/Mars. Similarly, the nervous system, ruled by Mercury,
Whose Sephirah is Hod, requires a certain amount of sodium, ruled by Saturn, associated with Binah, to
function properly. Thus the domains of Mercury/Hod and Saturn/Binah are interrelated.
 As I said before, traditionally Saturn is associated with Sephirah 3, Binah, which caps the Left-Hand
Pillar of Severity of the Tree of Life. According to modern interpretations, however, Uranus is
associated with this Sephirah, while Saturn is associated with Da’ath, which isn’t really a Sephirah at
all, but is instead the energy of the entire system represented by the Tree of Life (i.e., the entire Solar
System, on all levels, physical, psychospiritual, etc.). On the Tree of Life, though, Da’ath is represented
as “Sephirah 11” in the region between the 3rd Plane of the Tree of Life (a horizontal line defined by
Geburah on the Left-Hand Pillar and Chesed (Mercy), Sephirah 4, associated with Jupiter, on the Right-
Hand Pillar of Mercy) and the 2nd Plane (a horizontal line defined by Binah on the Left Pillar and
Chokmah (Wisdom), Sephirah 2, on the Right-Hand Pillar). Through this region also passes the Path
(line defined by two Sephiroth) Gimel (a vertical line defined by Sephirah 1, Kether (Crown) at the top
of the tree, associated with Pluto, and (Sephirah 6, Tiphareth (Beauty), associated with the Sun, just
below the 3rd Plane of the Tree) associated with the Tarot Trump II, The High Priestess, and Luna.
Da’ath is represented having its center on that portion of Gimel lying between the 2nd and 3rd Planes
and exactly between them. This therefore puts it right on the Central Pillar of Consciousness of the Tree,
a vertical line passing from its top, Kether, through Da’ath, Tiphareth, Yesod (Sephirah 9, Foundation,
associated with Luna), and Malkuth (Sephirah 10, Kingdom, associated with both Earth and Saturn*) at
the Tree’s base, respectively comprising the Paths Gimel, previously described, Samekh (Tarot Trump
XIV, Temperance, associated with Sagittarius, connecting Tiphareth and Yesod), and Tav (Tarot Trump
XXI, The World, associated with Saturn, connecting Yesod and Malkuth). This is appropriate, too,
because the Central Pillar is concerned with those things at the core of our being. Its Planetary
associations include Pluto, Lord of chi energy, the bedrock energy of the universe and the living world;
the Sun, Lord of the Light of Life; Luna, Lord of the Waters of Life; the Earth, the Realm of Life; and
Saturn, Who rules the skeleton and its associated minerals and chemical elements, e.g., limestone and
calcium, and the skeleton lies at the very core of our bodily existence, the part of us which, all other
things being equal, endures longest, remaining long after everything else in our bodies has rotted away.
Clearly Saturn, as Lord of Bones, belongs on the Central Pillar just as, in His capacity as traditional Lord
of Knowledge and Understanding, He belongs at the head of the Left Pillar of the Tree of Life.
– All of which, by the way, is part of a long, illustrious tradition of exegetical discourse known as
pilpul, a phrase meaning “nit-picking for fun & profit,” a pastime I enjoy immensely, so let me know if
this sort of thing bores you and I’ll try to curtail it . . . 

*Saturn, Lord of the Material Realm, Lord of This World, is the ruler of the Element Earth,
Alchemically speaking. Earth is, however, also our own living Planet. So both Planets can be associated
with Malkuth, just as Saturn and Uranus can both be associated with Binah, for other reasons (among
other things, both are rulers of the sciences, which are associated with Binah).

*******

Sylvia –
In your interview with me some time ago, you asked me how I see the “Malefics,” Mars, Saturn,
Chiron, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto (and sometimes Mercury). I think I said I saw them as indicating where
trouble was likely to come from during life, and what resources we would have to deal with it when it
happened: Mars is a spear, for going on the attack against trouble; Saturn, a shield against it; Chiron,
the sort of treasures you find after you’ve slain the terrible dragon that guards them; and so on.
One of my best sources for astrological knowledge concerning all the Planets – assuming that Uranus
and Neptune are associated with “the Starry Heavens,” Pluto with the “Primum Mobile” of traditional
concepts – is the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Dante was extremely learned when it came to
astrology and associated disciplines, and the universe of his Comedy is constructed according to strict
astrological, numerological, and related principles. His Paradiso delineates the up-side of the Planets,
his Inferno, Their down-side, his Purgatorio the transition between. In particular, in the Paradiso, Mars
is associated with the Cacciaguida,” the Warriors of God, in Cantos XV-XVIII, while Saturn is
associated with “The Contemplative,” the Saints, in Cantos XXI-XXII. Uranus and Neptune may be
associated with Cantos XXII-XXVII, on the Fixed Stars (the Starry Heavens), and Pluto with Cantos
XXVII-XXIX, the “Primum Mobile.” Planets beyond Pluto (and the three Veils of the Negative of
Qaballah) may be associated with Cantos XXXXXXIII, on the Empyrean. And so on. And in the
Inferno and the Paradiso – well, I won’t spoil the fun. I’ll merely say that all three books contain
incalculable treasures of spirit, worth all the effort of digging them out. At any rate, these, too, yield all
sorts of gems of astrological wisdom and understanding, and should be in the library of any serious
astrologer (not just Roman Catholics! <g> – of which I am not one, by the way).
Enjoy, yrd

*******

[From exchange with a friend via Internet:]

Him:

My experience with libertarians has been that many of them aren’t really. They mouth the words, but
when it comes time for action, they take another path.

Me:

Dey walk dat walk, an’ dey talk dat talk, but dey sure can’t hum de tune . . . 

Him:

Hum . . . just like science-fiction fans. I used to read a lot of science fiction because I craved art
with imagination. I grew up isolated in a small town in West Texas with little exposure to other science
fiction fans. When I went to the Big City™ – first Austin, Texas, and then Portland, Oregon – I fell in
with lots of active club-going fans. I was shocked and appalled to find that most of them HATED any
new stories that displayed lots of imagination. They wanted only so much, preferably of the types they’d
had before.

Me:

To my sorrow, I’ve noticed that, too. And the market seems to follow the fans’ demands,
unfortunately? Remember the Golden Age of Science-Fiction? Whatever happened to it? It’s all Lit.
Crit. and LITERATURE and absolutely no guts, heart, or backbone any more. Where are the Heinleins
of yesteryear? As far as I’m concerned, the best s-f now being written is by L. Neil Smith, Stephen
King, R. R. McCammon (King and McCammon are both blockbuster writers of horror, would you
believe), while the supposed stars of the genre, such as Benford et al, are BORing . . . I do love Terry
Pratchett, he brings the
zest to his “fantasy” works that Heinlein et al brought to science-fiction, sort of a latter-day cross
between Fritz Lieber at his best and Gary Larson in a mood for writing, wonderful guy and funny as hell!
But the SCIENCE FICTION STARS – oh, Jesus! (Who probably hated his fans, too!) 

Him:

I’ve about decided that EVERYTHING is like that. There’s us radical extremists, and then there’s
the mundanes who pretend to not be mundane, and frequently fool us.

Me:

Sheep in wolf’s clothing? 

Him:

Kinda sad. Kinda funny. Kinda irritating. Kinda real. Piss on ‘em.

Me:
 I’ll certainly agree with that last!! :-]

*******

Points to Ponder (or Something Like That):

“When XV was introduced in 2006, it was denounced roundly for being even more attention-
absorbing than television. It was also praised highly because it allowed anyone to have the experience
instantly of knowing how to do a thing and of doing it. You could plug a kid from the urban ghetto into
the head of an engineer; give him a sense of the pleasure that came with finding a successful design for a
turbine blade, and the pure joy of holding the actual object in the hand, fresh from the cadcam shop; then
dump him back into the classroom and say, ‘And that’s why you want to learn math.’ You could take a
fat, shy, laughable nebbish and give him the experience of being physically beautiful and confident, then
haul him out and say ‘This can be all yours, really yours, if you’ll get to the gym and the personality
development courses.’
“You could take a psychopath with no empathy and give him the experience of being a victim. That
was the experiment that revealed the flaw.
“Legally it took them some years to get cleared to try it on a prisoner. The first time, it was merely
the accident that an XV reporter had been raped, mutilated, and left for dead while the recorder was
running. Many experts confidently predicted that if habitual violent criminals were exposed to that tape,
and really understood what they were doing to their victims, they would stop doing it.
“In fact, once they had felt the terror and pain themselves, inflicting it on others gave them more of a
thrill than ever. It was the effect they had been hoping they were having. One former model prisoner
became so excited by the SV tape that he raped an unarmed male guard on his way back to the cell block.
The human race’s great past cynics, everyone from Lao-tzu through Ben Johnson to Simone de
Beauvoir, could have told them this would happen, but cynicism is a sensible, civilized view. To live in
the midst of endless violence one must have sacred principles with which to endorse the violence. By the
end of the twentieth century, the most brutal in human history, there were only idealists left. Even when
forced-memory extraction and vicarious rape-for-hire emerged, XV, like all other information channels,
had become effectively impossible to censor. Technology – and the cravings of thousands of
proselytizers of all stripes – forbade it.”

– John Barnes, Mother of Storms (TOR Books, 1994), pp. 32-33

*******

Ken –
Re our earlier exchange concerning Golden Age vs. modern science-fiction, I think what I really
miss about the good old space-opera pot-boilers, not to mention Heinlein et al, in much recent stuff is
that the latter all too often has far too little swash and just a tad too much buckle . . . <sigh>
– yrd

*******

To what extent has epidemic disease been involved in the great turning-points of history, especially
the ones that are clearly evident in the cultural record, but which are delicately avoided in most modern
academic and scientific discussion? Consider ritual prostitution. When did it become less than sacred,
regarded as wrong and evil? When did prostitution per se become a sin or a crime? Probably when
increasing population density made it just too efficient a vector for spreading infectious diseases. Before
that time, most STDs may not have been recognizable as such, may have died out rather rapidly most
places because there simply weren’t enough hosts, in spite of sexual vectoring. After that time,
prostitutes and promiscuous people of both sexes would have become walking plague-centers, and such
practices became too dangerous for the public welfare to tolerate on any basis. When did rampant anti-
woman sentiment begin to fill the world? Possibly about the same time, or a little later, when land-
pirates became common and women and children had to be sequestered and protected at all costs.
Between the potential for plague which prostitutes represented and the high risk factors involved in
keeping and protecting a commodity which was nevertheless essential to keeping life and civilization
going, women came to attract all those emotions which inevitably attach to an utterly necessary, highly
valuable thing which is nevertheless also a cause of great danger and horrible death. All the feelings we
have about infectious diseases have come to attach themselves to women, as well. Why not men? There
have been male prostitutes, as well. Well, they do attach themselves to those men who are prostitutes;
such men are usually gay or bisexual, and anti-homosexual sentiments are generally found side-by-side
with anti-woman ones. Granted, this isn’t fair or just. Why hate all women, and all gay or bisexual men,
because of the mere possibility that a few of them might spread disease? Why arachnophobia, and fear of
snakes? Most spiders and snakes aren’t deadly – yet many people fear all of them, indiscriminately. In
the long run, though, those who fear all spiders and snakes are far less likely to be bitten by really
poisonous ones than those who don’t, at least on a statistical basis. Such phobias are pro-survival, at least
in most cases. Similarly, perhaps a similar biological mechanism is behind anti-woman sentiment – God
knows many women hate women, too. It doesn’t have to be rational. It doesn’t even have to be pro-
survival, as long as it developed out of a mechanism which was originally pro-survival, and hasn’t yet
become something so contra-survival that it selects itself out. Misogyny is a ghastly thing, a true
sickness of the soul. It may, however, be a warped result of something that began as a life-protecting
instinctive reaction to something quite dangerous, i.e., plague. Even today, some of those who hate and
fear women the most call themselves “pro-lifers.” This may be a hint of the biological roots of the
problem. Not all mutations are benign – in fact, most aren’t. This mutation of a plague-avoidance
reaction seems to fit the pattern – though unfortunately it hasn’t yet done so well at it as to have culled
itself out of existence.
Is much of the phobic reaction so many adults today have toward children also tied into this?
Granted, as overpopulated with human beings as our world is, this attitude is probably almost entirely
grounded in ancient instincts that have to do with keeping population from getting too large and too
dense for the carrying-capacity of one’s environment. Horrible as they are, murders of small children by
crazy adults and two-legged predators may originally come from that sort of mechanism. But could this
sort of thing be tied in, as well, to aversion to anything remotely representing plague? If what comes
from woman is plague, then children themselves represent plague. That’s the way the unconscious mind
works: it isn’t rational, fair, kind, or even life-enhancing – but the unconscious is the well of our most
ancient biological mechanisms, and even when they are sadly out of date and inappropriate, they work
most efficiently at their job. This would compound the problem of epidemic child-abuse enormously –
and it seems to have done so.
What price the worship of Hygeia?

*******

I propose an annual award, something like the Oscars and Emmys, for the various categories of Best
Muzak of the Year. Called the “Polly,” for Pollyana, it would feature a tin-plated aluminum statuette of
Mortimer Snerd, complete with cotton-candy cone stuck gently into one ear, and a very dead pancreas
hanging out of his upper abdomen . . . Anybody out there got ideas for annual awards for other Really
Stupid Things, e.g., the Reader’s Disgust, filibusters in The Congressional Record, etc.?

*******

{Exchange with a correspondent:]

Me:

By the way, Stephen King cut his literary teeth on Heinlein, did you know that?

Him:

No I didn’t. Hum . . . King’s work does kinda resemble RAH in a lot of ways. Interesting.

Me:
 I heartily recommend King’s Dark Tower series. Some of his other work, e.g., The Stand, is also
good, hard s-f, well-researched science, the whole nine yards, whatever else it may be – a mark of King’s
genius. Anyway, give at least book 3 of his Dark Tower stuff a read. It’s really worth it.
That’s what it is. There’s no feeling of the vastness of the universe there once was in science-fiction,
of the infinite possibilities inherent in it. It all feels so tame, controlled, explained – no real room for
wonder. Too much “viewpoint,” not enough sheer, gut-grabbing gorgeous wonder!

Him:

You hit that nail right square on the head!

Me:

This coming ten years or so may be a very good test of astrology. Pluto heaving left Scorpio and
gone into Sagittarius and Uranus entering Aquarius should turn the situation around. Uranus rules s-f;
when Uranus was in Capricorn (structure), s-f got strait-jacketed by “political correctitude” and artsy-
fartsy “esthetics.” That should chance, now. Gee – maybe E.E. “Doc” Smith . . . 
See above, about King. McCammon’s Swan Song is the American, non-sectarian answer to the
Divine Comedy of Dante – a marvelous construction, and excellent cautionary s-f.

Him:

Well, now. I’ll have to seek that one out.

Me:

It’s grim, but well worth reading. The science is good science, the horror is great horror, the story is
– well, McCammon always gives good story! And the ending is just superb! 

Him:

Pratchett, too. Damn. I hardly have time for reading as it is ;-)

Me:

Give one of his works a try. Anything from his Discworld series is excellent! The thing is, it’s a
universe where things that don’t work in ours (or so we like to believe) do, and there is actually a physics
that makes it all work. It’s good science, in spite of the fact that we’d think of it as “supernatural.”
That’s why Pratchett is such a miracle – he takes topics that turn into warm-and-fuzzy or dark-and-slimy
fantasies in just about anybody else’s hands and turns them into superb hard s-f (for a universe built that
way, anyway). Also, he’s funny as hell. :-))

Him:

Oh yeah, S.M. Stirling. He’s not a star, but his “Draka” series (from “Sir Francis Drake”) is almost
impossible to put down. It’s horrifying, although it’s not horror. But a hell of a story teller.

Me:

Never read him. Guess I should.  I’ll have to purchase those when and where and if I can –
library system doesn’t have them. Dammit . . . 

Him:

Paperback only. You’ll probably have to try a SF specialty store or have ‘em ordered. If the first 3
are in print . . . I hope they are.

Me:
 I’ll call University Books and see what they can do.

Him:

Speaking of which, have you got/read John Ross’s Unintended Consequences yet? It’s a killer (so to
speak ;-) Heh.

Me:

Haven’t seen it. Again, I’ll have to look for it.

Him:

This you’ll probably have to order. Just published a couple of months ago, by a tiny tiny press. It’s
a big thick hardback. Although I’ve seen a few copies at gun shows. I’ve got a review on my web page
at http://www.liberty.com/home/kholder/jross.html. When it came in the mail I immediately read it –
took about 3 or 4 days. I would stay up until 1:00 or 2:00 AM ‘cause I couldn’t put it down. Then my
wife read it. She did the same. It was droopy eyelids at work for the Holder family that week. Then,
when she finished, I read it again. It’s that good. It’s about the gun culture in America, and how we
finally revolt . . ..

Me:

Wow! This, I gotta have! 

Me:

Freud had a few good one-liners. If he hadn’t “repudiated” the idea of pandemic abuses of power of
a magnitude so great they drive the abusees, e.g., children, other helpless dependents, stark raving mad,
I’d have more sympathy with him. Because of Freud, however, a lot of the “anyone into self-defense is
crazy” movement has been supported by the psychiatric industry that has grown up as a means of
suppressing dissent, self-defense, and any other attempt on the part of victims to speak out and fight
back. <Sigh> . . .

Him:

Well, he was a coke-head. Frequent use of coke screws up yer ability to see things clearly. See E.
M. Thornton’s The Freudian Fallacy (Garden City, New York: The Dial Press, Doubleday & Company,
Inc., 1984).

Me:

There’s that. But also – well, maybe it was professional cowardice (job-security at stake), and then
again, he may have had a gun at his head. There is evidence suggesting that the family of the head of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time had some truly ghastly skeletons in the closet, rape of children by
relatives, girls killed by weird sexual practices, etc. Freud may have known about it, uncovered it with
his original techniques, the Emperor found out and had Freud politely but firmly given to understand that
either he cooperated in the cover-up or woke up dead or something. Plus ça change, plus ça la meme
chose . . . 
Take care, always,

Him:

And you too. Busy weekend ahead. My wife wants to spend a day at the nudist club, my son wants
to go to the shooting range, and I want to reload a bunch of ammo. Good thing it’s a 3-day weekend!

Me:
 Hmm – sounds like the one I’ve got planned for June 11-13. Climax is a 4-hour class by women for
women in “gun safety” (trans.: how to stay safe by knowing how to use guns competently <g>) at
Wade’s Guns over in Bellevue. 

Him:

Y’all be good, ya heer!

Me:

Well, at least I’ll be careful . . . 

Him:

You will find that a government is the kind of organization which, while it does big things badly,
does small things badly too.

Me:

Including covering up its own sins . . . have you been watching what’s been happening with
Whitewater?!! 

*******

Esoteric Astrology: Saturn and Uranus

Uranus and Saturn are the esoteric rulers of Virgo and Sagittarius. Uranus and Neptune rule the hard
and high-energy sciences and technologies. Whereas Gemini is concerned with information-gathering
and -dissemination of all kinds, regardless of content or value, Virgo is concerned with the analysis and
testing of information to determine what its worth is, while Sagittarius is concerned with systemization of
the findings of Virgo, that is, with building systems to account for the results of Virgo’s tests of Gemini’s
discoveries. These activities of Virgo and Sagittarius – analysis, testing, discrimination, and
systemization – are typical concerns of Saturn and Uranus, as well as being part and parcel of the
scientific method, ruled by those two planets. The findings of modern, objective science are thus the
results of the work done by Virgo and Sagittarius, the Magickal Operations of those two Outer Planets
necessary for the manifestations as hard science of the domains which They rule.
Pisces is concerned with synthesis. Saturn cuts down and Uranus breaks up – definitely not Piscean
activities. Pisces is also concerned with mathematical thinking as well as the esthetic sense – pattern-
recognition and openness to the “Oceanic” realm of the Collective Unconscious, concerns anathema to
Saturn and Uranus, Who are concerned with details, hard work, logic, and all the rest of the “left-brain”
thinking typical of Virgo and Sagittarius and diametrically opposed to the “right-brained thinking” of
Pisces. Pisces is concerned with feeling, instinct, faith – Solar and Lunar concerns. Hence Sol and Luna
are the esoteric rulers of Pisces, as They also are of Gemini, since the peripatetic, indiscriminate
curiosity, rambling, searching and collecting typical of Gemini come at the promptings of instinct and
feeling rather than “reasoned,” coldly logical motives typical of Saturn and Uranus.

*******

Thought for the Day:

Hi, gang –
I think I’ve come up with a proof of the existence of God! – Well, of Creation, anyway.
Individual Creation.
By What, we are not sure.
The proof is potato-bugs.
Yes, dear friends, as anyone whose ever seen one of the damned things knows. potato-bugs are so
ugly even they don’t want themselves. So there’s no way in hell they could reproduce in any normal way.
 Which means they have to be created, one at a time.
Why would a loving, just God create such things?
Actually, did you ever wonder what serial-killers and politicians come back as? . . .:)

*******

Hi –
I’m interested in any astrological, Alchemical, or other esoteric associations any of you may have for
the numbers 23, 17, and 5, which are associated with Eris, Goddess of Chaos and Discord, and the
modern religions of Discordianism, SubGenius, and Erisianism. So far, I have the following:

5: Sphere of Mars Geburah, Heh (Hebrew letter associated with the Sign Aries and Tarot Trump IV,
The Emperor), the chemical element boron (atomic number 5, located at column 3a, row 2 of the
Periodic Table of the chemical elements)

17: Key number for Zain (Hebrew letter with value 7, associated with the Sign Gemini and Tarot
Trump VI, The Lovers), chemical element chlorine (atomic number 17, located at column 7a,
row 3 of the Periodic Table)

23: Key number for Mem (Hebrew letter with value 40, associated with the Pythagorean Element
Water, the Planet Neptune, and Tarot Trump XII, The Hanged Man), the chemical element
vanadium (atomic number 23, located at column 5b, row 4 of the Periodic Table)

Be interested in any more primary associations you might have. Thanks,

*******

The Astrology of Pluto and Persephone (Pluto + 1)

The Underworld of the Greeks and Romans symbolically corresponds to Houses 1-6 and the Signs
Aries through Cancer in astrology. These are the Houses and Signs of the Individual and his or her
connection to the Collective Unconscious, i.e., the Underworld. Pluto’s diurnal mundane rulership is
Aries and the First House, the beginning of this span of Houses and Signs, while Persephone’s is Virgo
and the Sixth House, the last of it. Pluto is the King of the Underworld, He Who receives the newly
dead, so it is fitting that Aries and the First House, the beginning of the astrological realm corresponding
to His domain, are also ruled by Him. Persephone, His wife, on the other hand, is She Who judges those
souls Who are ready to reincarnate, deciding what their next life is to be like, and releases them back into
the world of the living. So it is appropriate that She rules that House and Sign that close out the
astrological domain corresponding to the Underworld. By transit and progression, Planets move counter-
clockwise through the Houses and Signs, beginning with Aries, progressing through Taurus, Gemini, and
so on to Virgo, then Libra, and so on around to Pisces and back to Aries again. In the same way, the
newly dead descend into the Underworld at a place where they are then admitted to it by Pluto (Hades),
Whose House and Sign likewise constitute the beginning of the astrological equivalent of the
Underworld. When those souls are ready to re-enter the world of the living, it is Persephone Who
enables them to reincarnate, and fittingly, She rules the House and Sign constituting the end of the
astrological Underworld.
In addition, Pluto is strong in Leo and the Fifth House, His diurnal esoteric rulerships; and in Virgo
and the Sixth House, His diurnal exaltation. Persephone, on the other hand, is strong in Aries, the First
House, Taurus, and the Second House, of which She, like Mercury,* is esoteric Lord; She is nocturnal
mundane Lord of Gemini and the Third House; and Leo and the Fifth House are Her nocturnal
exaltations. Neither Mercury, Hades, nor Persephone are strong in Cancer or the Fourth House, at the
bottom of the chart, which are thus the “roots” of the Underworld; this Sign and House belong to Sol,
Luna, Venus, Jupiter, Neptune, and Hera/Durga, all Gods of the Upper World. Perhaps this reflects what
Dante showed in the last stanzas of the Inferno section of his Divine Comedy – that the route to Heaven
lies straight through the bottom of Hell and out the other side. In any event, Pluto is strong in three of
each of the Signs and Houses of the astrological Underworld, while Persephone is strong in five of them.
What precisely this means is something that deserves some research on the part of astrologers,
Magickians, and psychologists; probably, though, it simply reflects the fact that they are indeed Lords of
the Underworld, Their proper domain.**

*Mercury/Hermes is the Psychopompos, Who guides the souls of the newly dead down to the
Underworld from the living world, and those souls about to reincarnate back up to the living world
from the Underworld. He is the co-ruler of all the Signs and Houses in which Persephone is strong,
and in some ways She is a female version of Him.

**Pluto/Hades was the brother of Zeus/Jupiter, which may be reflected by the fact that He is strong in
exactly half of the Houses and Signs above and below the astrological horizon-line (that defined by
the Ascendant and the cusp of the 7th House in any chart, or by the first degrees of Aries and Libra
in the Natural Chart Wheel). Because His brother was Lord of the Sky, He thus had a foot in both
worlds, as it were, that above and that below.
Persephone, on the other hand, may have chosen freely to become the wife of Hades; and there
are some indications that one of the reasons She did so was to become permanently beyond the reach
of Zeus/Jupiter, the Greek Lord of the Heavens and the Upper World, because, as He had so many
other nubile, attractive young women, He had set His sights on Her and would have raped Her if She
had not fled to His brother, Hades, and agreed to marry the latter. That She is strong in most of the
Houses and Signs below the astrological horizon, and in just one of each of those above it, could be a
reflection of that possibility.

*******

(Dale –
I know I just sent the following to you, but in a form that did not emphasize the part of it that
advocates teaching responsible use of fire-arms as an antidote to violence. You may find that part of it
useful or something, so I’m re-sending it with this note. From everything I’ve seen, one way to guarantee
that someone will turn out either hopelessly passive-aggressive or truly cruel is to punish them when they
are children for attempting to defend themselves from unwarranted aggression on the part of others when
such defense is nothing but appropriate. It doesn’t matter whether the aggressor is a schoolyard bully or
grandpa, trying to Do Sexual Things to a protesting grandchild – if the child is slapped down in any way
for trying to evade the attack, or defend him- or herself against it, the child will end up hating his/her
parents, teachers, or whoever does the punishing, and by extension, all authority figures. As well all
know, prohibition always entrenches the problem, rather than curing it, and of course this goes for guns,
too. Anyway, it is almost certain that much of the hideous gratuitous violence in our culture is a direct
result of preventing small children from learning effective means of self-defense. The reason for keeping
children helpless is, of course, for the convenience of those who want to use them, in whatever way, but
in the long run even the users can be hurt by the violent man or woman who grows out of that ill-used
child, so it’s in the interests even of pederasts, control-freaks and other users to teach children
responsible use of all current means of effective self-defense – up to and including firearms use. Banning
guns will only make us more violent, because it will make us all more desperate, resentful, fearful – and
you make anything as big as a man chronically fearful and you have got a large, ticking time-bomb on
your hands, just waiting to explode! The answer to evil isn’t ignorance, spiritually or physically – it is
education in how to defend against it. – As well all know, of course, and this is redundant for you, but
maybe you can quote me sometime or something. Hope this is useful, )

*******

Sylvia –
We live in a society which seems, so often, to thrive on cruelty – real, premeditated, sadistic cruelty
the only purpose of which is to give pleasure to the perpetrators. The victims are, all too often, children
and other helpless innocents. All too often, the “New Age” community writes this off as the victims’
“karma,” Gingrich-types write it off in their own inimitable ways, arch-”liberals” write it off in their
own inimitable ways, conspiratologists invent scenarios in which the victims have a conspiracy to bring
this on themselves or else are lying about it (e.g., “the Holocaust never happened,” “child-abuse doesn’t
exist,” “evil done to women is just a myth made up by raving feminists to advance their own political
positions,” etc.), and so many others don’t care: “I’m all right, Jack – and the Hell with you!” By
cruelty, I do not mean the general slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that always go on, from
hurricanes to death of a beloved child from some terrible, sudden illness to loss of a job because the
economy is out of joint. Shit happens, God knows, and that will always be a fact of the universe. I’m
also not talking about killing other animals for food or leather – that also is a fact of life, and in fact is
one of the great driving forces of evolution, one that has been around since life began on our world. No,
I’m talking about cruelty, evil performed for the pure pleasure of it, from serial-killings a la Jeff Dahmer
to boys torturing a cat to death because they’re bored. Atrocities committed during war, while evil in
themselves, aren’t quite what I have in mind, either, because at least there is the excuse of adrenaline-
overdrive, a glandular disarrangement that will put primates in a killing frenzy, especially when they are
in groups. It’s the cold-blooded sort of thing, carefully planned or even carried out for “something to do”
that I mean here. In many cases, it comes down to feeding on one’s own kind, at least in a
psychospiritual sense (serial killers rarely literally devour the bodies of their victims, but Jeff Dahmer did
do that, and there have been others), and that is something that is clearly a pathology except when the
perpetrators are literally starving; making a regular way of life of it is a real good way to select one’s
species right out of the gene-pool if tolerated, and a good way to get a lynch-mob on your tail, when it
isn’t!
I know that in our culture, Chiron is associated with this sort of thing. Usually the victims have
prominent Chiron in their charts, and the same is true of repeat perpetrators. Pluto, Saturn, and Mars are
often involved, too. But this doesn’t explain it, and it isn’t clear whether other cultures show these same
astrological tendencies. Does anyone have any data on cultures which are a lot less prone to gratuitous
violence and cruelty than ours, especially those that don’t tolerate child-abuse or cruelty toward children
in any form? With what is prominent Chiron in charts of members of such cultures associated?
For that matter, how about prominent Chiron in the charts of non-human organisms, from primates of
all kinds to any other sort of organism? Chimps seem to be as prone as human beings to tendencies
toward cruelty and sadism, though except in rare individual cases, these tendencies seem to be directed
mostly toward the taking of prey, usually smaller primates such as monkeys. Gorillas, on the other hand,
are rather gentle animals, and while they can be formidable on a one-to-one basis, especially large silver-
back males in their prime, they really aren’t very aggressive, and they have never been observed
indulging in anything like the sort of cruelty which is all-too common among human beings and, to a
lesser extent, chimpanzees. As for gibbons, baboons, orangutans, and other large primates, I have little
data, but the petty cruelties of many species of monkey are legend, as Kipling’s stories of the bandur-log
show (he got the data on which his Jungle Stories were based in large part from folk-tales of India, at
least when it came to non-human characters in those stories).
It is said that cats “torture” their prey, but this “torture” is, from the point of view of feline
psychology, rather like that of a little child prying the eyes out of a teddy-bear or taking the wheels off a
toy-train to see how it’s put together. Even better analogies are biology students in a dissection lab, and
adolescents endlessly tinkering with their old junk cars, then cruising around in them on Saturday night to
get some action. Most cats have to hunt to survive; the more they know about what their prey is like,
especially its behavior and ability to elude capture or fight back when caught, the better hunters they are.
That “torture” of a mouse by the family cat is really analogous to a boxer sparring with his own shadow;
it is fun for that cat and hell for the mouse, but through it, the cat learns to be a better hunter, even though
that probably isn’t on either the cat’s or the mouse’s mind at the time. (And if the mouse escapes, it
probably makes it better at staying away from cats! Not to mention the stories to tell the grandmice . . .
<g>) If they sold mice in stores patronized by cats, they’d probably advertise them as “Dis-Poz-a-Maws!
It’s a toy! It’s a snack! Play with it for hours! Amaze and amuse your friends! Break it? No problem!
Just gobble it up and reach for another! (And remember: it’s biodegradable! [We encourage recycling])
. . .”
Much of what passes for cruelty in human children is really like a cat’s playing with a mouse – it
isn’t very nice, but it helps them prepare with the world. The “violent” “gun-play” of small boys with
cap-shooters and what-not is actually in line with this; we live in a violent world, a world that contains
guns, and children know it. They want at least to know how to defend themselves from attack, and they
are trying to learn how to use an effective means of self-defense. (Rather than trying to ban guns, which
is impossible – having a gun illegally isn’t the same as not having one at all – the answer is to encourage
responsible use of firearms. In other words, give them a relatively safe place for such play, a carefully-
supervised and well-maintained firearms range where they can go learn how to use guns safely and
responsibly, under the close supervision of adults skilled in the use of, care for, and legal issues
surrounding guns. Ignorance about dangerous things won’t keep children from playing with those things
– it will just guarantee that they will encounter maximum danger in the process. So the antidote to “gun
violence” is education, not prohibition.) People who feel they can defend themselves from attack, and
don’t feel that the adults on whom their lives depend will punish them from trying to defend themselves
from unjustified aggression with whatever force is necessary and sufficient for the purpose, on the
average don’t become superlatively aggressive, unless they were born with defective wiring or got it from
damage to the head in early childhood or something. People who are fearful and angry all the time will
search for a way to defend themselves, and hate those who try to keep them from doing so, and it will
only add fuel to the fire – so allowing “self-defense” play, within reasonable and intelligently supervised
limits, helps minimize tendencies to unjustified aggression, gratuitous violence and cruelty, and so on. (It
will never eliminate these, maybe nothing will, but it will help put a ceiling on it.) So I’m not talking
about “violent play,” either, as long as it doesn’t involve a real dedication to inflicting cruelty, maiming,
and so on for the joy of it on helpless victims.
The thing I’m talking about involves almost a feeding on the spirits and souls of victims by
perpetrators, whether or not physical violence per se is involved: terrorization of small children and
helpless others for no
particularly good reason, except that the perpetrator takes joy in it. What is the astrology of it? Does it
vary from culture to culture? From species to species? What do the things that show up prominently in
charts of exemplary members of cultures or species particularly prone to it signify in members of other
cultures and species?
And have there been any really good anthropological, ethological, and sociobiological studies on
cruelty, sadism, and so on as a real and important part of human or any other biology and sociology?
I’d be interested in any data you might have on this.
Take care, love,

*******

The Buddha taught us: “When you have crossed the river, leave the boat behind.” – Yeah, but don’t
forget how to build and use a boat – you might run into another river somewhere, later on.

*******

Mars and the Adept

Combat-training, the basic art and science of Geburah, the Sphere of Mars, is a must for any aspiring
occultist or anyone else on a spiritual path of any kind. It’s a scary world out there, and it’s always
going to be that way. We may be spiritual beings, but we’re also made of meat, and contain a lot of
energy for an aspiring predator, be that energy “spiritual” or physical (as Einstein said, E=mc 2, meaning
that matter and energy are just two forms of the same damned thing). A man or woman who can’t
effectively defend him- or herself in situations of high risk doesn’t even know the first thing about it, and
becomes a fearful, resentful, hateful person. Eventually he or she becomes desperate – and dangerous,
because there’s no looser or more high-power cannon than an ignoramus terrified out of his or her wits
and fitted out with an opposable thumb and a big brain! (In this is much more true of the female than the
male – if nothing else, the female is the one who has the care and education of the next generation in her
hands, and if she becomes vengeful, she can take it out on the future itself!) Lack of experience with
mano y mano combat or weapons doesn’t mean an inability to hit or to pick up something and throw it;
coupled with fear and a big brain, ignorance of the best, most efficient, most effective ways to deal with
danger can lead to large craters in the landscape and damage that not all the damage-control in the world
can fix later.
The cure for this unstable condition is education, training, and experience with everything from
hand-to-hand combat to use of firearms, shuriken, staves, and anything else currently available. Such
training ultimately percolates through to the Inner Planes, as well, giving an edge in “pure spiritual”
combat, economic competition, and so on – but it never works the other way. Either you get out there
and get your butt dumped on the dojo floor and pick up some good bruises and learn how to keep from
having it happen again by hands-on training, or you aren’t fit to get your hands on anything that could be
potentially dangerous – which is no guarantee you won’t, anyway.
“Anything that could be potentially dangerous” includes – especially – all forms of occult training,
from Ceremonial Magick to politics, psychology, and the care of children (if you don’t think that’s an
occult subject, you’ve never raised children and never had to baby-sit!). Without training in Geburah –
i.e., real-time, hands-on combat-training – achievement beyond Geburah, especially the major, collective
power-spheres of Binah (Uranus), Chokmah (Neptune), and Kether (Pluto) – makes the aspirant
increasingly more dangerous to self and others, a walking time-bomb ready to lay waste to everyone
around. People who don’t know how to defend themselves on a physical level, and who have never
given themselves permission to do so, tend to become paranoid, even viciously so, and lash out at others
when strange things happen – and strange things are the stock-in-trade of the various spiritual paths! This
is what initiation into Geburah for the aspirant to spiritual achievement is for: to give him or her some
solid confidence in the universe, by training him/her in ways to deal with dangerous situations. Without
such training, “occult training” ultimately becomes either an empty pastime or a road to catastrophe.

*******

Thoughts on reading James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure:

“The easiest way to tell a believable lie is to tell part of the truth – and then shut up.”
– Robert A. Heinlein

This book does a good job of ignoring the face of real evil in the world. That is, there are more
motives for evil than “following a control script,” e.g., sheer pleasure in it, financial profit, power, etc.
There are also reasons for becoming defensive beyond a fear of having others “get your energy,” e.g.,
fear of torment, torture, being murdered, disease, etc. So why aren’t these mentioned? “Giving up
scripts” won’t cure the latter – and maybe the latter shouldn’t be cured, any more than a cat ought to be
de-clawed (especially one that lives in a neighborhood full of large, mean dogs). And “positive spiritual
benefits” isn’t a draw for the former – evil people like being evil, they get rich, powerful, and/or pleasure
out of it, and the “benefits of the spirit” have about as much real or potential meaning for them as hang-
gliding does for an earthworm.
There is no such thing as “pure spirit” – all spirit is embodied in some fashion. E = mc 2 – by the
same token, spirit and matter are just two different aspects of the same underlying biological reality.
Spirit is Will, intentionality, and the soul supporting and mediating it, and these are aspects of biological
being, which is one with the physical universe. Whether it’s the Dali Lama, Hal 9000, or My Mother the
Car, all spirit is embodied in some fashion. So we are never going to evolve into “pure spirit,” and a
“purely spiritual” way of looking at the world is exactly as inaccurate as a “purely materialistic” way of
doing so, for complimentary reasons. “Which is better: matter or spirit?” is like asking, “Which is
better: vanilla or chocolate?” It depends upon what it’s being asked to do. Human beings are no
“higher” than any other part of Mother Earth (jokes about the Stoned Age will be allowed only after the
lecture is over, please). Just as the “point” of development of the tissues and organs in one’s body is to
ensure that the body runs right and does its genetic thing, the “point” of evolution of species is to fit
species to the development and reproduction of a Planet – for the ultimate good, genetic and otherwise,
of all its life. – A lot of people have the impression that health is a moral issue, that “good” people
know how to stay healthy, and practice “healthy ways,” and only “bad” people get sick or damaged.
Well, the main reason to stay healthy is that pain hurts and sickness is sickening. An adherence to
“health” beyond that is not just stupid, but robs you of all the fun of a really good lost weekend, hangover
and all. A study on monkeys that showed up in the Seattle Times around the beginning of this month
(June 1996 e.v.) showed that if you deprive a monkey of sex and put him on a diet close to starvation
levels, he may live twice as long as his well-fed, well-mated cousin – but as they asked in the article,
what is the worth of such a life? You die in the end anyway, and if you die without passing yourself on
in some form, and don’t have any fun in the interim, why bother? Similarly, all the “spiritual progress”
in the world isn’t worth a damn if it ain’t no fun. “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world
but loses his own soul?” can also be read: “What does it profit a man if he becomes a True Spirit Adept
– but is never able to kick back and enjoy life a little?” “Spiritual progress” is a term something like
“Manifest Destiny.” We have to ask: Qui bono? Who benefits? And what are the benefits – and the
limits thereon? Further, what is spiritual progress for me may not be for you – and vice-versa.
Ultimately, of course, the point of life isn’t progress – it’s life. Progress is only so relative to a condition
of damage or disturbance – and once that has been cleared up, progress is only progress away from a
condition of health, happiness, or some other desirable state. Is this whole Progress schtick just another
aspect of Puritan Guilt, the super-ego’s way of maintaining its tyranny over us by calling it something
else?
In fact, maybe that’s what makes me so uneasy about this book: In addition to the things I know are
wrong with it, it all sounds just a little too good to be true. And we know what the Better Business
Bureau tells us about those, don’t we? The cure for anoxia isn’t arsenic – there are other, and better,
options.
The body and “intuition” won’t or can’t always tell you what you need to know. They can be – and
frequently are – subverted by other beings, e.g., viruses, brain-washers, parents, teachers, Madison
Avenue . . . “Trust in intuition” is a little too much like “if it feels good, do it.” Even as small children,
a certain amount of experience with green apples, unlimited access to Halloween trick-or-treat booty, and
going barefoot through poison ivy tells us otherwise . . .
Anger, fear, and the other Ugly Emotions aren’t per se “spiritual pathologies” due to “lack of
spiritual development.” Mother Nature put them there for very good reasons: they’re spurs to action,
and without them, we become so much snack food for predators, from con-artists to the Jeff Dahmers of
this world, to the junkyard dog and even larger, toothier non-human types.
Oddly, one of the things that really bugs me about this book is a very subtle thing, one you’d think
shouldn’t be a problem: the author’s tone. He reminds me somehow of Hal 9000 – just a little too
“spiritually enlightened,” “polite,” “peace-loving.” You know, a bit like a very accomplished repeat
child-molester, con-artist, politician, or other predator. The sort who starts out, “Now, don’t be afraid . .
.” The sort of book the point of which is: “If we all just . . .” But we never all “just” whatever-it-is. If
we did, we’d be transistors. Instead, we’re living organisms, and thus highly individual, idiosyncratic
beasts, each with his or her own needs and wants, and we’ll always be so. “If we all just . . .” really
comes down to: “. . . so you just . . . and I’ll just . . .”
In other words, it’s a way of trying to persuade individuals to behave in a given way, by appealing to
an impossible vision of aggregate humanity. Why? Is it really to get us to behave more sanely? Maybe
it is, but if so, it’s a very mistaken approach. And if it isn’t – then what is it? One more con? Probably,
in that case – there are so many like this out there.
It may be that I am overreacting. I don’t think so. There really is some stuff in this book worth
paying attention to. Certainly it describes a part of what life is all about, including human life. But the
spin it puts
on them is misleading, simplistic, and ignores certain fundamental realities of biological existence,
human and otherwise. Maybe the author is just a well-intentioned man who isn’t that good a student of
human nature or general sociobiology, who wants to see the world become a better place, and has tried to
offer some insights. But we all know what road is paved with good intentions – and as the old saying
goes, a little knowledge won’t hurt you . . . it will kill you (sign in missile-control room of a missile-silo
near Washington, DC).
Why do I bother with this, anyway? Well, I’m told Jeremiahs run in the family. I agree that the fact
that Jeremiah was right didn’t make him any better liked. And it doesn’t mean I’m right. Still . . .
something about this book, which at first glance sounds so good, and kind, and hopeful, bothers me very
badly. And the fact that it’s so hard to pin down doesn’t make me any easier, either.

*******

Subj: Einstein
Date: 96-06-05 02:55:08 EDT
From:

Yael,

Thought you might enjoy this quote I came across on a

newsgroup:

“Astrology is a science in itself and contains an

illuminating body of knowledge. It taught me many things, and
I am greatly indebted to it. Geophysical evidence reveals
the power of the stars and the planets in relation to the
 terrestrial. In turn, astrology reinforces this power to some
extent. This is why astrology is like a life-giving elixir to
mankind”

-Albert Einstein

Source: Albert Einstein’s personal papers called “Cosmic

Religion, with other opinions and aphorisms” (Covici-Friede,
NY; 1931)

*******

Sylvia –
This is a sort of PS to my earlier suggestions about developing a comparative astrology of cruelty:
M. Scott Peck wrote People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil as a start on a
psychology of evil. But evil must always be a social phenomenon – somebody does something to
someone else, or intends to, and this by definition is a social situation. It may or may not be
intraspecifically social, that is, it may not necessarily involve members of the same species. But it is
always at least sociobiological in nature, and set in a social context of some kind. Thus if we are to
understand evil and cruelty in all their phases, it can only be through studies that include the collective,
societies and ecosystems. There must thus be a sociobiology, a sociology, an ecology of evil, or all
purely psychological studies of the phenomenon, those that examine the evil individual as if he, she, or it
existed in a social vacuum, can never hope to yield truly useful results. A social vacuum is, after all, a
moral vacuum, and evil is a moral phenomenon. How can we hope to understand evil if we examine it as
if it were not part of a social ecosystem of some kind?
Evil remains in existence as long as it is tolerated. This may be because the members of the society
or ecosystem in which it occurs are helpless to do anything about it, or it may be because there is a
collective agreement, tacit or otherwise, that its existence is necessary to the survival and well-being of
that system and the majority of its members (in fact, many of the studies done by Emil Durkheim, the
“Father of Modern Sociology,” hint at exactly this). So if we are ever to understand the nature of evil
and the reasons for its persistence – and I am talking about real, substantive, persistent, deliberate, willed
evil, not the accidental catastrophes that can happen simply because of entropy and Murphy – then only a
study that includes examination ad analysis of the dynamics of the systems in which it is found can
ultimately have any chance of success.
Since astrology is a systems discipline – it is ecology written on the largest possible scale, that of the
universe itself – then an astrological approach might turn out to be fruitful in this regard. This would be
especially true for a comparative astrology of evil, that is, a study that compared the astrological
correspondences of evil in different human cultures and even in different species. To date, very little has
been done on this, though Saturn, Mars, and the other Malefics have long represented evil, or at least
difficulty and tragedy, in Western astrology. Chiron, representing inexcusable tragedies such as assaults
on small children by adults and other horrors in Western astrology, may give the first real opportunity to
establish a true astrology of evil, though this is only a beginning.
I think this is something astrologers in all cultures might find worth looking into, and would be
interested on any feedback on it anyone might have.
Take care, love,

*******

Hi, gang –
Just for the record, I wanted to let somebody know why I have devoted so much time, energy, effort,
nuisance-value, and all else to writing and trying to promote this big fat turkey of a literary effort, New
Magicks for a New Age.
While, to be honest, I think I really have something worth while to share, here, I also know the
drawing-power of what is generally referred to in this benighted culture as “the occult.” Whatever its
objective value or lack thereof, it also functions as a very real form of intellectual porn, if you will, jag-
off material for jaded intellects in the same way that erotica also functions as jag-off material for jaded
sexuality. And therein lies a tale (no puns, please <g>) . . .
 Over the years, a number of very brave, enterprising teachers working in night-schools with young
people in their 20s from the Inner Cities whose prior education, to put the best face on it, was less than
zero, have had astounding success getting their students to learn to read and write fluently by assigning
high-quality pornography for reading material, everything from Fanny Hill to The Story of O.
Underground comix and The National Lampoon also proved to be winners in this service. Nothing else
really worked until they tried such “obscene” material – which, like some of Shakespeare’s most popular
plays (which have been censored numerous times because of “obscenity,” by the way), is so popular that
even the utterly illiterate will work their (excuse me) tails off coming to (excuse me twice) grips with the
material . . . and in the process, just incidentally, learning to read, and read well.
These same teachers then tried assigning writing pornography to their classes. Then they had the
students critique one another’s efforts, and using the results for grading the assignments. And since the
students were the most particular possible critics for this sort of material, soon they were taking great
care in composition, spelling, and every other aspect of the job, because their fellow-students would not
stand for inferior efforts. Literarily sub-standard material doesn’t have the jag-off power that top-quality
stuff does, you see. So the entire class got used to writing, and writing well, because they were one
another’s nastiest critics, and . . . well, you see how it goes.
By the same token, the occult has a drawing-power so great that even the Mortimer Snerds of this
world will somehow learn to read, just to grasp the material. And let’s face it, gang – in the City of God,
there are slums . . . and all too many of this century’s children grew up in them and never learned
anything beyond the ‘hood. They are in danger of losing their heritage – and have no idea that there is
anything to lose. So how do we give them back their century, their history, their cultural heritage? How
do we give back America to our children and all our descendants to come?
That’s what I’ve also been trying to do: put together a Magickal package so attractive that even the
6th-generation welfare types might be tempted to try to open it and see what’s inside . . . and in the
process, gain not only some fluency in the English language, but a knowledge of the history that gave
birth to them, the world they live in, and all the possible futures.
Maybe it’s a stupid hope. Maybe nothing will work on those hopeless denizens of the Inner City of
the City of God – but who knows? It’s worth a try. Or so I think. And that’s why this turkey of a
literary effort . . . :-|

*******

In a message dated 96-06-06 09:27:09 EDT, you write:

>> and kind, and hopeful, bothers me very badly. Anybody got any
>> thoughts on this?
>
>Yeah, I do.
>
>I presume you’re talking about the first book. I won’t read the second.
>
>I second your reservations. No only do I agree with much of what you
>wrote, I harken back to claims that its “loose” style may cause more
>damage than it heals. I lack your spiritual intuition, but it rings true.
>
>Lastly, if (ostensibly, if I understand his point) Christ was the first
>to achieve transcendence or what-not, how did an entire culture of South
>Amerinds disappear in 500 B.C. - some time before??
>
>Fluff. Pablum. Dime-store stuff. I didn’t care at all for it. You’re
>just the only other to have noticed what I did, so I shut up about it. :)
>
>

Apparently a lot of people have read it and hate it, but the only place you hear about it is on Internet, via
email from friends. It certainly isn’t being publicized by the media! Here’s what a friend of mine just
said about it (and my reply):
 I agree with you. It’s a real “feel-gooder” alright and
everyone wants to feel good. There are aspects of it
which have merit, but they’re nothing new. He’s stolen bits
of age-old occult wisdom, thrown in the obligatory concern
over forest ecosystems to make it current (wonder if he
donated his profits to forest conservation?), then used
what he knows of human psychology to come up with an
over-priced trio of soma pills which his accounts love. What
bothers me the most about the book is that I don’t think he
really buys any of it. . . even the parts which were right.

Sort of a New Ager version of Von Daniken. Only Von Daniken believes in his own poison. One of the
things I really hate about this book is that it adds fuel to the fire for idiots like the CSICOP bunch and the
Skeptikal Inquirer crowd – the “this part sucks, so it’s all rot!” types. It also adds fuel to the fire for their
opposite numbers, the New Agers, who say, “It sounds so good, it must all be true!” There must be a
special place in hell for authors like this . . . >:(=

*******

In a message dated 96-06-06 09:51:52 EDT, you write:

>
>> The thing I’m talking about involves almost a feeding on the
>> spirits and souls of victims by perpetrators, whether or not
>> physical violence per se is involved: terrorization of small
>> children and helpless others for no particularly good reason,
>> except that the perpetrator takes joy in it.
>
>Is that necessarily always true? I keep thinking of the more
>mad writings of De Sade - old men suffering from impotence
>or even ennui who would no longer even “take joy” out of their
>torture binges.
>
>I mention this, because you have done a good job demonstrating
>how “alien” such evil is - which to my mind means, in many ways,
>incomprehensible. We might project they might do so (i.e., feel
>pleasure), but this strikes me as “us” trying to understand
>the motivations of “them,” and by needs be expressed in terms
>we understand. OTOH, what if such horror is perped as a method
>to increase their own self-agony or such like?
>
>I’m just musing out loud. Thanx for not letting me go complaisant!

Actually, you’re right. What I’d like to see is an objective study of evil, that is, it’s ecology, what it is
associated with in time and space – and a full-on admission among astrologers that it is real, that there
are things that can’t be excused as “karma,” that shouldn’t be predictable in a natus but are, and that the
latter implies that this means that in that culture or species, evil has been allowed to go on for a long,
long time and is given its “due” in the form of a certain portion of the population, targeted as its prey
from birth on by genetic characteristics which just, incidentally, happen to be reflected in its horoscope.
In other words, it isn’t the “Lords of Karma” or the stars or any other unimpeachable types that determine
when and how evil strikes – it is something in particular populations that tolerates it, for whatever reason.
Evil preys on life, so where it turns up and turns up and turns up, it’s targeting a certain part of a
population on a consistent basis – otherwise it would go after everybody and would either kill everyone
off or be done in itself by an outraged populace. So the population “decides,” on some level, that some
genotypes are “disposable,” that they can afford to throw them away to the predator, in exchange for
whatever (safety? goodies?), and so so. As it happens, apparently the natal horoscope in large parts
corresponds to the genotype, or certain parts of it, so you can tell by horoscopes who’s likely to be
targeted this way, and who isn’t (the astrological markers may or may not vary from culture to culture
and species to species – that’s one of the things that should be studied). So: why does a culture or a
species tolerate having so many of its members preyed on by the utterly alien like that, over so long a
time, and why does it select those it does as “throw-aways”? Those are things we could study, the qui
bono stuff, pure cost-benefit analysis. Screw motives – let’s look at “Who profits?” and “Who loses?”!!

*******

Subj: Re: ?
Date: 96-06-06 17:15:38 EDT
From: Polaris93
To: itachi@crl.com

In a message dated 96-06-05 19:41:15 EDT, you write:

>‘Fraid I can’t help on this one: my past training & experience was focused,
>shall we say, on getting things done in the here & now rather than on
>them what’s gone on to the hereafter. . .ds
>
>

Not the hereafter. Evocation is really aimed at the psyche of the Magickian – it’s just that it’s far more
effective than standard psychotherapy for certain purposes. Sort of like the difference between a gun and
persuasion – and if you’re dealing with a rogue elephant, persuasion isn’t really very useful! Anyway,
whether these are spirits of dead souls or complexes within the psyche or both, they work through the
psyche, and that’s the problem. Evocation tears up the access routes and closes them down for good. It’s
about the most useful thing you can do with evocation – “controlling spirits” is a bit dicey for me, as far
as enlisting them to do things for you, but when it comes to making something go away and stay away, or
yield up all its energy and cease to have a foothold in the psyche, which is about the same thing for my
purposes, it doesn’t cross the lines of what is due, proper, and handle-able. I think. I hope. Because
whatever it is I’ve been fighting, psychotherapy never worked – only getting at the primary sources does,
and that looks as if it’s gonna take some firepower, as it were.

*******

Hi –
I got to thinking, why shouldn’t something useful come out of the sort of work I do as a telephone
psychic, working for a psychic hot-line? So why not some real entertainment –Astral 911, the first sit-
com about psychic hot-lines? (Between the clients I get and the stuff the company pulls on us, I’ve
already got enough material for the next six seasons . . .) If you know of anyone who could use
something like this, and would PAY, let me know . . .

– Yael

PS: Somebody else said it all when it comes to The Celestine Prophecy: “You mean a forest died to
publish this thing?!” – <sigh> . . . why can’t I come up with lines like that . . .

*******

Sylvia –
I’ve found it useful to assign parts of the Old Testament to each of the Planets. For example, each of
the 10 Plagues of Egypt from Exodus 9+ can be assigned to one of the Planets from Luna outward to
Pluto. The Seven Days of Creation in Genesis can each be assigned to one of the 7 traditional Planets.
But what assignments go with the Outer Planets (beyond three of the Plagues)? Well, Uranus could be
assigned to the Four Gospels, Neptune to everything else in the New Testament exclusive of the Book of
Revelations, and Pluto to the Book of Revelations itself. Also, Uranus could be assigned to the New
Testament, Neptune to all major Jewish writings since the beginning of the Christian Era, and the Koran
to Pluto. Or whatever seems suitable.
What astrological associations might be made for, e.g., The Book of Mormon, Mary Baker Eddy’s
Key to Science and the Scriptures (Christian Science), the Ba’hai faith (which has much the same
relationship to Islam that Christianity does to Old Testament Judaism, and other modern faiths?
Wouldn’t these be associated with the Outer Planets, or even trans-Plutonian Planets? How about Afro-
American Christianity, which is as much a libertarian movement as it is Christian?
Dante’s Divine Comedy has a very highly articulate astrological architecture throughout. And
though in Dante’s time only the 7 traditional Planets were known, there is still room in them for the Outer
Planets. In the Inferno, the traditional 7 Planets, from Luna through Saturn, are respectively associated
with Circles 1-7 of the Inferno. But there are 2 more Circles, 8 and 9, then the Center/Satan/Exit from
Inferno – and Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto can be respectively associated with these. Similar comparisons
can be made out of his Purgatorio and Paradiso.
Has anyone done a thorough study of such astrological associations, correspondences, and
rulerships? If so, I’d be delighted to hear about them, for my own research. Thanks,

*******

Sylvia –
I’ve been reading a book which discusses in detail the reality represented by Chiron. It is a book by
Judith Lewis Herman, M.D., titled Trauma and Recovery (NY: Basic Books/HarperSanFrancisco, 1992).
Among other things, it discusses the repetition patterns common to people who have undergone chronic
terrorization and abuse, and analyzes it in terms of a model of organic response to trauma by which such
repetitive returns to the wounding seem to be unsuccessful attempts at self-healing by the wounded
person. That is, the organism attempts to heal itself by gaining mastery over the thing that wounded it,
and can only do this by returning again and again to something like the original wounding situation and
once more attempting to master the thing that did the wounding. This is seen in the lives of people who
have been political prisoners, battered wives, chronically terrorized and abused children, Holocaust
survivors, Vietnam vets – people who have suffered chronic forms of every type of life-threatening and
terrorizing situation. The psychology of such survivors is typical of Chiron-prominent natives who are on
the “wounded” side of the Chiron dynamic, while their victimizers are typical of natives on the
“wounder” side of it. Which leads one to ask: Is Chiron prominent in the charts of famous victims, e.g.,
Patty Hearst, the victims of Ted Bundy and Jeff Dahmer, etc.? Is it prominent in the charts of victimizers
such as Adolph Eichmann, General “Hersheybar” Hersey of the Vietnam War, J. Edgar Hoover, George
Bush, Torquemada? Is Chiron prominent in the charts of people who embrace the idea that all evil is
explainable and excusable as the result of “bad karma” on the victim’s part, whether they are themselves
victims or victimizers? The psychology of Chiron seems to be very prominent in the lives and minds of
those who have suffered chronic trauma, as described in this book, as well as in those who have
traumatized them, and a study of the astrology of chronic traumatization, e.g., in the lives of battered
wives, brutalized children, political prisoners, war veterans, concentration-camps survivors, other
chronically terrorized, brutalized people, and those who have traumatized them might yield some
interesting results. I have in mind a statistical study, rather than one of individuals per se, because I have
an idea that a statistical survey would throw some fascinating light on some of the sociopathologies of
Western civilization, especially the ones that harm us all and could ultimately do enormous damage even
to our Planet.
I suggest that the planetoid Chiron was finally discovered only when Western civilization was
getting ready to confront and expose the ghastly reality of epidemic, aggravated, chronic terrorization
and traumatization of children, women, the elderly, and minority populations and begin to do something
about it. If so, Chiron represents the whole of the paradigm of chronic victim/chronic victimizer – and
may also give us clues to eliminating this pervasive evil as a collective phenomenon. Of course we will
never be able to prevent isolated cases of it from happening here and there – evil is persistent, and there
are no absolute guarantees against it. But we do not need to build and maintain our whole civilization on
it as its foundation and fuel – the longer we do that, in fact, the farther down dat ol’ proverbial Slipper
Slope we skid, and the less chance we have to reverse our course and make for safety before all hope is
gone. Maybe Chiron will offer us some clues as to how to get out of this collective mess Western
civilization has got itself and us into. Let’s hope something does – because otherwise, the ultimate
signature of our civilization may be a mushroom cloud signaling Ragnarok, and a radioactive slag-heap
where a living world used to be.
Anyway, if anyone has anything to add to this, glad to hear it. And maybe somebody will find Dr.
Herman’s book useful in looking at some of the details of what Chiron represents.

A few more thoughts on Chiron:

Chiron is associated with both Saturn and Uranus. Uranus is associated with viruses. The things that
are good for viruses aren’t necessarily good for us. What viruses like include such things as hosts with
chronically depressed immune systems; extremely large, dense populations of their hosts; easy
vectoring – the easiest is sex, and the best is sexual vectoring to a very young host, one who is likely to
live a good long while and pass the virus on to lots of people; and confused, demoralized hosts that can’t
understand what’s wrong with them (the virus) and who thus aren’t very likely to develop a way of
getting rid of it once and for all. Isn’t it curious that Chiron is associated with such things as
concentration-camp survivors (crowded conditions), battered wives and children and other victims (who
generally have permanently depressed immune systems, and find it hard to defend themselves at need
from things other than infectious disease, because of chronic demoralization, as well), sexually abused
children and prostitutes (sexual vectoring), and so many other things that are good for viruses but not for
human beings? And these things are so wide-spread, and so pervasive – it’s almost as if our civilization
has taken its current form not for our benefit, but for those of certain viruses to which we are hosts!
Certainly Chiron, whose orbit is between the orbits of two Outer Planets, Saturn and Uranus, is a
Planet of the collective, and not of the individual. Thus it can have little or nothing to do with an
individual’s “karma”; its function must have to do with the functioning of societies and ecosystems, even
of our living world as a whole. So those who show Chiron’s mark, as either chronic victim or chronic
victimizer or both, are “chosen” for this not according to “karma” or other sin/punishment criteria, but
instead for their suitability as instruments of the collective. We have to ask: is it a strictly human
collective which they are chosen to serve? Or is something else going on? Since so often, the
chronically traumatized often themselves become victimizers – e.g., abused children growing up to
become abusers – both victim and victimizer may be serving the best interests of something that isn’t
human at all, and has nothing to do with the “karma” of either of them.
Is Chiron an indicator of viruses that have lived with us ever since the beginning of the hominidae,
millions of years ago? Or since the existence of the first large, dense populations of human beings, only
thousands of years ago? Viruses that have learned somehow to trigger certain behaviors in us which,
directed at others of our own kind, serve the interests of those viruses (to vector them onward and
whatever else), but not ours? Viruses that use victimizers to “initiate” victims into host-hood by rape
and/or chronic terrorization, preparing the victims to become hosts so that they may themselves, in turn,
become victimizers and infect new victims later on?
Western astrology so often seems to be based on the tacit assumption that individual human beings
live in social and moral vacuums, and human populations live in ecological vacuums, so that no one’s
fate is tied in any way to anyone – or anything – else’s. I think it’s time that astrology came to look at
the way in which the individual is embedded in his or her society, and in which that society is embedded
in the whole living world, and the consequences of that embedding. When that embedding isn’t
ecologically sound – and in the West, it is almost never healthy – the result is sociopathology, ecological
pathology, epidemiological pathology, moral pathology on all levels. Chiron is probably our first strong
indicator of where that embedding has gone wrong, and the consequences of it, whether epidemic viral
infections that affect our interrelationships with one another, our mates, our children, total strangers,
everyone on a vast scale in the most terrible ways, or simply behavior so ecologically stupid it may lead
us to destroy our own world and render ourselves extinct.
The healing of Chiron’s wound always requires a paradigm shift. The problem it presents can’t be
solved until we change the whole way we look at the world, become conscious of the basic principles of
our world-view and begin to question those and ask what they might better be replaced with. The moral
wound of collective evil in the form of epidemic terrorization of women, children, ethnic out-groups,
gender out-groups, and non-human organisms that is rampant in our civilization can’t be eliminated as
long as we regard it solely as a problem of individual responsibility, of individuals in vacuo, even of just
of collectivities of human beings. We have to ask: what else could be going on here? and then follow up
whatever comes from
that question, to see if the answers have anything to do with the present situation. Chiron has to do with
such paradigm shifts – and by studying Chiron from every possible angle, Western astrology may truly
come of age, become a true sociobiological science.
As Dr. Herman says in Trauma and Recovery, it is typical of chronically terrorized and traumatized
individuals to blame themselves and those like themselves for what has been done to them, because they
can’t do anything about their tormentors, and have a tremendous need to feel as if they had some control
over their own situation. By blaming themselves for the evils inflicted on them, psychologically they
feel they are standing outside of their suffering, and have some measure of control over it. All too often,
they stuck at this stage of things, even after they have somehow gotten away from their tormentors. And
as long as they are stuck there, they can’t heal. What it takes to really begin healing is to find some way
of effectively changing their situation for the better – e.g., discovering an effective weapon and a way to
use it to bring about their own deliverance, or a means of escape, ditto, whatever, and using it to get out
from under the horror.
Western occultism has gotten stuck in a “blame the victim” mode for far too long. Occultists – who,
so much of the time, themselves have been chronically traumatized individuals, abused children, battered
wives, etc. – have gotten into the habit of blaming every evil under the sun on the “karma,” individual
and collective, of the victims. This is typical of the chronically traumatized – they see themselves in
every victim, and all too often, all they can do to ward off the agony they feel in empathy with the victim
is to blame the latter for whatever has happened to him or her. In this way, they distance themselves
emotionally from the victim, because by making such a judgment of the other, one automatically assigns
to oneself a position of moral rectitude, the lofty peak of felt blamelessness it is necessary to climb in
spirit in order to be able to judge. “I am not as him, because I can see how sinful he is.” The reaction is
as understandable as it is deplorable – and it is the reaction of someone who feels utterly helpless to do
anything truly effective to change things, to truly eliminate evil, of a person who is, inside, the eternal
victim him- or herself.
Unfortunately, all too many astrologers have taken up this same “New Age” attitude: evil exists only
because the victim somehow wants it, or deserves it. Well, maybe it’s time we got over that attitude,
isn’t it? As long as we cultivate it, we can do absolutely nothing to change the world for the better and
eliminate such evils, because that attitude buys into those evils by excusing them. “If it happens, it
should happen.” To quote Admiral Chester Nimitz, in his reply to Admiral Tojo’s demand for
unconditional surrender to Japan of the US fleet during World War II: “NUTS.” No, we don’t have to
buy into it, and maybe we can do something about it – and maybe Chiron can help show us the way.
That is what I would like to see at least some astrologers do: explore that idea, test it against the world
and as many charts as possible, now and throughout history, and see what comes up.
I was born 3/20/45, at 5:48 p.m. PWT, in Pasadena, California. I have Chiron at 0° Libra, conjunct
Neptune in Libra and Pallas in Virgo, in the First House opposite my 0° Aries Sun in the 7th, both square
a Luna/Eros/Saturn/Juno stellium in Cancer in the 10th. And I am here to tell you, people, NUTS! I have
had it with being a victim, and I have had it with tolerating evil of any kind, and with any idea that we
have to live in a hellish world! Sure, bad things happen, bad things will always happen. That’s entropy.
But deliberate, willed evil on a collective scale that threatens ultimately to total our whole world – no
way! I finally took up the study of Zen combat arts because I got tired of being everybody’s favorite
door-mat – I’m not at all confrontational, I don’t like scenes, I hate causing scenes, but I finally decided,
I will not be walked on, assaulted, violated, insulted, my rights trampled on by everyone and everything
any more, and I will learn how to defend myself at need. And you know what? Ever since, I have had
the most enjoyable precipitate drop in the sort of horrors that were the substance and sum of my life up
until then. If that is what happens when someone who is, astrologically speaking, almost an avatar of
Chiron decides to take a stand and not get walked on, maybe that is a hint as to what Chiron is trying to
tell us: things can change, we can help change them, truly, effective – but we can’t do it by being only
“spiritual warriors.” As Hillel taught:

If I am not for myself, who will be?

If I am for myself alone, what then am I?
If not now – when?

Notice which comes first. Before you can be for others, you’d better be able to be for yourself, and you’d
best do it now. Remember: Jesus of Nazareth was no wimp! He whipped the money-changers out of the
temple, and it took a large pack of Roman soldiers to take him off to be crucified. “Gentle Jesus meek
and mild” is a p.r. agent’s dream – but it doesn’t reflect the Gospels. So “being a follower of the Great
Teacher” isn’t a good excuse for embracing and cherishing learned helplessness, either. No matter what
your religion, you can’t do anything about the evils that beset us all, including you yourself, by living in
a fantasy of “surrounding myself with White Light” and “being above violence [i.e., self-defense].”
Chiron was, after all, a warrior and a teacher of some of the greatest warriors and kings of his world. He
didn’t incur his terrible wound as a warrior, he got it trying to heal someone else – so being “good,” in
the sense of doing good for others and avoiding war, is no guarantee that one can avoid being hurt,
either!)
An interesting example of Chiron’s influence in a particular natus, in this case, mine (5:48 p.m.
PWT, March 20, 1945, Pasadena, California): Something interesting about Chiron. When I was small, I
witnessed my adoptive father kill someone with a gun while he was in an altered personality state. It
may have happened more than once, and he may have threatened me with the gun. Guns were thus part
of my Chironic Wound. In 1993, about two years before my Chiron return, I began learning how to use
guns for target-shooting, and bought my first gun, a Taurus 85 snubnosed .38 – which I named Chiron,
not sure why at the time. Target-shooting was great fun, and now I have a little more ability to take care
of myself should I be faced with a dangerous assailant, as well. Thought you might like the following
story, in that context:

*******

Subj: Hi – good news for a change

Date: 96-06-11 15:42:49 EDT
From: Polaris93
To: itachi@crl.com

Dale & Teri –

Good news, for a change – I went over to Wade’s Indoor Gun Range for a 4-hour course on handgun
safety taught by Ginnie Lyford, got to do some shooting as part of the course. The instructors – Ginny
and her assistant – were quite pleased with all of us. I definitely prefer the semi-autos, now, at least for
target-shooting – they had us all try a .44 magnum as well as some other heavy pieces, along with a
Glock* and other auto-loaders, and while I’d much prefer the magnum for home defense (or bears,
maybe), I’ll
stick to the Glock et al to improve my aim on the range, most of the time! :)

*”When a better semiautomatic pistol is invented, it will be invented by Gaston Glock.”

Finally have a name for a lot of what’s wrong with me: – post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Ultimately it’s apparently tied to the stuff my adoptive father did to me – but the worst of it is almost
certainly associated with his “alter,” or more than one of his multiple personalities, which may not have
been named “George Dingle.” Even so, it’s a way of getting at it. I think the women’s gun-safety course
– there were only women in it – is a good way of repairing some of the damage done to me as a child as
far as my social development went. – I know, I know it is! Here were all these nice, kind, polite women,
training to use handguns, some of them outright cannons – like I said to somebody there, “This is the
Mad Rapist’s worst nightmare – a room filled with Dames With Guns!” :) Anyway, it was a lovely
experience, very civilized people teaching one another empowerment and being friendly, rather than one
or two Big Nurses or whatever other type of Social Worker, teaching women how to be slaves. (An
awful lot of the rest of the traumatization I’ve gone through has been what nurses, psychiatric techs,
psychiatrists, social workers, etc. have done to me – almost always impersonally, and right along with
everyone else in their charge. Like a medicalized version of the theocracy in Heinlein’s Revolt in 2100
or something.)
Since I’m by no means the only woman who ever went that sort of chronic traumatization, either the
sort my adoptive father and his cronies put me through or the sort of training-to-be-cattle I was put
through by the system later, maybe a lot of women should try this sort of course. Ginny also offers a 6-
hours self-defense course over at Wade’s and a lot of other places, costs about $98 total, if I can ever
afford it I’m going to take it; that course, too, probably would be perfect for a lot of women who’ve been
through things similar to what I have.
 Odd thing – it’s as if the recoil of the gun somehow imparted energy to the person using it! I came
out the Range feeling better than I have in months, as if I were way down in vitamin B12 and had just had
a vast injection of it or something! :) I still feel one hell of a lot better this morning than I did two days
ago.
Oh – Ginny talked about something you mentioned once, why do cinematic poster-makers and TV
producers show their stars holding guns close up to their faces, the muzzles touching their chins?!! It’s
about the stupidest pose in the world – you could shoot your face off really easy! As I’d theorized, and
Ginny said, it really is because it makes for a dramatic-looking pose, and in still shots, e.g., for posters, it
works a lot better than the sort of shot you’d need to get their beautiful faces in the same photo as the gun
if they were in a correct stance for it. The photographer wants to get the face and the gun in the same
photo, and the gun-muzzle-under-the-chin shot shows both off to great advantage, much more so than
about anything else they could do. So . . . :-/
Thought you’d enjoy hearing about it. Take care, love,

*******

Natural Magick

When it comes to the destructive potentials of Magick, think of all organisms like you should think
about all guns, and treat them accordingly. There is no such thing as an unarmed gun, as many have
discovered to their horror, picking one up and playing with it and finding out too late that it was armed.
Similarly, the capacity for Magickally “unarmed” idiots to wreak havoc is infinite. Think of any little
kid out of his or her – even worse, her mind with rage and/or grief and what he/she can do with a “mere”
wish, in that case. It doesn’t happen often – but when it does, the Bomb isn’t even in it for potential
destructive power! And within us all is a little kid – the one we began as, the one that does not “know”
and never will that “Magick doesn’t work” and “it’s only a superstition,” the one that was born a master
of Magick and will remain so forever, in spite of the worst his/her culture tries to do to his/her spirit.
Even the stupidest, most Magickally ignorant and inept adult will revert to the Perfect Magickal Master
under enough stress and provocation. Be careful whom you piss off – you just never know . . .

*******

From: Yael R. Dragwyla

To: General editor, Discover Magazine

Dear editor:

Just received the July 1996 issue of Discover, which I am reading with much pleasure. I was especially
interested in an mini-article included in your “Breakthroughs” column on p. 32, “NO in the Nose.” For
years, I’ve suffered from sinusitis as well as phlegm in the lungs that has been extremely bothersome to
me, and which has at times been rather scary because my body wasn’t able to get enough oxygen to meet
its needs at the time. It has also kept me from sleeping soundly, and there are times when I’m quite
exhausted because of many days in a row of that sort of sleep-disturbance. I wonder: is it possible that
my sinuses aren’t producing enough nitrous oxide? And could this have something to do with severe
asthma and many other respiratory conditions? I have found that taking about 100-300 mg of niacin – a
vasodilator – often markedly improves my breathing, clearing my sinuses and my lungs for awhile,
making it far easier to breathe, and to sleep. This implies that possibly the problem in my case is that my
sinuses don’t produce quite enough nitrous oxide, a condition which may account for many cases of
asthma and other respiratory problems, as well. It might be productive for someone to investigate this –
if such research proved fruitful, it might lead to ways of treating sufferers from such conditions that are
much more effective, with fewer side-effects and at far lower cost, than conventional treatments for
them.
Thank you for a thought-provoking presentation about sinus-generated nitrous oxide! As always,
your magazine does not fail to delight and inspire new ways of looking at things that could turn out to be
extremely valuable.
Sincerely,
 Lvg. (Ms) Yael R. Dragwyla, KSG

*******

Notes: Visions of Inferno

Perpetrators of evil done to children under the ice in the 9th Circle; their small victims boiling in the
Lake of Blood (Acheron) in the 7th, filled with unsatisfied malice and outrage because of the evil and
injustice done to them, because there is no way to explain to them why it happened or reason with them,
they are too small
Some reach hell by their own design; some, by the malice of others
Within each of us is a small child, and every child is born a Master of Magick. That we can dream,
create, imagine shows that each of us contains a spark of the Divine in us; that spark can do Magick.
When we hate collectively, we do maleficent Magick collectively – and by it we put those we hate into
Hell. And sometimes – maybe a lot of the time – our targets are inappropriate. But they end up in Hell
nonetheless.
To believe in anyone’s idea of Hell literally is to miss the point. Hell is the spiritual consequence of
a hellish life, whether because one was perpetrator or victim. Each culture has its own symbolism, and
Hell appears differently for members of different cultures. But the condition of the soul in Hell remains
the same, however the symbolism varies. To take any given idea of Hell literally is to take the map for
the territory – but to reject the notion of Hell altogether is to make the mistake of deciding that the
territory is only imaginary because the maps for it are “only” symbols.

If Dante were alive today, where would he find those who destroy children for their own profit and
pleasure? Where those who would destroy the whole world just to give themselves a power-rush, a boost
to the ego? Where the ecological devastators, and those who promote nuclear war? I think these things
go beyond the worst of Dante’s Inferno – yet I think he was onto something with his infernal architecture,
which so closely follows the Qlipphotic version of the Tree of Life, with its 9 Circles (anti-Malkuth to
anti-Chokmah) and Center (anti-Kether). So these things are found somewhere in his Inferno – an old but
sufficiently sturdy bottle for new wine, an old but strong architecture for new inmates. The Collective
Unconscious is the interface between ourselves on Earth and the realms of Spirit, whether good or evil
(or is the reverse true?). What can come out of it can be found in Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso – and evil
comes out of the Collective Unconscious as surely as good. So what we know on Earth here and now has
its reflections in all the realms, obverse and converse. Even so, we will find new faces on evil, new kinds
of evil in the Inferno, though on the same old ground, adapted for new purposes in the same way that the
environment evolves to accommodate new climatic conditions and new inhabitants. Think of Dante’s
scheme of Inferno as something like the coordinate system on a map, coordinates of spiritual latitude and
longitude reckoned in the form of the Circles and Rounds (position in any given one of them is the
longitude) and the steady descent downward (the depth is the latitude). Just as distance from the Earth’s
north pole (latitude) does not change even though the continents move across the face of the Earth due to
plate tectonics, so a sin has its place in Hell according to its seriousness (latitude, depth in Inferno) and
symbolic nature at that depth (place in a Circle, longitude), The latitude is measured relative to
something objective (depth of Hell, seriousness of sin, gravity of wound against the Holy Spirit); the
longitude is arbitrary, measured relative to an arbitrary standard, like Greenwich 0 (cultural
understanding of the nature of a sin in symbolic terms). A good example of this is the novel Swan Song
by Robert R. McCammon, an American and non-sectarian version of The Divine Comedy in the form of
a modern science-fiction novel.

*******

In a message dated 96-06-15 11:31:42 EDT, MERLIN1246 writes:

<< Yael, another response to your question. . .. . ...

<<
Dear Merl,
 Regarding “bad things happening to good people” syndrome. I don’t know that this is an “abductee”
thing - I very seriously doubt it. I think this is a pattern for a LOT of people’s lives. It seems like the
lesson to be learned in these types of lives is how to overcome obstacles. This story goes all the way
back to poor ol’ Job in the Bible. It really stinks when it’s your life this happens to. But it seems that
luck of this type runs in threes, and I suggest that once the third ‘trial’ is over, the pendulum will swing
the other way. Hugs, Ruth >>

I don’t think it’s an abductee thing. Rather, I think “abductees” are one class of a much larger group of
people all of whom have impossibly long and bad “runs of bad luck” which, statistically speaking, can’t
be defended as being just “bad luck,” but for which no known, understood cause or reason exists. As an
Hermeticist, I do know that due either to what they themselves do or others do to them, people are often
trapped in “currents” of directed energy, due to which their lives get progressively better or worse, as if
some will not their own, outside themselves, were behind it. Occultists have studied such phenomena for
far longer than we have good records, perhaps as long as human beings have been around, a million years
or more. Maybe this is something intrinsic to living organisms of all kinds, not just our species, because
of the underlying biophysical principles of the living world. However such “currents” arise, sometimes
as the consequences of the “target’s” own actions, sometimes not, they can either make life heavenly or a
living hell. In my own case, it seems to have started at around the time of my birth, due to activities in
which my adoptive father was then engaged (he was a dabbler in the occult, and used me later in some of
his “experiments”). Leftovers from that time, as it were, still plague me. And they do resemble the sort
of hell so many contactees go through, too, as if UFOs and their associated intelligences, wherever their
physical origin, had
something in common with the weird beings, intelligences, and phenomena with which occultists have
been dealing for so long. So for what it’s worth . . .
:)

*******

In a message dated 96-06-17 20:30:07 EDT, you write:

<< << But I’ve had too many people close to me die in too many ugly ways, too
many losses of records by colleges and government agencies, and so on and on
and on. Some of it is no accident – but what is causing it, and why, is
something I’m still completely in the dark about after 51 years. You tell
me! :>>
>>
You’ve convinced me – “some” of your bad luck may be contrived – by others. But who, Bryson?? >>

I honestly don’t know. It’s as if my adoptive father and other people who’ve messed me over during my
life – including Bryson – were related to one another and to the way my life has gone the way the fingers
of a hand are to the hand itself and what that hand is doing. Trouble is, what the hand is, I have no idea.
If you accept the idea that viruses can be sentient, maybe all of them have had the same virus, and it was
out to get me – but why on Earth? Again, I have no idea. Occultists call the sort of sequence of horrors
I’ve gone through a “current” of energy, such as chi energy or Kundalini, and clearly a lot of it, and the
effects it has had on me, are like those which contactees often go through (though as far as I know, I’ve
never actually encountered an honest-to-God UFO or been abducted by its inhabitants). I have, all along,
sensed a truly horrendous, deliberate malice, a sort of mind and will, that has gone with it, always the
same thing, but with somewhat differing expressions, as if it worked through the people who’ve done me
so much harm, from birth on. But what it is, I don’t know. Maybe whatever I can tell you about it could
be of help to those doing research on contactee experiences – maybe a lot of the latter are just different
expressions of the former. What do you think?
– Yael

PS: I’m so utterly, utterly sick of cruelty. I’ve been fed off by the malice of other – what? I’m not sure.
All my life long it’s gone on, and I can’t even die. Now my roommate is pulling this “I’m going to
torment you for things you haven’t even done, and never tell you why, ever, and get all my friends to
punish you, too!” jazz again, and so this morning I did something, an evocation to set up an enormous
counter-current to deal with it. If there are demons, then there are things that feed on demons – and I just
let loose, not a current, but a damned tsunami of something to feed on that. Like the Dutch chopping
down their dikes and letting in the sea when the British tried to invade them. If it works – I wonder how
it will manifest? If it isn’t just me that this whatever-it-has-been has been after, there may be more than a
few assholes out there that get the surprise of their lives. If not – well, if it gets me too, and I can finally
rest, I’d like that. I don’t know what it is or why it has been after me all my life long – like the astral
equivalent of little boys tormenting a stray dog. There’s no one at all who gives a damn who can get to
the bottom of it or stop these things – except the sea. I can let in the sea. And I just did. So if you notice
anything odd happening to various people who richly deserve it – and believe me, if this isn’t just me, it
would show up all over the place! like, in the national media – well, maybe it worked. Take care, love,

*******

June 18, 1996

Subj: :(
Date: 96-06-18 23:25:44 EDT
From: Polaris93
To: MERLIN1246
CC:

Merl –
At this point, you’re probably wondering why I keep blowing up as I do. Truly, I have hair-trigger
nerves. I’ve spent my life in no relationships at all, yet constantly beaten up and knocked around,
emotionally and sometimes physically, by various people and things. I’ve just begun reading The
Batterers by Donald G. Dutton (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), a study of abusive men, how they get that
way, and the way society deals with it. As far as the two-legged parts of it go, the profiles given in the
book of typical abusers (there are three main types) fit so many of the idiots who’ve made my life hell to
a T. The scariest kind are those described by psychologist Neil S. Jacobson as “vagal reactors” (vagal
refers to the vagus nerve, which conducts impulses between the brain and the muscles of the throat, heart,
and abdomen). As Dutton says:

Usually when we’re upset, we experience an autonomic response: our

hearts race, our palms become sweaty, our breathing turns quick and
shallow, our stomachs churn. Vagal reactors don’t respond in this way.
In fact, their internal reactions become cool and controlled when they
are engaged in heated arguments with their wives.

(Ibid., p. 28)

In his 1993 keynote address to the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, Jacobson
said:

We were astonished to find that about 20 percent of our batterers

actually showed a decline in heart rate during the course of the
nonviolent argument. In other words, some of these batterers
became calm internally despite their emotionally aggressive
behavior. This disconnection between physiology and
behavior was something none of us had ever observed, and it
makes no intuitive sense. They look aroused, they act aroused,
but on the inside they are getting calmer and calmer.
Furthermore, the batterers who showed this heart rate
decrease were the most belligerent and contemptuous toward
their wives. . . . The ‘disconnected’ group showed the highest
rates of violence outside the marriage, and were the most likely
to have reported violence in their family of origin.

(Ibid.)
According to Jacobson, about 20 percent of all batterers and half of all antisocial personalities are vagal
reactors.

Dutton says of this:

Vagal reactors might be the velociraptors of intimate violence. They function like
trained martial artists, cool and composed, with a suppressed autonomic reactions while
highly alert and tuned to the environment. As Jacobson explained, ‘instead of being out
of control, our most severe subgroup of batterers were like ‘autonomic athletes,’
actively controlling their level of arousal so that they can focus their attention on their
wives, presumably so that aggression can have the maximal effect.’ Their violence is
instrumental and controlled. It has the purpose of controlling and dominating the other
person, and it is cunningly expressed to achieve this end.

(Ibid., pp. 28-29)

This, by the way, is what Bryson was like with respect to the whole world. Now I think that he
probably asked me to be his “teacher” (he had originally found my card in a feminist bookstore) in the
occult because he figured (from the sort of statements he made about society and the world in general)
that because I studied and taught Magick, I had to be a “marginal person” whose life and death nobody
would give a damn about, so he’d be quite safe in targeting me for ruining my life and then, perhaps,
finally killing me in some creative and interesting way. Sort of like Hannibal Lector (who, by the way, I
later found out was one of his heroes). As he got older, his control started to slip, he got ulcers, he ate
tummy-mints like candy and got horrible kidney-stones (served him right) and so on and on – but he kept
right on “recreationally tantrumming,” because that was his charge. He liked that better than sex.
My adoptive father was another sort, overcontrolled and with a multiple personality. My ex-
landlord, Kevin, was like that, too.
The thing is, if you’re female and you get targeted early on, as I was by my adoptive father and his
buddies, as a kickball and sex-toy, the world sort of writes you off then and there, and never really writes
you back on again. You get so you can spot the monsters and avoid them, may even get good enough at
combat arts to be able to trash a predator’s butt if and when one tries something. But no one who gets to
know you personally really ever likes you, feels close to you, has much affection for you – people are
strongly repelled, turned off by survivors of post-traumatic stress syndrome. It’s understandable why: to
survive as a child, you had to learn a way of living and behaving socially that kept you alive in your
world, one with no core of experience of a loving, protective parent or anyone else, one badly distorted
and warped with respect to what would be appropriate for normal life. In short, your behavior and
appearance – in terms of the way your facial muscles behave and your posture – become ugly and stay
that way, even if you superficially resemble a model. You give off all the wrong signals, your life long,
and people take you for a freak.
More than that, though, people collectively have a way of “tracking” people – once they get used to
you one way, if you ever try to change, ever try to make a different sort of life for yourself or change
your patterns in any significant way, they make life hell for you, with everything from ostracism to overt
cruelty, battery, even murder. If you think I’m kidding, look at the work of every sociologist and social
psychologist from Emil Durkheim to Jeff Masson and Alice Miller, all of whom worked directly from
authentic field data, often right out of the files of police departments of major cities around the world.
As individuals, all other things being equal, most of us are good people – but put us in a situation in
which our evolutionary history is given its head, such as a mob or any other situation in which the
collective is king, even the small nuclear family, and we quickly turn into genetically controlled robots
and we don’t even know it. And often, what our genes have us do makes us outright sons of bitches. You
have to know you’re doing it at the time to make yourself stop it – and even then, it’s very hard. I know
– underneath, however freaky I may seem, I am as much an heir to the Old Adam as anyone! :] Anyway,
what this boils down to is: if you change, you’re a freak; if you don’t change, you’re a freak; and
neither God nor humanity wants it any different. Ultimately, you don’t change because if you do, it’s
like admitting that the people (?) who messed you over on a chronic basis when you were a tiny child
were right to do what they did to you [or that, because you are “wrong” to be the way you are now, you
are therefore wrong to have developed into it, which you did to survive what happened to you as a child,
and therefore you are wrong to have survived that, and therefore you should be dead, and you are wrong
not be dead now, you should have died at the hands of the perps who did all those things to you], that it’s
your fault for being the way you are, and that you should change to prove you’re being “good,” to show
you’ve “reformed.” And that’s more than most people can ever go – hardly anyone has so little self-
respect, so little sense of their own dignity, so little regard for face. So even if you could stop being a
freak – and after so many years of being one, with no early training in or encouragement to be anything
else, that’s almost impossible – you don’t, because you don’t want to sell your soul.
So the only people (?) who want anything to do with you are predators, because they think you’re an
easy feed (who would care what happened to you, after all?) and other freaks (and if you have anything
to you at all, you don’t want them).
And when you’ve lived long enough that way, you finally accept that it will never change, except to
get worse, that you should never have been born, that the kindest thing anyone could ever have done for
you is to have euthenized you at about age 6, because by the time you were that age, it was an iron-clad
certainty that you could never have a life worth living. You live in constant pain, and you know, if you
have any connection with reality left, that it will never be any other way, except to get worse. That’s bad
enough. When, in addition, you get caught up in a “current” of the sort I’ve described before when
you’re very small, and all your life long something comes between you and every possible chance at
happiness, up to and including somehow contriving to kill anyone halfway decent who might fall in love
with you (one in a car accident, one shipped to ‘Nam, where he bought the farm in a very ugly way), your
cats, your ferret, your best friend in the most horrible ways, keeping about $4500 worth of advertising
from drawing any business in a city where it virtually has to draw at least enough to pay for itself,
making every paying publisher who accepts your work go immediately out of business, and otherwise
creating an absolutely impossible 45-year long run of “bad luck” in every area of life – how do you fight
it? There can’t be human conspiracies out there to get me, as an individual. In the first place, I’ve never
had any such importance – why bother? In the second, arranging a lot of that garbage not only would
have been physically impossible, it also depended upon decisions made by various people involved, e.g.,
my dead fiancé and friend, etc. that put them in those situations n the first place – if they hadn’t made the
decisions they did, they’d probably still be alive. Did they conspire against themselves? No way. So I
have no idea what the mechanics of all this is, the who, what, how – only the effects have been visible.
Those absolutely shout “Magickal current” to anyone involved in the occult for very long – but who set it
in place? And why? None of it makes sense.
I can’t fight the invisible and the unknown. I can, if I’m lucky, hold out until it is destroyed – but
since I don’t know what it is, I have no idea what my chances of doing that are. And whatever would
destroy it? Not knowing what it is, how can I know what might destroy it? It’s like trying to find a black
cat in Carlsbad Caves at midnight without a lamp in sight, when you’re stone-deaf and can’t hear the cat
if it does meow.
It’s gone on since I was born in 1945. It won’t end until I die. And I have no idea why. None at all.
So if you run across anything in your work or research that might give me a handle on this, believe
me, I’d love to know! I’m sorry to dump on you, Merl – it’s just that if this goes on much longer, I’m not
so much worried that it will kill me is that it won’t, and instead drive me mad, so that I’d lose what little I
have. I’m so tired, so exhausted. I wish I could just go to sleep and never wake up – not to die, just
never to be this tired and in pain again. The pain is “only” “brain-pain,” from a badly malfunctioning
nervous system, but it still hurts like hell. And it never stops. If you run across anything that I could use
to maybe make it stop, please let me know – I mean, like what I’m fighting and how to fight it! At least,
Lord, give me a true fighting chance!

*******

Merl –
Something that struck me as I was writing the last thingee, which may have some sort of bearing on
why psychotherapy so often doesn’t work. Victims of chronic terrorization, torment, and assault when
they are children survive only because they somehow adapt, and if the need for the adaptation goes on
long enough, the behaviors and psychology it forces become permanent. They make the adaptation out
of their own inner resources, their greatest and most important creative act, and have a right to be proud
of it. Later, they seem “weird” because of this adaptation, which comprises a post-traumatic stress
syndrome, but which is also their own creation, something that came out of their very souls and spirits,
something uniquely their own, more so than language or anything else learned from others. Is it any
wonder, then, that they identify with that act of creation? More: they survived because of it. If the fruits
of that long-term creative act are “bad,” “sick,” “weird,” “freaky,” then both they themselves and their
survival are likewise “bad,” “sick,” “weird,” and “freaky,” because both they themselves and their
survival are identified with the adaptation and the “weird” behavior and psychology that go with it. If
“therapy” is presented to them as a way of
“doing something about” – i.e., junking – their adaptation, even if the adaptation is counter-productive
for them, they’ll resist, avoid, reject out of hand such therapy. And all too often, that is exactly what
happens. Especially for females – for example, not only in my own case, but that of many women I’ve
known, they have been told by therapists and counselors and everyone else that their high IQs and
academic achievements are “sick” because those “therapists” identify their “weirdness” with their
intelligence and treat both accordingly. That is, society and its representatives all too often see
intelligence and other desirable traits as “sick” and “weird,” possibly because such traits make their
bearers harder to control and make “socially useful.” It can quite truthfully be pointed out, of course,
that the fruits of such intelligence went at a very early age to building an adaptation to a highly abusive,
dangerous environment, and accordingly turned out a little weird. But those aren’t the only possible
fruits of intelligence, are they? If the person who is supposed to get therapy is given to understand that
the symptoms produced by one’s intelligence and creativity may be bizarre and counter-productive, but
the intelligence and creativity themselves are good and desirable, it’s a different story – no problem. But
how rarely that happens! I’ve been a witness to situations in which young women were given shock
treatments because their “IQs are too high for a woman” – the IQs were attacked, the girls were attacked
because of the “symptoms” of “high IQ,” but the abusers that originally traumatized them were protected
and cherished by the same system that did these things to those girls. And in my own case, when I
stupidly agreeing to go for “help” to the Harborview Sexual Assault Center after I was raped back in
1988, the therapist – the female therapist – attacked me for being a “survivor.” She actually tried to
bullyrag me into committing suicide! Therapy – isn’t. After all that, after so many experiences like that,
one would rather be damned than change, any day! This applies to both male and female survivors of
such a history, too – and the abusive therapists can be of either sex. Anyway, this is one of the many
reasons that trying to get people to change their “weird” behavior and ideas and emotions to “make their
lives better” rarely does any good. One has one’s entire soul and spirit invested in all one’s years of
growing into that weirdness, not to mention the fact that it has kept one alive and functioning. So . . .
Thought this might be of interest. Take care, love,

*******

Merl –
Again because it may help your research, or somebody’s, I thought I’d add a little more to my last
couple of missives. (I had the most horrible nightmare about my adoptive father this morning – maybe
this is revenge on him for it. Who know?)
First, all too often, rather than being the solution, psychotherapists are a large part of the problem.
I’m not the only one who’s been on the business-end of a control-freak psychotherapist, or one with such
good intentions (and we all know what road is paved with those, don’t we?), or one who is just plain
sadistic, or a complete medical incompetent. Jeff Masson has done a really thoroughgoing study of
therapy per se, Against Therapy (1988, 1994), and shows that it is inherently prone to do harm rather than
good. Part of it is because we are primates, band animals, hard-wired from infancy to value power, value
using it on others, fear its use on use by others, react strongly to it when used by others. The
psychotherapists, for better or worse, knowingly or not, has potential power over the soul itself rivaled
only by religious organizations – and even in the best of us, there is some imp within that delights in
using power over others, either straight out, like a club, or “benignly,” for someone else’s “own good.”
Either way, the potential for mis-use and outright abuse of such power is enormous – and all too often,
that potential becomes kinetic. Everyone has his or her own personal axe to grind. Therapists are no less
likely to have one than anyone else. If they are not only good, but wise as well, they work hard to keep
from bashing others over the psyche with their own axe. If they are well-meaning but have a strong need
to feel they can do no wrong – watch out!
Dr. Lenore Terr, who has done one of the best and most comprehensive studies of the results of
chronic abuse and terrorization of children available to the general public, Too Scared to Cry: Psychic
Traumas in Childhood(1990), also has this thing about even the possibility that ESP and paranormal
abilities might be real. It’s all a lie, all denial, etc. etc. – so when some really badly traumatized
youngster comes to her for therapy who is so badly traumatized that the screens and valves Ma Nature
puts in us to keep paranormal abilities from operating most of the time, except at dire need, have been
busted for good, and is throwing symptoms in the form of real ESP and real paranormal abilities, as a
result, she lands on the patient for it, tries to browbeat him/her into “admitting” that no such thing is
happening or could be real, etc. In fact, strong paranormal abilities are often every bit as real evidence of
trauma as broken bones and internal bleeding, due to chronic stress-induced biochemical and
physiological lesions at least as serious, in their way, as many burns. So what the kid gets from her is:
“Your trauma aren’t real, they didn’t hurt you, I know, you’re lying about having been abused!” – even
though Dr. Terr does believe the child was abused, is trying to help, is trying to do her best. But her own
sensitized reactions to paranormal abilities, God knows where she got them, maybe from some sort of
weirdness on her own parents’ part, can actually compound the damage already there. “Nobody believes
you. You’re crazy. It’s your fault!” Well, I’m here to tell you, it is real, it is also the result of
horrendous abuse at an early age in so many cases, it ought to be used as evidence in court supporting
charges of chronic abuse, and well-meaning idiots like dear Dr. Terr are doing their damnedest to
prevent just that!
There are other problems with therapy that have to do with primate power-lust, not to mention
economics. Medicine itself has an awful power, literally the power of life and death. As a profession, it
tends to attract those who have a strong need for ego-reinforcement, not to mention wallet-reinforcement.
Doctors often – not always, but often enough to do great harm – hold to the medical theories that feel
best to them because of their psychological needs, rather than those that do best for the patient. Further,
they often get off on the fact patients come to them in great need, and look upon them as men and women
of great power, for the time of need believing in them with all their hearts. The sadists get off on it. The
greedy take advantage of it another way, to line their wallets. And in either case, many of these don’t
particularly give a damn about whether their theory works or helps the patient, as long as the patient
believes it does, enough to do what they want, enough to pay out lots of money for it. “Iatrogenic” –
“doctor-caused” – illnesses abound. Guess why?
When Freud and his colleagues medicalized psychology and ethology, they set up an enormous
potential for this sort of abuse and resultant iatrogenic harm to patients. In this case, the harm can be
done to both body and soul – the body, because of the medicines given out by MDs and psychiatrists, the
soul because of the fact that psychotherapy invariably involves a relation of power between doctor and
patient, with the patient on the bottom and the doctor on the top, which is more temptation than many of
us can resist, isn’t it?
There are many other problems, of course, but these highlight some of the worst of it. Psychotherapy
is a minefield, certainly, far more for patient than doctor. The doctor has all the power, all the respect,
collects
the fees – the patient pays his/her money and takes /his/her chance, and if the therapy doesn’t work, “It’s
your fault!” says the community to the patient. It doesn’t matter if the doctor’s theories and technique
are
utterly inadequate and wide of the mark, it doesn’t matter if the doctor is a sadist or a monster of
venality, it doesn’t matter if the patient is a victim of endless abuse by others and his/her symptoms are
evidence of ongoing criminal assault that should be used as such in court. No, it’s always the patient’s
fault if therapy doesn’t work – and how do you fight a social attitude like that?
Two things work consistently far, far better than psychotherapy, taken statistically: a good lawyer
and training in effective self-defense, e.g., combat-training. Those are the last things a therapist
recommends, if at all – and yet it is so obvious why they would be so effective. If you know you have a
good, solid fighting chance should there be future assaults – and there are always future assaults! – it
does wonders for your soul if you have been a victim of chronic traumatization. As for a lawyer – that’s
even better, because there’s nothing illegal about taking some clown to court and suing the living
whatever out of him or her, is there? Better still, maybe the lawyer can get criminal charges to stick
against the S.O.B.s. Both a lawyer and personal self-defense training is better still – even if the clown is
put behind bars, these days, said clown is likely to be out on the streets again muy pronto, and in a
vengeful mood. So . . . (Then you may need the lawyer to defend you in court – on a charge of
aggravated self-defense with intent to commit self-defense, as things go these days!)
Have I used the term “designated victim”? This is something I’ve heard social psychologists and
anthropologists use. In dysfunctional families and communities, there is usually an at-risk population
among them that always bears the brunt of the dysfunctions. Abusive families will frequently target one
child for abuse because “he’s different,” “she’s a freak, not like us.” Communities – well, do I have to go
into detail about Nazi Germany vs. the Jews? I believe it was John Wyndham who wrote the post-
nuclear holocaust novel, Rebirth. In that novel, there was a saying: “Watch thou for the mutant.” He
wasn’t really talking about the future. Theodore Sturgeon early on pointed out the “green monkey”
syndrome (I think he got that from others before him): take a monkey out of a monkey colony, paint it
green, throw it back in among its erstwhile brethren, and the latter will quickly take the poor little bastard
apart, then either chase him off or kill him. Primates, rats, and other colony animals all have such
tendencies – and we’re colony animals ( if you doubt this, go check out New York City sometimes. It
would appall a termite queen!). Colony animals are also political animals – and often, the band-leader
decides it would be expedient to get the general population mad at some scapegoat, to keep them
distracted from the fact that the colony isn’t doing all that great under that band-leader’s leadership.
Again, one remembers Nazi Germany. You don’t even have to be a mutant to be targeted as one – you
can, as it were, be turned into one as easily as it takes to dump paint over somebody. Or force them at
gun-point to put yellow Stars of David on their coats. Or batter them into looking and feeling and acting
like nothing nature designed them to, keep on battering them until their looks, feelings, and behavior are
built solidly and permanently into their central nervous systems, bones, peripheral nervous systems, and
muscles. Voila!: the perfect scapegoat. Who gets picked for scapegoat? – Whoever’s handy – but some
are handier than others. Those that look different, say, or have a different religion, or a small and
vulnerable, or whatever. And the entire community just stands there and watches it all happen – because
the community itself is dysfunctional, horribly so, and “needs” scapegoating as a way of maintaining the
fragile social cohesiveness that allows it to function at all, to keep producing food and maintaining
essential services. There are better ways to maintain that cohesiveness – but that’s all the people know,
that’s all they can think to do, or is available. And in each of them, there is some dark, dark corner in
which lives an imp of perfect sadism. So they do nothing but murmur, “Oh, how terrible” – if, in fact,
they do even that. If you’ve ever wondered how Child Protective Services in big cities lets such
obviously at-risk children stay in homes of high-risk, that’s why: social welfare services themselves are
part of a hugely dysfunctional society, their employees members of that society, and are as dysfunctional
as anything else in society. Like psychotherapists, they are part of the problem, not the solution,
regardless of how well-intentioned or kind their individual members may be as individuals. Emile
Durkheim carefully documented an appalling fact: human societies are organisms every bit as much as
beehives, termitaries, and
ant-nests are, and they fulfill their needs before their members get anything. And if the needs of a society
require the sacrifice of tiny children or the sanity of growing children, so be it, that’s the way it goes . . .
Who was it said that civilization is just a big machine for destroying children? Whoever it was has a
good point. The answer to evil won’t come from social institutions until society has exorcised the evil
that permeates it. And that will take some sort of collective-consciousness raising of an unprecedented
kind. Maybe that consciousness-raising is going on now, who knows? But whatever the timing, until the
old Adam in us all has been dragged up into the light, bound, and banished in an effective exorcism,
whatever that may entail, in the meantime therapy and social welfare organizations are part of the
problem, and compound it, not part of the solution.
As the Buddha and Jesus tried to teach us all, society is an illusion, civilization is a trap. The trap is
sprung when we begin believing in the illusion, forget that it is just a set of rules we worked up for
getting things done a certain way, forget that the map isn’t the territory, that the law was made to serve
life, not life the law. The illusion may be necessary to survival – but forgetting that it is an illusion is
fatal. Fatal not only to the body, but the soul and spirit, as well.
Who am I, the Outsider, to tell you this? Who am I, the Mutie, the Freak? Why, I’m only a voice in
the storm, dust in the wind, no more than a messenger, like the postman, if that. But

Hath not a Mutant eyes? hath not a Mutant hands, organs, dimensions, senses,
affections, passions?
If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you
poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

Perhaps this is my revenge on some of the evil in this world: I will not stoop to it – I will warn others of
it. I will tell you: I understand the attractions of the idea of Judgment ‫ﳾ‬ay. Perhaps nothing less can get
rid of the burden of horror this world labors under.
With luck <g>, I’ve had my say, now. Take care, Merl, love,

*******

This dates me :
 Do any of y’all remember those wonderful affirmative terms of Days of Yore, “tuff,” “boss,” and
“bitchin’”? As in, e.g., “That’s one tuff jacket!” “That sweater is soooo boss <sigh>“ “Oh, bitchin’!”
(when something groovy happens). What were the Terms of Endearment at your high school? (I may
have gone to the High School from Hell – but there were some great moments there, even so, there really
were . . . <g>) Winner and runner-up gets used in a novel or something . . . :} – yrd

*******

[From a correspondent, concerning a nightmare I had recently about my adoptive father]

I was out of town until very late last night so I didn’t get to respond to this. . ..
This is one of those epiphany situations: the point where you have “faced your enemy” from which
everything else is just tearing down, as I think you’re noticing. I think it’s a wonderful thing! (well,
having a nightmare isn’t, but supplying yourself with the mental and spiritual tools to deal with it is). . .
Am proud of you and looking forward to hearing how the rest of the process falls out. Be free–you
don’t have to die if you don’t want to. 
Ankh udja seneb (life, prosperity and health!) >>

[My reply to her:]

Well, for what it’s worth, maybe I’ll finally find out at some point what my adoptive father did to my
adoptive mother to drive her crazy the way he did. She took all the blame for the hell I went through –
she was part of it, but I think much more as a symptom than as a cause. Women have little political
power, even now, and back then, women who married monsters usually had no way to get out of the
situation except when they or the monster died. In the meantime, if they went crazy and Did Things to
the children as a result, they got the blame, not the monsters. I know I could never care for my adoptive
mother at all, in any life, after all of it, certainly not as she needed and wanted – but maybe I can get her
a little justice. Say a prayer to Djehuti that I can do that.
As for death – what’s happened to me over the years has robbed me of the ability to want anything,
even nirvana (<g>). I’m alive, I can’t die, so I go on – but you know, there isn’t a soul in the world that
would truly be hurt if I just ceased to be. Maybe people would grieve, for a while, a little – but no one
would mourn me as I have mourned Gary, my cat, my ferret. That, you can lay at my adoptive father’s
door, as far as blame goes. The damned thing has haunted me long after his death, and is closely
associated with the continued astral beatings I’ve suffered ever since childhood, if not the actual cause of
them. He made a pact with something back before my birth, and that something may be the root cause of
it, but he bought into it and never bought out. And because he did what he did to me back then, I’ve been
tormented and punished by the something, him, and other idiots ever since. I’m tired, Tam, and it’s the
kind of weariness that even death won’t end, only oblivion. If there had been love, if there had been a
niche, a real niche for me, somewhere in these 51 years, it would have been different. But the capacity to
be healed by anything has finally been eroded away from me. There’s too much foulness in the world,
and it’s too widespread and too deeply entrenched among those in power to go away, and I don’t want to
buy into it, and that’s the only way I can hope for peace, rest, or any other desirable thing. This isn’t the
case for most other
people, but most other people weren’t sold to a demon as small children. In my case, the only way I’ll
ever have even a little peace is to do what the demon wants. I won’t do that, so . . .
Apparently this demon is something Crowley may have encountered in Cairo, in the Great Pyramid,
and mistook for something benign. What Gods are in charge of getting rid of Pyramid demons and things
like that? I could sure use an assist from one or two of them about now! 
Take care, Tam, I’ll keep you posted. Love always, yrd

*******

This may be of interest:

The following is taken from Jeremy Bernstein’s Hitler’s Uranium Club: The Secret Records at Farm
Hall (Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics, 1996), which presents excerpts from recordings
taken by British Military Intelligence of conversations among German physicists interned before the end
of WW 2 at Farm Hall, a safe house in England run by British MI.

From report 4, pp. 119-120:

II. 6th August 1945

1. Shortly before dinner on the 6th of August I informed Professor Hahn that
an announcement had been made by the BBC . . . that an atomic bomb had been
dropped. Hahn was completely shattered by the news and said that he felt
personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, as
it was his original discovery which had made the bomb possible. . . . With
the help of considerable alcoholic stimulant he was calmed down and we went
down to dinner where he announced the news to the assembled guests.

2. As was to be expected, the announcement was greeted with incredulity.

The following is a transcription of the conversation during dinner.

HAHN: They can only have done that if they have uranium isotope separation.

WIRTZ: They have it too.

HAHN: I remember Segré’s, Dunning’s, and my assistant Grosse’s work;

they had to separate a fraction of a milligram before the war, in 1939. [Segré
is Emilio Segré . . .. John Dunning was an experimental physicist who
worked with Fermi on the early fission experiments. Aristide von Grosse, who
was at Columbia University at the outbreak of the war, collaborated with
Dunning and Alfred Nier on the early experiments to show that 235U was the
fissionable isotope of uranium. He had been Hahn’s assistant in the early
1930s.]

LAUE: “235”?

HAHN: Yes, “235.”

HARTECK: That’s not absolutely necessary. If they let a uranium engine run,
they separate “93.”

[The Germans understood that what Harteck refers to as “93,” and which is
now called neptunium, was unstable. It decays into “94” – plutonium – with a
half-life of 2.36 days. Hahn published a paper on this decay in Die
Naturwissenschaften in 1942. To make sense, if sense can be made of the
colloquy that follows, let us review briefly here the remarks made in the
Prologue about the German knowledge of the use of transuranic elements,
such as plutonium, for weapons. Independently of developments in the United
States regarding transuranic elements, on the 17th of July 1940 von
Weizsaecker produced a report for the German project in which he suggested
using element 93 as a fissionable weapons fuel. It was not until 1942 that
Hahn published the paper referred to above that showed that this element was
unstable and completely unsuitable for this purpose. In the meantime in
August of 1941 Houtermans came up with the idea of using element 94 –
plutonium – which is long lived and as fissionable as 235U. This idea must have
made its way into the project since at his lecture before the Nazi dignitaries on
26 February of 1942, Heisenberg refers to using “94.” In the experiments that
the Germans did to make a reactor they must have produced trace amounts of
 plutonium. It did not seem to have occurred to them to do any radiochemistry
on these. Of course without a functioning reactor they never could have made
enough plutonium to use in a bomb. In what follows, Harteck and Hahn seem
to have forgotten that element 93 is unstable.]

HAHN: For that they must have an engine which can make sufficient
quantities of “93” to be weighed. [It is not clear what Hahn has in mind here.
He is still talking about “93.’]

GERLACH: If they want to get that, they must use a whole ton. [This
reference to a “ton” is equally obscure. A “ton” of what?]

HAHN: An extremely complicated business, for “93” they must have an

engine which will run for a long time. If the Americans have a uranium bomb
then you’re all second raters. Poor old Heisenberg.

LAUE: The innocent!

HEISENBERG: Did they use the word uranium in connection with this atomic
bomb? . . .

ALL: No.

HEISENBERG: Then it’s got nothing to do with atoms, but the equivalent of
20,000 tons of high explosive is terrific.

WEIZSAECKER: It corresponds exactly to the factor 104. [Probably what

Weizsaecker has in mind here is that 1 kilogram of uranium completely
fissioned would correspond in energy to about 104 tons of exploding TNT . .]

GERLACH: Would it be possible that they have got an engine running fairly
well, that they have had it long enough to separate “93”? [As noted earlier,
the word “engine” is apparently a translation of the German word Maschine,
which the German scientists used throughout the war when referring to the
reactor or pile.] . . .

– Ibid.

*******

The metal plutonium, whose atomic number is 93 (uranium is 92, plutonium is 94), is ruled by Neptune.
In the natal horoscope of Aleister Crowley, Neptune’s position is 2° 0’ Taurus in the 10th. (Crowley was
born at 11:30 p.m. Greenwich time [UT] on 10/12/1875 at Leamington Spa, United Kingdom [1° 31’ W,
52° 18’ N]. His Ascendant is 5° 52’ Leo, MC 13° 10’ Aries. Sun, 19° Libra, 4th; Moon, 22° Pisces 41’,
9th, in mutual reception by House with Jupiter, 7° 8’ Scorpio, 4th; Mercury, 13° 21’ Scorpio, 4th;
Venus, 24° 24’ Libra, 4th; Mars, 22° 52’ Capricorn, 6th; Saturn, 19° 31’ Aquarius, 7th; Uranus, 19° 7’
Leo, 1st; Pluto, 23° 14’ Taurus, 11th; Moon’s North Node, 8° 27’ Aries, 9th. It is of interest here that
the numbers 19, 13, 31, and 11 are so prominent here.) According to Crowley, 93 is the number of the
Aeon of Horus/Aquarius and of the “current” that kicked it off when he did his Cairo Working of
3/20/1904 e.v. at midnight (0 a.m.) in the Great Pyramid at Cairo, Egypt, which apparently manifested
as his writing of The Book of the Law at Cairo on April 8-10 of that year. Later, the Nazis began their
research into the occult – or perhaps began with such research – that was ultimately concerned with odd
uses of Crowley’s work (something which Crowley hated, by the way – he detested the Nazis and all they
stood for). Eventually, because of the Nazi takeover of Germany, WW 2 began, culminating in
production and use of the first two nuclear devices in a military capacity – the dawn of the Atomic Age.
This was the quintessential Thelemic moment, and it came about by use of fissionable materials such as
uranium and plutonium. The fact that neptunium, which can be produced from uranium, is unstable and
liable to decay into plutonium is highly significant not just to nuclear physicists and engineers, but also to
students of occult history – for the atomic number of neptunium, the number of protons in its nucleus,
which define its essential chemical nature, is 93.

*******

Tam –
As we’ve discussed in the past, Set can be considered to be one of the protectors of Egypt, rather as
Kali is of India: isn’t it nice when he’s on your team? :) In a recent email I mentioned that Aleister
Crowley encountered a spirit in the Great Pyramid of Egypt in Cairo in 1904, which he called Aiwass,
which later inspired him to write The Book of the Law. Somewhere in the 1920s or so, some dip occultist
in Germany got a copy of the book, fell in love with it, decided that her pupil was to be Europe’s
“Messiah,” and virtually spoon-fed him the book by way of attempting to transform him into exactly that.
Her pupil’s/protege’s name was Adolph Hitler. Her idea of what the book meant was admittedly warped,
and Crowley, to whom she wrote in her enthusiasm about her star pupil, thought she and the pupil were
idiots, and was very perturbed at what they were doing with the book. Anyway, as we all now know,
Hitler damned near destroyed Europe on the momentum of his “energized enthusiasm” over the ideas he
got out of the book, then was destroyed himself – but Crowley died in bed at the age of 72, after a long,
full life, an ardent patriot and devout Englishman.
Well, in the early 1970s a man named Michael Aquino formed a splinter of LaVey’s First Church of
Satan called the Temple of Set. Unlike LaVey, who deplores murder and use of living organisms as
sacrifices, etc., Aquino got into some very dark stuff indeed. After breaking with LaVey, he started
going back and forth between America and Europe to do “research” on the Nazis, i.e., occult research
and experiments involving whatever esoterica the Nazis had been into. Aquino is probably guilty of
hubris for taking Set’s
name in vain – and yet it is as if, all unknowing, he carried into the heart of the fortress of evil the one
being who would be perfectly appropriate to combat that particular form of evil, which originated in
Egypt itself, in the Great Pyramid. One wonders what will come of it. It’s as if some really stupid
crooks, robbing a bank, in the middle of the heist called up 911 to ask: “Duuuhhh . . . we’re robbing
this bank down here, would you come over and gives us a hand?” :)

(Fun facts about the Age of Aquarius Department)

– By the way, I don’t think The Book of the Law, written by Crowley on April 8-10, 1904 e.v., is the
same kind of religious book the Bible or Koran is, say. Whereas you are supposed to believe in the latter,
Crowley and The Book of the Law itself admonish that doubt is to be applied to that very book. Crowley
thought that that was to get people to use the scientific method, which employs the Null Hypothesis
(doubt) to prove its truth. But maybe there’s another way to look at it. Crowley swore he only recorded
verbatim what was dictated to him in several voices to write the book. What if the Intelligences behind
those voices weren’t all in accord? What if some were basically benign, Life-cherishing, others flatly
evil, and the book was in fact a record of their arguments? What if the reader is to try to sort out for
him/herself which is which? I think this may be the case. Some of what’s in the book really makes
sense. But the rest includes material that is utterly dark, malignant. I don’t think that book speaks with
one voice or one will, but rather several, and they aren’t all good or evil. Those who “believe in” the
book whole cloth thus inevitably will mess up, as Hitler did, because they end up believing in ultimately
opposing, contradictory Intelligences, Wills, and belief-systems. Maybe this explains what the Age of
Aquarius really is all about: to unearth and come to understand the spiritual dichotomies in what, all
along, we have believed were true unities, so that we can winnow the true spiritual wheat from the chaff
– and the dreck.
Interested in your opinion. – yrd

*******

Hi –
I had to share this one with you, it was just too good to pass up:

“If all the denizens of the spirit world could be considered as one large (and
hopelessly dysfunctional) family, then the poltergeist would undoubtedly be the
youngest son – bursting with energy, prone to mischief, and utterly beyond control.”
 – Robert Masello, Fallen Angels . . . and Spirits of the Dark (Perigee Books, 1994), p.
200

*******

In a message dated 96-06-27 01:11:50 EDT, you write:

<< If there are “demons” in the pyramids they are the kas of the pharaohs
whose rest is being eternally churned up by space-folks chanting in their
tomb chambers. . .

(sigh) We don’t posit belief in a demonic so it must be something somebody else brought in–during the
Egyptomania period I’m sure enough rituals were botched in those chambers to supply at least a bizarre
scary undercurrent if not a breeding ground for things that are truly sinister. And because of the breaches
of the security of the tombs as they were originally set up by their makers, there is nothing of the
protection that would originally have kept those places sacred anymore. >>

This is true. No telling how it got in there – and the likelihood that “Aiwass” (the thing Crowley stirred
up/brought back to Europe/whatever) had its origins in ancient Egypt is zilch. From its behavior and
effects, I would rather conclude that it had its origins in one of the cultures whose Gods it slanders in The
Book of the Law, which are either monotheistic or have a Father God in them. It may have come from
Arabia, a Qlippoth of Islam, or from tomb-robbers from a Christian or Jewish culture, most likely. It also
seems to dig ecological devastation. Ancient Egypt was very aware of its roots in the natural world, one
reason (not the only) for the animal heads on its Gods, e.g., Hathoor and Kephra (which symbolized the
fact that their wealth ultimately depended on fertilization of the land with the dung of their cattle, plowed
into the soil by the activities of the little dung-beetles). Ancient Egyptians couldn’t have conceived of
anything mad enough to want to destroy the land itself – it wasn’t that they had repressed such a yen into
their collective unconscious (which would have accounted for such a demon as a return of the repressed,
somehow) but rather that it was a thing that never would have occurred to them at all. To them, as to all
the ancient world, nobody would have destroyed the land, no matter what else they might go after in war,
because everybody depended on the health of the soil and environment for survival. Today, we build
hideous machineries that can set fire to the whole world, and destroy the very capacity of the soil,
everywhere, to support life, a thing that would have been beyond the capacity of even the most evil
Egyptian to comprehend, certainly as far as motives go. No, whatever this is, it isn’t Egyptian – but it is
something which Set, the ultimate ecological feedback-mechanism <g>, was perfectly configured to
destroy. Set, as I understand it, like Kali, is Heaven’s cop – the Heavens/Gods are the collective
Intelligences of the living world, so Set would be there to protect that world from anything that
threatened it as a whole. So whatever Aiwass was/is, because it had been cocooned there in the Great
Pyramid, as it were, in Egypt, once it was loose in the world, Set would try to track it down and destroy
it, all other things being equal. So here Michael Aquino comes along, founds the Temple of Set (be
careful what you pray for – it might show up! <g>), falls in love with Nazism and Nazi occultism, goes to
Germany to do his research on same, and becomes a perfect bird-dog for . . . you’re ‘way ahead of me!
:->>

<< I will actually be in Egypt this October–I’ll have to do a little lurking around, in between the
purification and funerary rites we’ve planned for the neglected ancestors. >>

Be careful. Regardless of where the damned thing originally came from, it did get into the Great
Pyramid, and part of it could still be hanging out around there!

Take care, love always, yrd

*******

In a message dated 96-06-20 16:58:43 EDT, [Correspondent AH] writes:

>Most people STILL believe the “American System” exists and think voting
>makes a real difference. I don’t believe the government system we see is
>the one we get. In fact, I believe the entire government system to be an
>illusion. We are only allowed to believe we have a say in what happens but
>in reality, we do not. Most Americans have been so psychologically
>programmed to believe so many illusions no one can see what’s REALLY going
>on.
>
>
>My 2 cents.
>
>Amy
>
>

[My response:]

First, the American people have a certain amount of responsibility for that situation – and to at least
that extent, the ability to change it. “Changing the system” doesn’t only mean voting – it means changing
the minds and behavior of those around you, and your own. Changing the minds and behavior of others
starts with family and neighbors, by sharing your feelings, opinions, your honest reaction to it all. It
extends today to the whole world, at least potentially, via Internet. It means writing your elected
representatives – did you know that one letter can have the impact of a thousand or ten thousand votes,
i.e., before the election? They figure for every one that writes, there are thousands out there with the
same opinions. So who writes? Just nuts like me? Maybe if more of us wrote to the bastards, and dared
to sign our names, we’d begin to get somewhere.
Second, it’s not a matter of absolutes. Nor does it extend only to politics. Read Paul Watzlawick’s
How Real Is Real?: Confusion, Disinformation, Communication (Vintage Books, 1977) – or the
teachings of the Buddha. The philosophies behind the most potent forms of combat arts in the world is
Zen Buddhism, or Taoism, which teach that human society and civilization exist on the basis of carefully
cherished illusions about reality which don’t really match how the natural world works at all (hence the
way so many civilizations, e.g., the West, regards Nature as an enemy and treats Her as such). Part is
real, part illusion – but nevertheless life and humanity have managed to go on and on and on for
countless generations, haven’t they? You work to find out what the underlying reality is, underneath all
the horsedookey, and act on it appropriately. Or get Nature’s pink slip, AKA “natural selection.”
Third, a lot of our “programming” is what we ourselves have bought into, isn’t it? We find it
pleasurable, self-gratifying, profitable or whatever to accept the “programming” and go along with it. At
the circus or the movies, this is called “entertainment.” In real life, however, it can mean “disaster” if the
illusion is being peddled by a con-artist – or politician. But the thing is, we can unbuy from it, we can
swallow our pride/give up our addiction, bite the bullet, and turn away from it. Yeah, it’s slow, hard, and
painful – but so is giving up cocaine, or booze, or nicotine, I hear. What’s the alternative?
Fourth, for this, as for every other important thing in life, there are no instant fixes, there are no
perfect fixes, there is no iron-clad, guaranteed way of getting past this mess. This is how we got in to the
mess in the first place: we bought into the idea – the lie – that there can be guaranteed perfection, perfect
bliss, guaranteed plenty and prosperity, with no more work on our part needed to keep it going. You
think we didn’t? HAH – that’s an illusion! One of the more famous people who bought into that sort of
bargain was Johannes Faust, and Marlowe told us what happened to him. It’s called selling your soul on
the installment plan – but it was our choice to do so, at least to start with, wasn’t it? And people can
repent of political and economic choices as well as the more traditional religious ones. You can turn
away from Mammon and Moloch just like you can their infernal boss, Old Scratch. I don’t mean to turn
toward any other deity – but certainly, as Moishe Rabbinu taught us, you can choose Life. You don’t
have to join a church or a political movement or a major groupie thing to do it, either – in fact, those tend
to get in the way, when you get right down to it. Just figure out where in your life love is – or should be
– and follow that: base your life on your right relationships with your children, spouses, neighbors,
friends, relatives, the natural world, and cherish those relationships and people. No, it won’t guarantee
you perfect bliss or immortality – but nothing will guarantee you that, because such guarantees don’t
exist. Those are just the fruit offered to you by the serpents out there in the political and economic
Gardens of the world – take a good long look at those fruits before you take a bite out of ‘em, people,
because the well-being of your soul and spirit may depend on it!
 “It can’t be changed” is just another such illusion – it’s one that caters to our laziness, our wish to
have somebody, something else take charge of our destinies and do our destinies for us. Too many of us
have abdicated responsibility for our lives for too long – and that’s why we’re in this mess. What can
you do? Do whatever you can, each of you – yeah, you may get your head shot off when you stick it up
and have notice taken of it, you may lose your shirt, all kinds of bad things can happen when you take the
risks entailed in responsible action. And so what? Nobody lives forever – and if you do what you can,
however little it may seem, and do it right now, at least you’ll have self-respect and your own soul to take
with you when, as we all do, you shuffle off this mortal coil:

– If I am not for myself, who will be?

– If I am for myself alone, what then am I?
– If not now, when?
– The rest is study. Go and study.
– Hillel

No one of us can fix this collective mess we’re in, and yeah, we risk so very much in trying to do
something about it. But we have the certainty of losing everything, individually and collectively, if we
don’t try. So which alternative will you choose, people?

>No matter who the American public votes to be president, the secret
>government - the real government - will put their guys in office. Voting
>only serves as feedback and only in the event of extreme variance will any
>changes to their agendas be made. Even if the politicians in office are
>changed, the agendas remain the same.

Their agendas vary like anyone else’s, depending upon what they see coming over the hill. If they think
they’re about to get fired by the public, their agendas will change muy pronto! If thousands of people
write them angry letters about something, they do change, as the national forum on gun-control issues is
proving. They aren’t invulnerable, either politically, economically, legally, or physically – but they want
you to believe they are, and that if you dare protest or criticize their actions, Things will happen to you.
Well, Things might happen to you if you dare to stand up to them – but Things will sure as **** happen
to you if you don’t! And how much risk is there in writing a letter? Really? Will they cut off your SSI
check for it? Well, if they do, you can go to an SSI lawyer – or maybe think about alternatives to living
in a country that pays you a paltry SSI check in exchange for your soul? You want that? Then I’m sorry,
I can’t
help you. But don’t worry – they’ll take care of you . . . all the way to the slaughterhouse, where all the
sheep finally end up, won’t they?
Finally, depends on who the vote has to do with. You know that ultimately the President of the
United States doesn’t mean doodly-squat unless he has the full cooperation of Congress? Congress
makes the law and votes the budget. No tickee, no laundlee – no Congress, no money, nothing gets done.
No cops, no army, no CIA, no essentially services at a federal level, nothing. Don’t worry about who the
President is – yeah, Magickally, the President is kind of like the country’s high priest, representing our
communal spirit. But Congress represents our wallets and our interests. Concentrate your vote and
lobbying on who gets elected to Congress and the Senate – that’s how the anti-nuclear people, over the
years, have changed our country’s involvement with nuclear weapons. And by doing so, maybe kept the
whole world from going up in smoke. So your vote can’t do anything, hunh?
Voting at the state and city levels also ultimately adds up. Mayors and governors can end up in
Congress, and when they do, they have a heavy influence on how the country is run. And again, the
principle of “one letter, ten thousand screaming voters” applies here.
Here is Washington State, we got Senator Slade Gorton to renounce his own legislative baby, the
Communications Decency Act, which he wrote and promoted and then finally voted against because we
got up on our hind legs and told him we’d never vote for him again unless he did go against it. You think
that federal court in Philly that finally threw it out wasn’t influenced by that?
If the Supreme Court ratifies or chucks out a law, Congress can turn around and write other laws –
and lean on a President and get him or her to stack the Supreme Court a different way when it comes
time. Most of the politicking in this country goes on behind the scenes. Your vote won’t influence the
way the media present politics (though enough letters to the editor will, as will cancelled subscriptions,
and subscriptions to other media), but you can get at what’s really going on through a lot of digging, and
you can influence the horse-trading by (a) your letters to your representatives and (b) campaigning on a
personal, local level or a national one (via Internet) to get others to do the same.
Ultimately, it comes down to this: how much do I risk in sticking my neck out like that, vs. how
much do I gain?
For each of us, the answer is different.
For me, I looked at Hillel’s little series of questions and the answers I came up with were:

“No one.
“Nothing.
“Never.”

Do it now.

– Yael R. Dragwyla, proprietor, HydroDragon,

Life member of the NRA and CCRKBA,
member of the American Federation of Astrologers

Subj: Re: The Smoking Gun

Date: 96-06-30 14:56:27 EDT
From: itachi@crl.com (Dale Seago)
To: [Correspondent AH] (Amy Hebert)

Amy,

That was my wife’s reply you responded to, but I do agree with her - and for the
most part, with you as well. The structures and mechanisms of government, as they
used to be studied in civics classes, have little
to do with how the system actually works. They provide something of a “skeleton” or
framework for assessing/measuring/quantifying what goes on, but that’s about it. (I
have a master’s degree in political science, by the way.) As you’ve observed, there’s
more often than not a serious disparity between rhetoric and action. Modern
psychology has its own explanations for this, but perhaps the simplest way to look at it
is that people (both individually, and collectively as governmental entities/agencies)
will use deception in their interactions with others to accomplish things which would be
more difficult (or impossible) otherwise.
You appear to posit something vast, hidden, and essentially monolithic behind the
sociocultural and political conditioning processes to which all of us are continually
being exposed. This may or may not be the case. . .but the confluent effects of
individuals and groups operating from simple human greed and narrow self-interest are
sufficient to account for the phenomena observed.
If you want to change things for the better, there are three principal ways to go
about it: (1) through education: exposing negative effects/implications of the things
being imposed on us, and suggesting positive alternatives; (2) through the political
system (judicial, legislative, and - via the vote - executive), which DOES provide the
“interface” for an orderly imposition of force and allocation of resources, even though
that imposition seems to go mainly from the top down; and (3) through direct use of
force (revolution, terrorism).
As an acquaintance of mine likes to express it, we have four boxes at our disposal:
soap, jury, ballot, and cartridge. Use in that order.
I probably should mention something about my own background, by the way. I’ve
spent many years as a military intelligence and special-operations officer (until well
after the ‘91 Gulf War), with much of my work being in the field of political-military
warfare, particularly in both strategic-level and tactical psychological warfare
operations. I also am a senior-level instructor in the only historic Japanese ninja
tradition and lineage which can be verified as having survived from the Kamakura era
(late 1100s) to the present. And, as
Yael can tell you, I have more than a nodding acquaintance with esoteric/occult
matters, from BOTH sides of the metaphysical fence.
 Best wishes,
Dale Seago

Amy – I agree with Dale also (see above for the text of his letter to you). The main thing is: if you let
yourself be paralyzed by the seeming Unsurmountableness Of It All, like a jack-lighted rabbit, you have
no chance at all. Doing something is better than just giving up – for one thing, you look much more
confident, instead of like a sitting duck, and a sitting duck is just what you don’t want to look like. It
helps to research what the “something” should be, of course, and to practice tactics and strategies until
you’re as good as possible with them. But despair just feeds the Reaper – so if you don’t want to do that,
learn how others deal with the situation, pick the best techniques for yourself and go for it.
Remember: nobody lives forever. The trick is to live well – and die well. That’s the only way to
stay free. And without freedom, life is just a sojourn in the stockyards.
– Yael

PS: Dale and his wife, Teri, are my senseis, my combat-arts instructors. And as he says, Dale knows a
good deal about the occult. He knows exactly what he’s talking about, historically, technically, and
otherwise, and is one of the most knowledgeable people in all relevant areas alive today.

Dale –

Amy is part of a large group of “UFO contactees” who have been seriously damaged by something and
have embraced the damage as a way of life. I’m not defending her choice, just observing its corollaries.
Her mind-set has a solid core of passive-aggressive personality-type, to which she and people like her
seem to be almost religiously loyal. There are a lot of people like her out there – and they are, like her,
doomed. I was talking to anybody else on that list that might listen and take what I had to say to heart.
There are people there who have gone part way down the same road Amy has gone, but not all the way,
and maybe what I and both of you had to say may make a difference. For them. For Amy, I am afraid,
the time has come and gone for survival-committed behavior and mind-set. The thing is, though, people
like Amy seem to have this uncanny power to broadcast their devout despair and make it stick in the
minds of others who aren’t yet that gone in it, and if too many get that way, we’re all doomed, because
you can’t fight a whole world with that sort of committed mind-set! So I put in my two cents, trying to
counteract whatever Magickal current she was accidentally or unconsciously painting onto the public
consciousness. You did the same, and from some other responses I got, I really think it helped. But it’s
too late for Amy – she very frighteningly resembles some of those poor damned souls in various versions
of the Inferno who work so hard to rationalize the choices that led them to Hell and their continued
embrace of the result. She is a good example of the passive complement to the active principle of Evil,
that on which it feeds, which acts as its unconscious agent in this world, without actually doing the
murder or torture or whatever herself. I’ve met so many like her. I used to think they could be “saved.”
But they don’t want to be saved. So I make my pitch to whoever around her still might listen, still has
enough left of a soul to make the effort to turn around and go back up that road to Hell before it’s too
late. Thanks for adding your pitch, too. Believe me, Dale, there were others on that list who did listen –
and appreciated it, and will make good on it. It wasn’t in vain.
Poor Amy.
Take care, love always, Yael

(In re below:)

In a message dated 96-07-01 11:40:57 EDT, you write:

>Subj: Re: The Smoking Gun (fwd)

>Date: 96-07-01 11:40:57 EDT
>From: itachi@crl.com (Dale Seago)
>To: Trident23@aol.com
>
>Personal to you, Yael: If in fact we don’t understand what she’s talking
>about, it might considerably facilitate everyone’s understanding were
>she to simply come right out and SAY what she means in plain language -
>instead of relying on hints and leading questions subject to a variety
>of misinterpretations according to the experiences/concerns of the
>readers. Her further “hints” make her sound more like a sort of, let’s
>say, “Lovecraftian hermeticist”: “As OUT THERE, so here on earth”. . .ds
>
>––––– Forwarded message –––––
>Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1996 02:28:59 -0500 (CDT)
>From: Amy Hebert <[Correspondent AH]>
>To: Trident23@aol.com
>Cc:
>Subject: Re: The Smoking Gun
>
>At 10:13 p.m. 6/30/96 -0400, Trident23@aol.com wrote:
>
>> The main thing is: if you let yourself be paralyzed by the seeming
>>Unsurmountableness Of It All, like a jack-lighted rabbit, you have no
chance
>>at all. Doing something is better than just giving up –
>
> But despair just feeds the
>>Reaper –
>
>I don’t think either Dale, his wife (Teri?) or Yael have yet the foggiest
>idea of what I’m talking about. I haven’t “given up” on anything nor do I
>feel any sense of despair. I just know that the government we see ain’t the
>REAL government. I AM searching for ways to make the necessary changes but
>like the invisible government, these “weapons” or tools are not the same as
>those used on conventional, visible government policies or the illusions.
>
>I don’t think even 2% of America realizes we are at war with
>something/someone “out there” who are “down here” also. How can a country
>who does not even believe their own eyes believe in an even more intangible
>government? Never minds, I don’t need an answer, I’m just scratching my
>head.
>
>
>That’s the only way to stay free. And without freedom, life is just a
>>sojourn in the stockyards.
>> – Yael
>>
>
>Are we REALLY free?
>
>>PS: Dale and his wife, Teri, are my senseis, my combat-arts instructors.
>> And as he says, Dale knows a good deal about the occult. He knows
>exactly
>>what he’s talking about, historically, technically, and otherwise, and is
>one
>>of the most knowledgeable people in all relevant areas alive today.
>
>This seems true but I don’t think he knows what I’m talking about.
>
>Never minds. . ..time to move on to other topics. I know better than to talk
>about these things in “public”. ;^>
>
>Amy
>
>
Ukemi or no ukemi, I think she makes an outstanding example of what not to be! :->>

– Yael

In a message dated 96-07-01 03:56:03 EDT, you write:

>Subj: Re: The Smoking Gun (fwd)

>Date: 96-07-01 03:56:03 EDT
>From: itachi@crl.com (Dale Seago)
>To: Trident23@aol.com
>
>Whatever. Bet our ukemi is better than hers. . .Dale & Ter
>
>––––– Forwarded message –––––
>Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1996 02:28:44 -0500 (CDT)
>From: Amy Hebert <[Correspondent AH]>
>To: Dale Seago <itachi@crl.com>
>Subject: Re: The Smoking Gun
>
>At 11:19 AM 6/30/96 -0700, Dale Seago wrote:
>>Amy,
>>
>> That was my wife’s reply you responded to, but I do agree with her
>>- and for the most part, with you as well.
>
>Now THAT’S a gentleman!!! He knows better than to disagree with any two or
>more women!! That is, if he wants to live. <grin>
>
>
>> You appear to posit something vast, hidden, and essentially
>>monolithic behind the sociocultural and political conditioning processes
>>to which all of us are continually being exposed. This may or may not be
>>the case. . .but the confluent effects of individuals and groups operat-
>>ing from simple human greed and narrow self-interest are sufficient to
>>account for the phenomena observed.
>
>Sound like you’ve figured it out to your satisfaction.
>
>>>As an acquaintance of mine likes to express it, we have four
>>boxes at our disposal: soap, jury, ballot, and cartridge. Use in that
>>order.
>
>What about “Pandora’s Box”?
>
> I have more than a nodding acquaintance with esoteric/
>>occult matters, from BOTH sides of the metaphysical fence.
>
>Actually, Dale, I wasn’t referring to anything “esoteric”, “occult” or
>“metaphysical” at all. I’ll bet neither of us has had sufficient training
>to face what lies before us.
>
>Tell your wife she’s a lucky lady!
>
>Amy
>
>
Dale & Teri –
I don’t know if you ever read Watership Down – Richard Anderson can be BORing in the extreme.
But there was one very good – and terrifyingly accurate, if satirically so – scene in there, concerning the
rabbits who were living in a lush meadow on a farm. It concerned the poet-rabbit who made “poems to
the silver wire,” lyrical, lovely poems about what, it turned out, was the wire garrote which the farmer
used to occasionally harvest the rabbits. The farmer provided well for the rabbits, who lived a life of
bliss, in a paradise where they had to do nothing for themselves – except occasionally be harvested for
the farmer’s table. The silver wire of the garrote that did the harvesting was thus also a symbol of the
paradise they lived in, the ease and abundance of their lives.
Amy, like her confreres, makes poems to the silver wire – that’s what her response to you is all
about. I don’t think she’ll be one of the ones who leaves the farmer’s meadow in time. Let’s hope some
there do!

– yrd

In a message dated 96-07-01 16:34:49 EDT, you write:

>Talk about being on the same wavelength: Ter was making EXACTLY the same
>observation last night re: Amy, Watership Down, and the poems to the
>Silver wire. . .ds
>
>On Mon, 1 Jul 1996 Trident23@aol.com wrote:
>
>> Dale & Teri –
>> I don’t know if you ever read Watership Down – Richard Anderson can be
>> BORing in the extreme. But there was one very good – and terrifyingly
>> accurate, if satirically so – scene in there, concerning the rabbits who
>> were living in a lush meadow on a farm. It concerned the poet-rabbit who
>> made “poems to the silver wire,” lyrical, lovely poems about what, it turned
>> out, was the wire garrote which the farmer used to occasionally harvest the
>> rabbits. The farmer provided well for the rabbits, who lived a life of
>> bliss, in a paradise where they had to do nothing for themselves – except
>> occasionally be harvested for the farmer’s table. The silver wire of the
>> garrote that did the harvesting was thus also a symbol of the paradise they
>> lived in, the ease and abundance of their lives.
>> Amy, like those like her, makes poems to the silver wire – that’s what
>> her response to you is all about. I don’t think she’ll be one of the ones
>> who leaves the farmer’s meadow in time. Let’s hope some there do!
>>
>> – Yael

Dale & Teri –

You know, I saw that first in Stephen King’s The Stand, cited by one of the main characters in that
novel, before I ever read Watership Down. [Wouldn’t it be weird if King decided to join the
Bujinkan? :-) But seriously, folks . . .] I had heard of Watership Down, but it sounded like such a
trendy book I avoided it the same way I did Jonathon Livingston Seagull, for about the same reasons.
But after I read King’s character’s observation, I gave it a try – and it wasn’t bad at all. Even so, I think
it took King to get the point across in all its horrifying clarity – after reading The Stand, when I read
Watership Down, the poet-rabbit who made the “poems to the silver wire” came across like a
masochistic version of Goebbels . . . brrrr!
C. S. Lewis, in That Hideous Strength, talked about “things coming to a point,” history gradually
clarifying itself until all spiritual choices were crystal-clear. I think things are now “coming to a point”
for all of us, now. Maybe that’s why we’re on the same wave-length: we – Dale, Teri, and I – have seen
what’s coming, made the same essential choice as to which path to follow, Amy saw it, made a different
one (or let it be made for her by pretending there was no choice and letting things fall out as they would,
I don’t know which). Maybe it’s coming to that – maybe Mother Earth, and Mother Liberty, are close to
making Their choices as to what the future will be like. I hope the fact that sometimes we are on the
same wave-length means that though I know I haven’t gone a hundredth as far down your road as I’d
like, nor a thousandth as far as you have, at least I am on that road, and when all the ballots are counted
and the columns are totaled in the Book of Life, dead or alive I’ll end up on the good side of the ledger,
where you and Teri, the rest of the Bujinkan, the rest of those who have chosen Life are. I hope. (After
the way I bungled things for poor Gary, and Picky, and little Frank – didn’t act to save them when I could
have, didn’t see that I needed to, didn’t get the **** out of that hell-hole before it was too late, and all
the other stupidities of my life, I’m not too sure where I stand. I just hope it isn’t too late. Good
intentions are just that: good intentions. I hope there’s more to me than just good intentions. Well, we’ll
see.)
Take care, now, love always, yrd

Subj: Re: The Smoking Gun (fwd)

Date: 96-07-01 16:10:57 EDT
From: itachi@crl.com (Dale Seago)
To: Trident23@aol.com

By the way, “ukemi”, usually used in Japanese martial art to mean rolls and breakfalls to avoid injury
when attacked and thrown, is from “ukeru” meaning “to receive”. It’s actually a very philosophically
complex subject, even as applied solely in the context of Bujinkan martial art. It can mean how to
receive an attack - or anything else thrown at one, by human agency or by Fate - and “roll with the
punches” so that one is unharmed and actually uses the energy of the attack (or potentially destructive
event) to bring one out “on top” of the situation. . .ds

[My response to the preceding:]

This is embarrassing – I did know that before, but it took this to remind me that I had learned it. My
memory must have been really bad – clearly it’s gone to hell  . . . I knew this two years ago, what’s
happened to me? Well, maybe the gingko biloba (which does seem to be helping with other things) and
other supplements for memory will help me get back some of what I’ve lost as far as memory goes. I
hope. Anyway, thanks – mind if I use this as a starting-point for a note in Notebooks of a Magickian
(Vol. 4 of New Magicks)?

Dale & Teri –

Perhaps people like Amy are accurately described as “co-dependents of
evil.” I.e., people who don’t actually do evil themselves, and deplore it,
but have based their whole way of life on things that depend on the existence
of what is inherently evil for their continued existence. What do you think?

– Yael

Dale & Teri –

My friend John P.– started the list that Amy got onto. I just sent him the following explanation for
my Bad Attitude. Thought you might find it interesting. As I told him, if I can fight on, and will to fight
on, after everything that’s happened to me, anybody can, and there is very little excuse for not doing so.
– I am nothing, I am no one, I am mist, I am fog, I am smoke, I am dust on the wind. I am nothing, and
in and of myself can do nothing. Only in the Void, at the heart of Life, a vessel waiting to be filled by
the Will of the Spirit of Life, Life’s tool, in Life’s name, can I do anything – and then I can do
everything. An individual’s life is nothing, except it serve Life and Life’s purposes. But when it does, as
long as it does, all things are possible to it. The prerequisite for true success and triumph is to become –
nothing and no one.

By the way, I am trying to figure out how to get the thing in my nervous system – I mean the parasite
referred to below, not anything out of my own psyche and genes – to talk about its motives and purposes.
I’ve thought of everything from Ouija boards to “channeling,” but all of these are completely
uncontrolled evocations, hence very dangerous. Got any ideas?

Take care, love, yrd

[To the aforementioned John P.–

John –
If I seem less than compassionate towards Amy and other contactees on the list, it’s because of my
own life-experience. I agree they have suffered much. But my own experience has shown me that it is
not only possible to fight and resist whatever does this sort of thing to people, it also isn’t necessary or
healthy to regard one’s suffering as anything but a problem to be solved, a war to be won. John, I’ve
spent 51 years hag-ridden by some sort of internal parasite which has robbed me of everything, to an
extent you can’t even conceive of. I have had to fight it tooth-and-nail for possession of my own
nervous-system, Will, Soul, and Spirit all my life long, nor dare to relax my guard at all lest it take me
over and use me to commit atrocities against the innocent, against whoever I love. Even then, it has been
able to screw up my perceptions at all levels so it could trick me into doing what it wanted, some of the
time, shattering my life and destroying all my hope thereby. It has even been able somehow to
manipulate the lives and minds of others around me, however it does so – I don’t think, by any means,
I’m the only one carrying such a parasite, it may be widely distributed throughout humanity, which
would enable it to do these things to almost anyone – and has gotten people to behave in ways that bring
my hopes for a normal, productive, happy life up and then turn around and crush that hope to death. I
have learned by long, sad experience that I don’t dare hope for anything, because hoping creates a
window of vulnerability in my psychic and neuroendocrinological armor through which it can, by force,
seduction, or trickery, manipulate me for its own ends – why, how, I don’t know, but it does work that
way. So I have had to live 51 years in increasing, relentless, non-stop despair, not only because when I
hope, something always happens to shatter that hope and nearly send me over the brink, but also to
prevent it from taking me over and using me to hurt me and everyone and everything close tome. I have
had to give up all my hopes for some sort of security in old age, marriage, love, children, even success as
an author. I have had to give up all hopes of anything good in my life, and of fulfillment of my abilities,
True Will, and everything else. What I have found to take the place of all those things I should have at
least been able to hope for is a determination to somehow find out what the damned thing is, what its
windows of vulnerability are, and obliterate the son of a bitch. I have found that well-cultivated hate for
the thing, reasonably deployed and carefully, objectively controlled, keeps my adrenaline up and enables
me to function – and at the same time is moving me inexorably toward some sort of showdown with the
thing, which is just fine by me. I never had any true human parents, or anyone in my childhood who felt
anything but contempt, loathing, and despite toward me. I’ve lost my fiancé, the love of the springtime
of my life, to death because of it; lost any hope of closeness, real closeness, to any living being of my
own species; lost so many of my cats, and my poor little ferret Frank; lost Gary, the best friend I ever
had, by murder at my former landlord’s hands, somehow instigated by this thing; lost my health, youth,
strength, everything. It is all too clear that I can’t avoid dying alone, in poverty, with nothing to comfort
me in my last days. – And so what? That won’t keep me from kicking the damned thing’s butt, whatever
it is. For all of me, it’s a BEM from the Planet Zontar – or a CIA implant – or God alone knows what.
And I don’t care. I’ve fought it to the wall for 51 years, I’ll go on fighting it until I die, without
hindrance, without let. I have been in non-stop physical pain – including “brain-pain” from internal
stimulation of my rhinencephalon by the thing – because I have refused to give in to it all this time, as
well as in chronic depression caused by it as well as by my having to give up hope. It beats me up
internally, through some sort of biochemical means, for everything and nothing, screwing up all my
perceptions, never giving me a moment’s peace. And it still hasn’t won, and it isn’t going to win. I will
never surrender, I will never rest until I have driven it from the land, and it shall not prevail!
After all that, John, dealing with merely human powers-that-be, whether overt or covert, is nothing.
All that’s left for me is war – then so be it! I have been cut off from all true human community, and have
no hope of anything better even after death – and so what? If that is the way things truly are for me, and
always will be, then I have every good reason to sharpen all my abilities to a razor-edge to fight this
thing, to battle it, to do what I can to make sure it can’t ever again hurt anyone the way it has me, and no
reason not to do so.
So here I am, a no one, a nothing, not only now, but also, as far as I know, for the rest of eternity,
abandoned by God at conception to some sort of parasitical monster that will certainly do for the devil
until the real thing comes along – and John, if I can fight back, and assume that it’s only the part of
common sense to develop every skill I have to doing so, not only in battle with this thing, but indeed,
everyone and everything that would attempt to tyrannize the rest of us, well, who can’t? If I, the lowest
and least, have gotten into a long-term habit of fighting back, without even the incentive of being able to
earn praise or love or financial remuneration or any other good thing for it, simply because I refuse to
give up my soul and Will, so much so that by now, it’s second nature to me, who couldn’t do this?
 Hence I get really impatient with those who, obviously having more than adequate intelligence and
education and ability, and having suffered from the attentions of something foul and cruel and without
any concern for their well-being, clearly aren’t in this same mode. If that means there’s something
terribly wrong with me, well, so be it. Right or wrong, alone or with others, I will fight on. So why
aren’t others, who clearly have need to?
(It may be that my own experience could shed some light on what UFO contactees have suffered.
It’s not that I think my parasite is an alien – or that it isn’t. I think, myself, it’s a virus, one with a real
sentience of its own, and a thoroughly evil nature. Being a virus, it can be fought, and, as my own
experience testifies, it can be bested, or at least held at bay for an indefinite length of time. If you want
details, I’ll be happy to share, just let me know.)
I don’t mean to be nasty, and to you I am not. I know you’re hurt because of my reactions to some
of the people on the list. But they frighten me – for them as well as for anything else. Did you ever read
Richard Adams’ Watership Down? There’s a thing in there about the rabbits who live in the farmer’s
meadow, fed and kept by him. Every so often, he harvests them with a noose of silver wire. One of the
rabbits is a poet, who “makes poems to the silver wire,” which he (the poet-rabbit) associates with the
paradisiacal life they all lead in the meadow. To those rabbits, the noose that kills them is the source of
everything good thing they have, so they worship that wire. Sometimes, John, sometimes some of the
people on the list sound just like that rabbit. “What are we supposed to learn from this? What karma are
we working out? Why is the Great Teacher putting us through this?” Well, (a), they are supposed to
learn not to draw to an inside straight, (b) the karma of being a little too trusting and other-directed, and
(c) because we haven’t yet looked hard for the egress . . . and taken it post-haste. I mean. Screw – the
shell you look under is never the one hiding the pea, I’ll take my business elsewhere. Sure, eventually
I’ll buy the farm – but I’ll be holding a hand of Aces and Eights, and you won’t believe what they other
guy looks like . . . even if he is a three-eyed, bright-green BEM! If I have to go, I wanna go out like the
crop-duster in INDEPENDENCE DAY: “Hi, boyz, I’m back . . .” BOOOM!! Go out with style! – and
blow the damned things that ruined by life and so many others’ to hell and gone! At least that much. At
least. And as much more as I can score.
So I’ve got an attitude problem, John, I must admit. The thing is, that particular attitude has kept my
soul in my possession, in spite of everything that something could do to me over 51 years time; it has
enabled me to accomplish a few things of value in the meantime; it has kept me going. And no one has
ever come up with a good enough reason for why I shouldn’t have and do those things, whether for my
sake or anyone else’s. Until someone does – well, I’ll store up snowshoes for walking on frozen nitrogen
in Hell against that day, and keep right on fighting.
– And exhort everyone else to do the same. As loud as a bastard.
Didn’t mean to rile anyone, John, but I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer.
Take care, love always, yrd

*******

Subj: Are anti-pagan fundamentalists what they claim?

Date: 96-06-30 05:21:49 EDT
From: Polaris93
To: Jalyssia

Hi –
Possibly you might want to share this with readers of OPI.
There’s an old, rude saying, “A fox smells his own hole first.” In other words, those who are up to
no good will try to distract attention from their own crimes by accusing others of similar ones, thereby
raising a hue-and-cry in directions away from themselves. Could this be true of the “Fundamentalists” so
hot and heavy now against (a) abortion, (b) Pagans, (c) women, (d) children, and (e) liberty? Has anyone
done any sniffing around to see what connections these individuals and groups might have with powerful
occultists who are really up to no good and are instigating these attacks as a smoke-screen for their own,
truly horrendous crimes? One rumor I’ve heard – and it is only a rumor at this point, I haven’t been able
to substantiate it – is that some of the more rabid “anti-abortion/anti-Pagan” groups are actually funded
by Michael Aquino, founder of the Temple of Set, and whoever is bank-rolling him. There have been
other rumors, about other possible shadow-instigators behind these things, instigators who themselves are
occultists deep in the Dark Side, with connections to the CIA and other powerful vested interests.
 Some of this may or may not be due to instigation by the Vatican – the Vatican would officially
disclaim any intent to start a literal witch-hunt against Pagans in this country, of course, but look at the
declining numbers of Roman Catholics in this country that are still loyal to the Pope and the official line
of the Vatican, especially on such things as birth-control, and you gotta wonder. Is the Vatican possibly
trying to boost declining membership and support in this country by targeting “outsiders” as scapegoats?
It’s a tactic as old as politics, so anything is possible.
I suggest that those who can start looking for the connections between the overt turkeys who are
fronting these attacks and others, the ones with the big bank-accounts and the political designs, who
could be behind this. You might be surprised. Could, e.g., Clinton and his cronies be behind some of
this, trying to get non-traditional religionists in this country to flee to his “liberal” camp for protection
from the monsters? Again, anything is possible. I don’t know what the answers are to this. But the
obvious is rarely the ultimate answer in politics. Qui bono? Who profits? People, I think we’d really
better start checking these idiots out. I don’t think all is quite what it seems. True, there are lots of
religious psychos around who love to do this sort of thing – but it all smells a little too richly of the sort
of organization they ain’t good at, don’t you think?
What do you think? Let’s go digging . . . – yrd

*******

In a message dated 96-06-30 14:08:06 EDT, you write:

<< Hard to know what to think. If the Devil is the Lord of this world, then what keeps the Devil from
succeeding in snuffing out the righteous?? Another externalized force? perhaps, the Osiris of the
Egyptians?? The God of the Talmud?? “human nature,” Aton, or what?
Personally, I think the world is up for grabs. >>

Actually, I do too, from the viewpoint of an ecologist (one of my primary interests is ecology).
Whether Inner Planes or Outer, it’s all Life, in some form – and Life can get out of balance. And when it
does, you get opportunists moving in, everything from carrion-flies to the common cold to heretofore
relatively unsuccessful species that latch on to a suddenly-opened niche and go to town in it. Imbalances
can be disastrous, but eventually they are righted and the world goes on – unless some smart-ass type
decides to keep its edge by making gross imbalance permanent, in which case, the life of a whole world
is eventually seriously threatened, perhaps destroyed if it goes on long enough. That is true evil.
Everything else, whether harsh or benefic, is part of Life and something Life can adjust to. But
deliberate destruction of balance and prevention of formation of a new one for profit, power, and/or
pleasure – now that’s evil! (Sounds just like certain nameless Captains of Industry and Business we’ve
heard of in the past, don’t it? <g>)

– yrd

*******

Subj: the leading role

Date: 96-06-27 09:08:54 EDT
From: Clewt
<<
What goes on behind the scenes? What reality lies behind the use of vague abstractions?
It’s oil. Oil is the biggest player in world politics today, as it has been since the 30’s.
The scarceness of oil is a terrible dilemma for our policy makers here and in other nations. We can’t
have a viable nation without it. Modern industrial standards of living can’t be sustained without it.
Human life itself in its present numbers won’t be possible.
Did you know that WW2 was probably fought because of oil? The second phase of the industrial
revolution occurred with the internal combustion engine. As this scenario and its possibilities became
more apparent, policy makers realized the vital need any nation would have for oil if it was to participate.
The support of German industrialists was key in Hitler’s rise to power, and the industrialists realized that
Germany had no oil, (and it still has no oil today) . The industrialists were very concerned that
Germany had no oil, and that colonial powers, particularly Britain, by having access to oil thru their
colonies, would have effective control over Germany.
The same concern was behind Japan’s militancy and Japan’s decision that it had to risk war in order
to achieve oil access. Japan had no oil then, and it has no oil today. In one of the major ironies of
history, WW2 was fought because of the perceived threats of a colonial system to nations that had no
colonies, when this system was not likely to survive anyway, as indeed it didn’t . Decolonization
occurred very rapidly after WW2. This reminds one of another terrible war that was fought over another
event that was probably going to occur quite soon, and that was our civil war. Slavery was probably not
going to last in the South much longer than it did with the Civil War. Still, oil caused the worse war in
human history, and it has even bigger threats to us today.
Everything you get in a store used over 90% of the energy required to get there from oil resources.
and of course, you drove to and from the store using oil.
Oil is king, oil is scarce. You can’t put human energy to work and get results when it comes to oil
like you can with farming and construction. And the stranglehold of oil may kill us all. As oil
production declines, the turm OIL will change the way we see ourselves. Perhaps some disagreement
with Iraq will be used to invade and control Iraq and it’s oil. We could use ethnic tensions to install a
friendly proxy government that would accept such an arrangement. It may be cynical, but use your
imagination and consider the threat to your life that oil scarceness would bring.
As oil availability declines, you might think we would devolve to a medieval type political system.
But unlike the 13th century, we are sophisticated and scientific. I don’t see how we can go to an oil-less
society while we have nuclear bombs, chemical and germ warfare. The tensions of oil depletion would
create difficult scenarios to deal with, and we could all get killed.
One of the biggest threats to our own standards of oil use is the emergence of high-growth third
world nations that are on a development binge. Development means more oil usage for these countries,
countries like China. One of the biggest disappointments in the world oil scene is the poor results of
searching for oil in China’s remote Sinkiang province. This province was known to have good geological
structure for oil, but because of it’s remoteness and political isolation of China, it was not adequately
explored. Basically, it was the last place on earth to look for oil. Sadly, it turned out to be just another
Germany.
No matter what groups are out there and what plots they may be hatching, they don’t have anything
in mind for us as bad as what will happen when we run out of oil. >>

In a message dated 96-06-27 09:08:54 EDT, you write:

<< It’s oil. Oil is the biggest player in world politics today, as it has been since the 30’s. >>

Oil, my butt! Ultimately it comes down to two things: food, and water. And water is also necessary for
industry. Oil is power, yes, and power corrupts – but take a look at what’s happening concerning food
and water, world-wide, if you want a real scare!

– yrd

*******

In a message dated 96-06-30 11:15:38 EDT, you write:

>Subj: Re: Let’s do some digging, here . . .

>Date: 96-06-30 11:15:38 EDT
>From: waisman@efn.org (Jonathan Waisman)
>To: Trident23@aol.com
>
>> is quite what it seems. True, there are lots of religious psychos around who
>> love to do this sort of thing – but it all smells a little too richly of
>> the sort of organization they ain’t good at, don’t you think?
>> What do you think? Let’s go digging . . . – yrd
>
>Personally, I’m partial to the “conspiracy theory” that says that certain
>extremely wealthy folks are pulling the strings from behind a curtain the
>way the Wizard of Oz did. I doubt they can control everything but they
>do have much more power than the “people” and they are kept well hidden
>by design. Someone once sent me a list, and some of our banks were at the
>top of it, but I don’t remember which ones.
>
>However, since I don’t remote view, I can’t be sure any of this is true.
>If it is, then we don’t live in a democracy, we live in totalitarianism
>disguised as democracy. And they’d have good reason to keep the disguise
>well in place; after all, when people know they are being ruled, they
>rebel. World wide rebellion could create havoc even with the most
>powerful. Better to do this “thing” covertly. That being the case, what
>we see might just be an act, a pretense, and the real thing is hidden
>beneath a veil just thin enough so we can suspect, but never prove. And
>those who can prove get into convenient accidents from time to time.
>Notice any increase in official deaths lately, starting with Vince Foster
>. . . or should I say starting with John Kennedy?
>
>I’m not paranoid . . . yes he is . . . no I’m not.
>
>Jon
>
>

Gee – how’d you guess? ;-) Seriously, have you seen Jerry Falwell’s video, Bill’s Dead Friends,
about the 38 known deaths (pre Ron Brown) that have been associated with Bill Clinton during his
political career, not counting such things as the Branch Davidian Holocaust and Ruby Ridge? Every one
of them happened, every one of them has Clinton’s stink on them. Then there are Waco, Ruby Ridge –
and Oklahoma City. And Ron Brown. And . . . Clinton has a nickname (among others): “Bush Lite.”
Too many connections to the CIA. And God alone knows what else.
So: yes, we live in something other than a perfect democracy. So whenever any politically “hot”
tempest starts up, you can bet that if it hasn’t been directly set up by behind-the-scenes agents for
political reasons, then those same agents, like any healthy opportunistic infection, will soon move in to
take advantage of it.
The thing is, too, is that the government is no friend of Christianity, no friend of Pagans, no friend of
Jews, no friend of blacks, whites, men, women, you name it. We all have a stake in getting together,
comparing notes, finding out what’s really going on, and doing whatever is appropriate about it. All this
Pagans-vs.- Fundies nonsense – and deadly nonsense it is! – does is keep us divided so that we can
remain conquered. The same is true of the divisions between any two ethnic groups in this country,
whether the split is along gender, skin-color, or any other lines. If, however, we can get to the bottom of
who or what is instigating and/or taking advantage of and exacerbating those splits, we’ll have a very
good idea of why our country is going to hell – and maybe what to do about it.
Do some digging!

– yrd

*******

A new term for describing Clinton supporters:

“Co-dependents on evil.”

(Clintonanon? <g>)

– yrd

[Later, to another correspondent:]

Hey –
Would you call a 12-Step program for those who want to stop being co-dependent on evil a “Clinton-
anon”? ;) (Or is that just four more years of the son-of-a-bitch?)

– yrd

*******

In a message dated 96-07-04 07:03:48 EDT, Mickeyx32 writes:

<< OL! Kent!!! I’ll do the best I can. . .

<< 1. Is the planet quarantined?

No but it should be. . . >>

Oh, really? What are those BEMS with the white coats and the butterfly nets walking the halls for, then?

<< 2. Are we really here to learn? Is this school or is this prison?

Might be both. . . >>

Like circus animals, maybe?

<< 3. Why can’t we see beyond birth and death? Why is this veil on our memory and perceptions?

My guess is improper lighting but we are too caught up in our own proclivities to turn on the light
switch. >>

Nah – it’s just too horrible to look at, that’s all . . .

<< 4. Are our gods good guys or bad–helpers or wardens?

Hopefully good guys, but if not we’d better start thinking of contingencies. >>

Worship at the God of your choice – and watch your choice.

<< 5. Is the physical world solid–or illusion?

It’s solid appearance is apparent, due to the electromagnetic property of revulsion. But don’t try to go
through a wall at more than three MPH. >>

Or go for bargains on the Brooklyn Bridge.

<< 6. Do we pick our leaders or are they assigned trustees? My guess is assigned. . . but by who? >>

How about leading yourselves? If you let George do it for very long, after awhile George becomes
George Bush.

<< 7. Why must we play countries and territories? Cell blocks? Somebody has profitability on their
mind; or. . . take it before the other guy gets to it. >>

Hey – you know, we’re perfectly capable of evil all on our own hook! A good confidence artist only
takes advantage of weaknesses and sins already in place in the mark’s soul, and exploits them for his own
purposes, like any competent opportunistic infection! We’re territorial organisms because 3.5 gigayears
of evolution gave territoriality a survival edge over non-territoriality. We get in trouble with it due to our
own stupidities – and maybe because someone . . . or something . . . takes advantage of those
stupidities. If we take responsibility for our own weaknesses, we may find some of the evil that isn’t ours
vanishing; rob an organism of its food and it starves to death, nu? – Or is that sort of self-discipline,
honor, responsibility, and courage too much to ask of us?
– Dripping with sarcasm, yrd

*******

AolMail
Subj: Bujinkan and the Western Way
To:

Thought you might find this correspondence between me and another follower of Bujinkan ninpo taijutsu
enjoyable. yrd

###

Dave –
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law!*
(*This and the reply to it at the end of this letter are the two parts of the whole formula of the New
Aeon, which is but the formula of the Old Aeon re-worded: “Love your Kami with all your heart, soul,
mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s pretty standard among followers of the
Western Way. What’s the equivalent in Japanese for Bujinkan students, by the way? <g>)
Hi there!
Sorry it’s taken so long to answer your last letter. Anyway, here I am again.

>I picked up the disks today and will be mailing them out tomorrow.

Got ‘em. They should be ready for mailing tonight and out in the mail tomorrow, so you should
have them Monday. (“Enjoy!”)

>in your last email you mentioned that you would be interested in
>my views on the combat arts. I will speak only from my
>experiences before and after joining the Bujinkan.
>
>I think that the combat arts offer to everybody a chance to
>understand human nature and their own selves. to push it farther
>than a decent understanding takes a certain mind set. the mind set
>is one of commitment. the commitment being to the self, to the art
>and to life. by doing this i feel that anybody, despite physical
>handicaps, can see beyond the reflection of the mirror of
>life.(sorry, just came out that way.)
>
I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right. (I hope you don’t mind if I save this to include in a letter to
sensei Dale Seago, my teacher. He’ll agree with you, by the way. He’ll be tickled to know that I’m
corresponding with Bujinkan people via email.) Recently, I’ve found myself stripping everything and
everyone out of my life that would actively interfere with my True Will, not by design, but more in
reaction to really off-the-wall garbage they’ve come up with, which a few years ago I’d have unhappily
tolerated. I’ve just walked away from such people and things – and odd, isn’t it, how they are also the
things and people tending to inspire a mind-set that blocks exactly this sort of commitment! By the end
of this year, I think I’ll be fully into a committed program of Bujinkan training, for the first time in my
life – and that the rest of my life will be infinitely better off, as well – as a result of all this. You can
only follow the path of your True Will if you do have such commitment, and whatever would block that
sort of application of will, determination, and love should therefore be avoided, or, if it can’t be avoided,
battled as long as it takes to get away from it at last. Bujinkan training is the best thing in the world for
training the ability to make any sort of commitment – if you can return to the dojo and keep on training,
again and again, in spite of all the aches, pains, bruises, sprains, or whatever, as long as it takes to
become halfway good at it, you can do anything!  – No, please don’t apologize for the poetic turn of
phrase! If you have a mind for metaphors, that’s a wonderful talent – be proud of it, play with it, train it,
use it every day, and thereby bring more beauty into the world, which so very much needs all the beauty
it can get.

>I have also been taught that training is an every moment, everyday
>event. training is not an activity limited solely to the dojo or to the
>workout at the park. people train us, (I think spirits do also, but to
>my knowledge I have not experienced that in a conscious form, to the
>an extent that would allow me to affirm this feeling.) in that, the
>way the move around us, speak to us, etc. is in every way, shape and
>form a event that we learn from. these events can be wonderful
>such as a hug and a kiss and laughter or they can be devastating
>events that a person must guard the heart and be prepared (ears up,
>smell kicked in and the 6th sense alarms going off). I feel that the
>above is beginning to my feelings on the combat arts and that these
>are only small glass baubles in the treasure pile of the martial
>way, but they are also the most valued treasure that a human can have.

These are the sorts of realizations which followers of the Western Ceremonial traditions ought to have,
but rarely do – and why those who practice Bujinkan ninpo taijutsu can become the greatest adepts of all,
East or West, regardless of whatever else they do or where they come from. Because of just this, you
yourself are already far, far beyond the attainments of 99% of all the self-professed occult “experts” the
West has ever turned out. The O.T.O. is just a haven for followers of the occult version of Couch-Do
(The Way of the Potato); it may have nurtured a handful of real adepts in its time, out of all its thousands
of members, but I’ll bet you anything that those few had also been military vets, or cops, or firemen, or
had been otherwise trained in real combat arts somewhere else!

>the other day on my way to the dojo i came up with a thought that
>is a twist on the code of bushido. “living is natural, dying is
>natural, at any given moment do what comes naturally.”

This is the way of the T’ao, what tai chi and chi !kung are all about. Here again Bujinkan training is so
effective for teaching this – if you don’t act with 100% spontaneous appropriate natural reaction to any
given combat situation, at the very best you end up sore all over! :)

>Also, when walking, training whatever, Kevin Millis has harped on

>me to keep my head up and back straight (but not stiff). this is
>very important.

Yeah – it sure helps to see where you’re going, and not give your opponent the gift of already being off
balance! – She said, after several times being dumped onto the dojo floor . . . :)

>Caveat- I am only a shodan, in essence some of what has been

>passed on to me is, to a certain degree, water down. but many of
>thought that i express have been my interpretations of certain
>teachings.

I’m still so new at this, and know very little Japanese; what’s shodan mean? Anyway, relative to the
Bujinkan Way, you may not be very advanced – but I’d put you up against anyone from the Western
esoteric schools not trained in any school of combat arts any time, and make a fortune betting against the
other guy!! :)

>Thanx for the correspondence,

>
Et vous!

>laugh a lot, train hard and smile in the dark

>
“Smile in the dark.” – Come to think of it, that sort of implies that Bujinkan training is the answer for
the general run of problems of “normal” life today so neatly symbolized in the works of Stephen King,
Dean Koontz, et al. In horror fiction, “Death is when the monsters get you.” In Bujinkan, “Death – and
life – is when you nail the monsters!” The monsters may only be those inside your own school, those of
Fear, Terror, Paranoia, but they’re strong and mean – and Bujinkan training is the one thing in the world
that I know of that can nail even those, finally. For these are only products of misunderstanding, of
forgetting (for we always know at the beginning, and never entirely forget) that all that is, is part of Life,
part of Life’s great Conspiracy (= “Breathing Together”), subject to the laws of the living universe of
biological reality. All things ultimately are subject to the Tao, even the monsters. And by means of
Bujinkan training we learn this not just in our minds, but in our very bones, the heart of every cell of our
bodies, the real Unconscious mind!
Take care, diskettes soon on way
Love is the law, love under Will.
– yrd

*******

Subj: Notes on mutual reception tech

Date: 95-05-08 21:58:00 EDT
From: Polaris93
To: Zodiac TFP

Just a quickie, about possible additional mutual reception techniques (to use when all else fails?
<g>).
(1) If, for a given chart, a given House in that chart is the X th from the House ruling the matter under
consideration, the technique of stepping then allows us to treat the latter as if it were the First House of
the chart and the former as if it were the Xth House of the chart. That is, suppose we have a horary chart
concerning an inheritance. Inheritances are 8th House matters, so the 8th House of the chart becomes the
First House of the “stepped” chart. Now we want to look at the outcome of the inheritance, say. The
outcome of any matter is ruled by the 4 th House from the House ruling that matter. The 4 th from the 8th is
the 11th, so it is the 11th we want to look at.
Having created the “stepped” chart in this way from the original one, we treat the Houses of the chart
as if they were those in the “stepped” version. E.g., in our example, we treat the original chart’s 8th
House as if it, its cusp, and everything in it or related to it were the 1st House. Now we examine the
“new” chart to see whether any of the Planets in it are in mutual reception with one another by stepped
House placement – we ignore the “old” (original) House placements and use only those with reference to
the “stepped” Houses. E.g., if in our example Venus is in the 8th and Mars the 9th of the original chart,
then in the “stepped” chart derived from it for the question of inheritance, Venus is in the 1st, Mars in the
2nd of that “new” chart – and thus in mutual reception by House placement, whether they were in mutual
reception by House or Sign in the original chart.
(2) We can look at the actual Signs on the cusps of the Houses of a chart and the placements of their
Planetary Lords in the chart, and treat those Planets as if They were the generic Lords of the Houses
which have Their Signs on their cusps rather than Their true identities. That is, suppose we have a chart
which has Virgo rising, Libra on the 2nd, Scorpio on the 3rd, Sagittarius on he 4th, Capricorn on the 5th,
Aquarius on the 6th, etc. Then Mercury rules the Sign on the cusp of the First House, and is therefore
analogous in that chart to Mars, generic ruler of all First Houses; Venus rules the Sign on the 2nd House
cusp, and is analogous to Herself; Pluto, that on the 3rd House cusp, analogous to Mercury; etc. Now
suppose in that chart we have Neptune in Sagittarius and Venus in Taurus. In that chart, Venus is
analogous to Jupiter (ruling Taurus on the 9th) and Neptune to Venus (ruling Pisces on the 7th), so here,
Venus-as-Jupiter, in Venus’s traditional Sign Taurus, would be in mutual reception by Sign under
mundane dignity with Neptune-as-Venus, in Jupiter’s traditional Sign Sagittarius, and the two could then
be treated as mutual receptions by Sign generally are. Or, suppose Venus in that example were in the
2nd House of the chart and Neptune were in the 9th. They would then each be in Houses traditionally
ruled by the other’s analogous Planet, and thus in mutual reception by House placement under mundane
House dignity.
(3) The two techniques can, of course, be combined. If you want to do this, I recommend some tight
programming and a 486-DX or better computer with plenty of RAM as well as hard-drive storage – I
don’t recommend it otherwise, because either it is too easy to get lost somewhere between one step and
the next and mess it all up, or you use up a forest of trees and tons of graphite or ink trying to work it out
on paper (not to mention all the damn time it takes!)
Conclusion: These techniques can add a couple of strings to your bow when you need them to find a
possible way out of a jam described in a chart. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has
used them, concerning what results you got from it. Thanks, yrd

*******

April 26, 1995

America is the alchemy of uranium, refined, purified, decomposed, recomposed, in every possible
way, in the Black Dragon of the human body and the crucible of the human spirit. Trying to establish
control over Americans in any way is rather like trying to control bomb-quality uranium metal: it is not
recommended that one try it without using waldos, or using more than very small portions at a time! (By
comparison, the metal of the modern state of Israel, in whose chart Neptune is rising, having the same
dominion over Israel that Uranus has over the United States of America, is of course neptunium – subtle,
powerful, strange. As for plutonium – who else but the People Who Live in the Sewers, in the
undergrounds of great modern cities, having first gone down there to live early in this century after all
else failed, remaining ever since, and now thriving there, true children of Pluto?

*******

From Keith Laumer, The House in November (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970), pp. 104-107)

“I know we’ve been invaded by creatures that are not of this earth,” Mallory said
curtly. “What are they? What do they want?”
“Want? You misunderstand, Mallory. They want nothing; they know nothing – not
as you and I know and want.”
“They wanted something badly enough to invade the planet,” Mallory countered.
“No . . .invade is not the correct word,” the old man said. “Your planet is not
occupied; it’s infected. They’re not invaders; they’re a disease.
“The Mone,” the old man said, “is a single organism whose being is implicit in a
multitude of discrete units. It arose eons ago, on a world of a some distant galaxy.
Perhaps at first it was a simple virus, mindless and bodiless, existing only as a pattern to
be impressed on living cells, devouring them, spreading, growing.
“But it is the basic trait of life–even the half-life, pseudolife of a virus-to seek to
expand. It is conjectured that in time the Mone came to be the dominant-indeed, the
only organized matter on its native world. It – or they –developed . . . not
intelligence, but a system of instinctive reactions to situations comparable to the ability
of some of your native insects to construct elaborate nests, weave geometric webs, erect
traps, store food, herd other insects, navigate, communicate-all without true thought, as
humans know thought. And like other organized matter, it was faced with a choice:
evolve or die. The Mone evolved.
“We have no way of knowing the intermediate steps by which the Mone occupied
first its native system, then learned to cross interstellar distances-nor the process by
which it elaborated its ultimate, sophisticated methods of survival. We do know that
when it crossed intergalactic space to reach our Galaxy, it had become a force of
fearsome potency. Its encapsulated germ plasm could endure the rigors of cold,
vacuum, the passage of time until the warmth of a sun drew it close. Reacting to the
gravitational wells of planets, a spore pod would steer itself to a world – and it mattered
not on what kind of world it found itself. It was infinitely adaptable, capable of
thriving in molten magma, or on bare ice at a degree or two above absolute zero – or in
an atmosphere of incandescent gas. In response to exterior conditions, the germinal
units would ready themselves; then the pod would burst, releasing a thousand self-
 sufficient embryonic creatures, equipped to cope with local conditions, however severe
– to grow, construct a nest for the Queen Mone, support and feed her until her spawning
time. Then – with the planet seeded with multiple billions of worker-forms – the next
phase was entered. This time all effort was concentrated on the creation of million
upon million of pods, each packed with the seeds of a new planet-infecting force. In six
months – or a year – or a century – when the planet was exhausted-the pods would be
launched from the stripped world, spreading the plague outward from star to star at a
geometric rate. In a million years – or less – the entire Galaxy would be only a dead
husk from which all life had been stripped as locusts strip a wheat field.”
“Spores,” Mallory broke the silence. “Viruses. The things I saw were big,
powerful. They used tools, spoke –”
“Your chromosomes bear the genetic pattern which determines your form, your
abilities. This pattern varies from species to species, phylum to phylum. In the Mone,
the only pattern is – adaptability. Earthly species adapt to environment over a long
period, by evolution. The Mone has evolved the ability to make instant adaptation of
its chromosomes to meet whatever pressures it senses await the new-spawned
generation.”
“All this doesn’t explain what’s happened to Gill – to everyone. Why couldn’t I
make her understand that something was wrong? And why was my daughter’s room
sealed? Why?”
“The Mone uses whatever natural resources it finds. Workers are needed to
construct the nest, to prepare the special foods and supply the physical needs of the
Queen Mone. Here, it seized on a cadre of humans, instilled in its slaves a false image
of the world and of their roles, supplied them with false motivations to make them
docile and productive. As for the sealed room – if the girl was missing, the parents
might best be soothed by deleting her from their memories and eliminating all
evidence of her existence. A protective field which creates a sense of illness in
interlopers effectively discourages interference.”

*******

In a message dated 96-07-06 19:54:32 EDT, [Correspondent AH] (Amy Hebert) writes:

<< At 03:07 p.m. 7/6/96 -0400, Mickeyx32@aol.com wrote:

>
>Well who would want to invoke this type of sabotage? Might this be another
>form of biological warfare on behalf of our little gray friends?
>
>Mickey

I don’t know who would or will do such a thing but the water supply would be a prime target in the
event of any kind of chemical/biological warfare.
Didn’t we, as a group, discuss this once? Can’t remember.
Anyway, I like to watch worldwide events to see if there are any patterns. All I know for the US is
we’ve had a rash of forest fires, a black-out in 8 states, droughts, and problems with water supplies and
the stock market ain’t doing so good (did I leave out anything?). I don’t know if there is any pattern
there but we need to always keep our eyes open and observe over-all conditions as well as local. You
see, water shortage in one city may not seem important unless you notice the mention of water supply
problems elsewhere. You KNOW our government will not let us find out about any dangers until the last
minute when it will probably be too late and those “in charge” are safely in their underground bunkers.
We can only stay on our toes and keep our eyes open.
I don’t know too much about the stock market but it seemed like they would have made a bigger ta-
do about how low it closed Friday but everyone is acting like it’s “OK”. I remember when it dropped 85
points (or something like that) in October 198something and people went bananas. Now it was down
100+ and people just acted like it was normal. And the market closed 3 hours early was this for the
holiday or what? Like I said I don’t know that much about the stock market so I’m really confused. (I’m
sure some smart person will explain this to me - I’m waiting!)
I’m also observing the high temps here in Texas. We’ve had way too little rain this year and temps
don’t usually get into the triple digits this early in the summer. Global warming is becoming more real. I
have been thinking about what my goals are for the next 5 to 10 years and I am wondering where to go
for cooler summers. I’ve been day-dreaming about how things have changed and how they will change.
I think it’s time to start thinking in terms of survival, not panic but strategy.
So, we’ve got global warming, alien invasions, government conspiracies for a New World Order and
prophecies of doom. What a pickle! ;^>

Amy >>

You know, I don’t think we need to look for aliens for causes of these things, certainly not for most
of them. For thousands of years, humanity has been living on its ecological capital, the inevitable
consequences of which include, e.g., global warming. While some of the collective behavior involved in
this might have been inspired or whatever by ET invaders of some kind, most of it, certainly, has to do
with what we are and how we like to do things. For a better understanding of how we came to be what
we are and how our collective behavior over the aeons has affected our world, read Peter Ward’s
outstanding book, The End of Evolution: On Mass Extinctions and the Preservation of Biodiversity
(Bantam Books, 1994). Please, let’s separate out what could not be explained by well-understood
ecological and evolutionary mechanisms from what definitely could be. Until then, every speculation
about the possibility of ET invasions is only a guess, and not well-educated, at that. – yrd

*******

In a message dated 96-07-09 04:44:37 EDT, [Correspondent AH] writes:

<<
At 08:23 p.m. 7/8/96 -0400, Mickeyx32@aol.com wrote:

> I would be
>surprised to see an overt front page Alien Invasion. But who knows? Perhaps
>we are all in for quite a shock.
>They saw fit to use humans as guinea pigs for nuclear testing back in the
>late forties/early fifties; and I suspect they will stop at nothing. After
>all, a sociopath is not prone to loosing much sleep.

Well said, Mickey!

I wonder too if there will be any overt signs of an invasion if such occurred. I think
we have already been “invaded” centuries ago and as John Lear said, “It’s all over but
the screaming.”
It may sound crazy but it seems like we may have an invasion within an invasion.
According to the STS-48 incident, someone is fighting someone “out there”. And that
“fireball” over Windsor - Canada last August was fired on by someone’s government.
These “fireballs” are increasing in frequency. I’m not sure if we are allied with some
kind of beings or fighting some beings with the help of other beings. I tend to think it is
the latter because if we were fighting beings with superior intelligence, we probably
would have lost a long time ago (who knows, maybe we did). If we are fighting some
kind of beings now, I don’t think we would have made it this far without help.
Makes you wonder why ANYONE would want this planet. Well, they may want
the planet but not us. Can you blame them? >>

Now hold on, here! Mickey says:

>They saw fit to use humans as guinea pigs for nuclear testing back in the
>late forties/early fifties; >
If the hypothetical ETs are living organisms of any kind, even silicon-based ones, they do not want to
have to deal with all sorts of radioactive garbage strewn hell to breakfast across this world! It would
mess them up as bad as it has us. In fact, one could ask: has there been a covert operation on the part of
several governments over the past several decades to “test” nuclear devices on an ongoing basis and
deliberately dose our world with fallout as a sort of desperate “pest-control” measure aimed at such
invaders? That would make more sense. Otherwise, you’d have to postulate that the ET invaders never
intended to land on our world or interact with it in any direct physical way – any sort of delicate
homeostatic mechanism, from protoplasm to modern computers, quickly deteriorates when exposed to
any significant amount of radiation. Life on earth has had to exercise endless evolutionary ingenuity just
to deal with natural sources of radioactivity and radiation, e.g., volcanic ash and sunlight, and now with
all this fallout around, it is being taxed to the limit on that score. Why muck up a nice planet with that
stuff if you plan on invading it yourself? You wouldn’t. In addition to every other consideration,
whether you dumped it on your subjects as fallout or had them drink it as “medicine” during an
“experiment,” it would mutate your subject population all to hell and gone, making them more and more
unpredictable, less and less controllable, looser and looser cannons by the day! Why shoot yourself in
the managerial/military foot like that? Maybe humanity has been doing it back to aliens, like a coyote
chewing off its own leg to get out of a trap?
Similarly, an awful lot of “strange” phenomena on our world make no sense as results of deliberate
tactical exercises by aliens directed at us, whereas they do make sense as natural phenomena which,
though as yet little understood, are natural.
Again, please let’s separate the wheat from the chaff!!

– yrd

*******

In a message dated 96-07-09 04:44:47 EDT, [Correspondent AH] writes:

<< Now how the hell do you take infrared shots of the sun at night?!! Duh! >>

You don’t take them of the Sun – you take them of the living world at night, to see how the absence
of the Sun affects it. You can also take day-shots of the environment in infra-red wave-lengths to see
how it functions in direct Sunlight. Putting these two together gives us a much better understanding of
the crucial influence of Sol on our world and Her life. – yrd

*******

In a message dated 96-07-10 19:01:13 EDT, itachi@crl.com (Dale Seago) writes:

<< Yep, we knew about this one. Had one of the girls been OUR daughter, (yes, we
have taught kids in that age range) they might still have forced her, but some of those
doing the forcing would have been hospitalized. . .and that’s BEFORE we heard about
it and came running. >>

One more reason for my proposed “universal self-defense classes for pre-schoolers” draft (the only
people (?) who could possibly object to it, besides congenital idiots, would be child-molesters of
whatever stripe. At least give our children a fighting chance! :)
You know, it seems to me that that particular incident was highly illegal, just in terms of local laws,
let alone federal or state ones. Wonder what’s going to happen to the idiots who staged that? – Also
wonder: why was the school idiot enough to do something that blatantly illegal and bustworthy? Was
there maybe the principal hiding in the walls with a camcorder, planning to sell the film to dirty old men
or something? What on earth could the school having been thinking to pull a dumb stunt like that? – yrd

*******

In a message dated 96-07-11 19:39:17 EDT, you write:

 << << I haven’t seen the ‘BEMs’ (BEMs?) myself with their white coats and butterfly
nets, but I’ll take your word for it. At any rate you’ve got myself and possibly one or
two others guessing. Why are they walking the halls? >>

Monitoring for chalk-fights, or maybe cafeteria exchanges with the overdone

buns . . . :) >>

Sounds fascinating Yael; I wouldn’t spend my time doing the same, but I suspect they
have an alternate matrix of objectives. I hope they don’t get themselves into trouble
and find what they are looking for. >>

Actually, I was just being flippant. The thing is, I’m not sure all or most of these are BEMs (Bug-Eyed-
Monsters/aliens). I’m a Ceremonial Magickian, myself, and have found, as so many other Magickians
and shamans have over countless centuries, that a lot of what many people now think are ET aliens can
be evoked or otherwise called into physical manifestation via Magickal and religious ritual. The
mechanisms aren’t well understood, if at all, but there’s a physicist, Nick Herbert, whose intriguing
works, e.g., Quantum Reality, might have some ideas, and the biologist Lyall Watson also has some
intriguing thoughts on the matter. Most of the countless weird things that Magickians have called up over
all that time are clearly not ETs, as we normally understand that idea, and did not get here via any sort of
spaceship. Jacques Vallee speculates that some aliens may actually come through some sort of space-
warp from another universe, and that may also be true of some of the ghoulies and ghosties that occultists
have evoked. Anyway, there’s a question in so many cases as to whether the things “waling the halls”
are truly ETs at all. Further, if they are here, maybe they’re just trying to get by the best way they can,
like any living organism, and interact with us only to try to get some control over the environment they
now share with us, like the first human settlers on a new continent scoping out the local game and the
possibility of other human beings who got there first as potential threats, etc.

*******

In a message dated 96-07-11 19:39:08 EDT, you write:

<< < >Similarly, an awful lot of “strange” phenomena on our world make no sense as
>results of deliberate tactical exercises by aliens directed at us, whereas
>they do make sense as natural phenomena which, though as yet little
>understood, are natural.
>
>Again, please let’s separate the wheat from the chaff!!
> >– yrd
>
Yael:

You need to figure out what we are talking about THEN separate the “wheat
from the chaff”. Mickey was referring to things our government does not
necessarily what any so-called aliens are doing.

Amy
>>

Thank you Amy, Amy is correct Yael. I was strictly making reference to government
activity. Aliens were not a consideration regarding the aforementioned post..
Mickey >>

A lot of those same things – whether the government admits to them or not – may not be ETs at all. I
have found, through about 30 years of research on UFOs and contactees, that many or most contactees
are prone to see a lot of things as related to or caused by or identical with ETs that have nothing to do
with them. And that they do not – and do not want to – make careful checks to rule out all other
possibilities before deciding these are ET-connected events or beings. Again, as a Hermeticist and
Magickian, I – and my colleagues – regularly deal with and encounter beings and things that are clearly
not ET in origin, but which lots of other people immediately assume are aliens or connected with them.
When the government denies any knowledge of those things, or denies they are ETs, etc., a lot of people
immediately decide that means those things are ET-connected. But they clearly aren’t. Also, as a
biologist, I’ve run across a lot of known Earthly phenomena that people have mistaken for aliens or alien-
caused things. The cryptophenomenologist John Keel has had the same experience with non-
cryptophenomena that people will take for the Unknown . . . when it clearly isn’t. A lot of contactees
are appropriately angry at government denials and lies about ETs, etc., but it doesn’t help when they
themselves then go overboard in the other direction and blindly accept a lot of thoroughly terrestrial
phenomena and beings as ETs when they aren’t, because that just gives live ammunition to government
spokesmen, CSICOP, and the other debunkers. That is my beef – about 30 years of it (in just my own
experience)! – yrd

*******

In a message dated 96-07-11 18:51:54 EDT, you write:

<< reason. He didn’t say much – but what he did was terrifying! This was
not connected with damn Roswell – in fact, Roswell has been used by
military intelligence as a smoke-screen for a lot of things the public has no
hint of. Whether Roswell happened or not, the public does know about it,
and it makes a great distraction, “official denials” and all. Anyway, that
was what Gary was involved in. – Yael

What did Gary say about it? I have started to take this
subject much more seriously after reading a few recent
books. . . If you don’t want to answer over email you can send
by other means.
>>

Well, he did say that the furnishings in the ship were not anything like you’d think up for any sort of
sentient life-form our world could have come up with. And speaking as a linguist, he told us that the
glyphs or symbols in the booklet he and his colleagues were supposed to translate matched no known
language on Earth, not even dead ones. (It was Gary who told me about Mayan writing, in which each
concept or sentence-element is stylized component for a face, the whole face making up a sentence or
something like it. And of course there are the quipas, things like that. Gary knew about all of them, the
world over. When he said this was like nothing on Earth, he knew what he was talking about.) Also,
when he was just out of Amherst College and working for a year at an observatory in Arizona as an
assistant to the head astronomer, he and a colleague saw something come down in the desert (this was
about 1964 or so), went out to see it, took up-close photos of it which are still filed away in some back-
closet there at the observatory. He said it was made of something that would have made our state-of-the-
art space-age ceramics and other materials now look like wet Kleenex, whatever it was. There was also a
friend of his who was in the US Coast Guard about that time on a ship that was ordered to intercept a
Soviet Russian trawler one night. When they got there, about 100 feet above the trawler was this
enormous craft, disk-shaped and covered all over with stuff that was probably telemetry and other gear,
and the Russians were recording it with every type of recording-device they had, sound, video, magnetic,
you name it. The Coasties boarded the trawler (which was inside our waters, where it was not supposed
to be), and took command. They got on the horn and called headquarters, and got orders to cut a deal
with the Soviets: We’ll let you go – if you let us make copies of all the recordings you got off the thing.
The Soviets agreed, and the records are still there in a CIA or USAF basement somewhere. I actually
talked with Gary’s friend – if he was lying, I couldn’t tell, and he was very uneducated, so what he
described of that craft would have had to have been fed to him verbatim by somebody else (and he wasn’t
good at rote verbal memorizing, either), so the chances are it was all for real.

It’s hard to remember details of what Gary told me, but if you keep prompting me, I can recall more and
more. (His death really hit me hard, but this may redeem it a little. So please prod! <g>)
 – Yael

PS: “itachi@crl.com” is Dale Seago, who is sometimes interested in this stuff – he knew Gary, too, so
thought he’d maybe want to see this. Nobody else. – Yael

*******

[From Sylvia Schneble]

<<< Something interesting about Chiron. When I was small, I witnessed my adoptive
father kill someone with a gun while he was in an altered personality state. It may have
happened more than once, and he may have threatened me with the gun. Guns were
thus part of my Chironic Wound >>

I think you’re on to something; “Chironic Wound” sounds like a great astrology

book title or magazine piece (the thing about loaded gun magazines {chuckles} . . .
Your adoptive father sounds like even more disturbed than I recall your first telling
me about your hideous youth! But certainly have you fully examined the ramification
of your synastry between him and you chironically speaking? I’d love to know . . . >

[My reply]

Sylvia –

That Godawful Kite configuration in the S.O.B.s chart makes close aspects to my Moon, Saturn, Juno,
Neptune, Sun, Pluto, Uranus – his Sun, Neptune, and Mercury stellium conjoin my
Moon/Saturn/Juno/Eros stellium within a degree or so, and since his Uranus opposes that stellium of his,
and his Mars and Saturn both trine it, of course they make close aspects to it, too, not to mention my Sun,
Neptune, etc. Since that Moon/Saturn/Juno/Eros stellium of mine is in my 10th House, in Cancer,
closely squaring my First-House Neptune/Chiron/Pallas stellium as well as my 7th House Aries Sun, you
can see how he would have overshadowed my psyche and spirit for so long. It’s like the guy was water
and I was a fish, up until he died – assuming that the water was, in this case, stiff with toxic industrial
waste and raw sewage. Oh, yes, I’m well aware of that synastry. The thing is, as far as most people were
concerned, he came on look the original Good Ol’ Boy, Life-of-the-Party Georgie, the archetypal
toastmaster, which was anything but like his chart. Even without knowing his exact time of birth,
though, that kite formation in his chart says something entirely different – that was his core, and what
most people saw was another personality completely. His core could have been anything from another
Salvador Dali to a modern Count Cagliostro, nothing like his “daylight” personality. It was his core
personality that dominated my psychic environment when I was a child, not his exterior, “daylight”
personality, which was as different from his core personality as night is from day, the “good Georgie,” as
opposed to the “evil Georgie.” Anyway, one look at that kite of his in relation to my chart gives me the
cold shudders. Got any ideas as to how to clean the damned thing out of my psyche, what there is left of
it? All ideas are welcome . . . :-]
Take care, love always, yrd

*******

In a message dated 96-07-16 12:39:34 EDT, you write:

<<You CANNOT let this happen! You must seek some sort of protection either
through spiritual means, shamanistic means, or pure meditative monastic = type
meditation. This is a Monster; even after death. The power of prayer . . .? If enough
of us surround you in a circle of peace, light and love? You can’t let your energy get
zapped, that’s for sure.

I have tried everything. A lot of people who used to be my friends are disgusted with me because
everything they have tried hasn’t worked, and I no longer have anything to do with them. I have been
told again and again I ought to convert to Roman Catholicism; maybe these attacks are some sort of
attempt at spiritual extortion by some errant spirit of the RC Church, who knows? I think this falls under
the same heading that chronic, aggravated assaults on children by adults who have them in their power do
– such attacks are wrong, are evil, and nothing happens to stop them. Maybe I’m supposed to be battered
to death by these attacks, I don’t know. I do know whatever this is wants my soul, and I won’t give my
soul to it, so on and on it goes. One asks: how can good Gods let this happen? Well, look at what’s
happening to Mother Earth – or, for that matter, to little children who are murdered in the countless
millions every year by monstrous adults. There is an old question: is there a God that is at once all-
powerful, all-good, and all-knowing? If there is, then evil is good – that’s the only way you could
rationalize that answer, because otherwise such a God wouldn’t permit the murders either of Mother
Earth or of innocents. Otherwise good Gods aren’t all-powerful and all-powerful Gods aren’t good. The
Greeks and Romans knew things – their Gods weren’t all-powerful, though They were supposed to be
more powerful than the Gods of enemies of their respective countries. It was a relative matter, not one of
absolutes. That’s the only way one can understand such horrors as Auschwitz, Sobibor, Hiroshima, Waco
– though many are monotheistic, and want to believe their Gods are the only God, either there are many
goods, some weaker than others, some better than others, or else whatever one God there is utterly evil.
And what would be the point in believing in such a God? It might exist, but worship it? Pray to it? No
way. I honestly believe that the reason that Hermes/Raphael doesn’t protect me from this thing is that He
can’t, not because He doesn’t want to. That Mother Earth is dying doesn’t mean the Gods want Her to
die – after all, They are part of Her. It means that something is happening to Her that so far is worse than
They can muster the strength to defeat. That Auschwitz happened doesn’t mean YHVH wanted it to, it
means that maybe, for whatever reason, YHVH couldn’t keep it from happening. And so on. And so it is
with my situation. Shit happens, Sylvia, and it can happen to anybody. We all die eventually – maybe
this is what will get me. I only know I’m tired beyond the point where I can do anything more about it,
and others I have known who are knowledgeable in this area have done what they could and nothing
worked and they have given up. I have no idea where to turn next – and neither does anyone else. I
refuse to convert to a religion I don’t believe in the forlorn hope that would do some good, which is all
that’s left. So . . . Until something happens to demonstrate that the situation is going to change, I don’t
know what to tell you. For 51 years, every time I have dared to hope, events have occurred to slap me
down for it – e.g., the death of my fiancé in a weird car accident on August 6, 1963, the deaths of my cat,
my ferret, and my friend Gary between December 1994 and July of last year, and so on. All I can do is
fight on, and refuse to give up my soul. If that seals my doom, so be it. I wish I could tell you something
hopeful, but currently there is nothing to give such hope. This is why I have made out my will,
purchased by cremation plan, and so on – odds are this thing will destroy me. The alternatives include
such things as a rich, loving husband, getting my book purchased by Simon & Schuster, somebody rich
dying and leaving me a fortune, etc. If those things happened, I could buy the help I needed, and damn
the consequences. But the chances of those things happening are just about those of anybody winning the
Lottery – not impossible, but very, very close to it.
If anything happens to change things for the better, I’ll let you know at once. It’s just that it doesn’t
seem likely.
I’m sorry, Sylvia. Take care, love, yrd

*******

Hi –
All hope is not lost – Oliver North, who himself has quite a following in the NRA, has come out
openly endorsing Harry Brown, the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate. He interviewed Brown on
his radio show the other night, and urged listeners to vote for Brown because “Dole sold out the
Republicans on the gun issue.” North was a hard-core Republican, not to mention that he is a life
member of the NRA. As he goes, so will much of the nation. So . . . Whether you like the man or not
isn’t the point. He’s a very conspicuous canary in a very deep mine, as it were, and what he does may
well be an augury of Things to Come.
Newt Gingrich is also very anti-Dole. While I can’t stand Gingrich personally, I can only agree with
him that Dole is a traitor to the party – Gingrich hasn’t called him that openly, but he is doing everything
he can to scuttle Dole’s agenda behind the scenes.
One other thing: it has been reported that missiles brought down that 747 jet a couple of nights ago,
the one that blew up in mid-air just off Long Island. The government is trying to claim it was a terrorist
attack, but the type of missiles implicated are those available to the armed services and nobody else, and
virtually impossible for non-government personnel either to obtain or emplace for such use. First, Waco;
then, Oklahoma City. Now this. Does Our Boy Bill just have this bad habit of murder, or is something
slimier going on? . . . [organ music comes up. Stay tuned for our next installment of “All My Murders,
or, As the Constitution Burns” . . .]
By the way, for those of you who are astrologers, I did get the chart data on that crash – came down
about 8:40 p.m. EDT on 7/17. Had Neptune and Uranus in the 12th with Aquarius rising, and Uranus
sextile Pluto, Pluto in the 10th, Scorpio on 10th cusp. ???

*******

Subj: Ph’nglui-Louie dept:

Date: 07/20/96
To: itachi@crl.com

Dale & Teri –

Thought you might enjoy . . . – Yael

Subject: So Your Child Is Coming to Miskatonic!

From: kckluge@krusty.eecs.umich.edu (Karl Kluge)
Date: 10 Jul 1996 23:31:57 -0400
Message-ID: <92o687vbh3m.fsf@krusty.eecs.umich.edu>

Dear Parent,

On behalf of the faculty, staff, and administration of Miskatonic University, allow me

to express our appreciation that you have decided to entrust us with your child’s
education. As going away to college can be traumatic for both the incoming student
and parents, I’d like to discuss a number of issues that will confront you and your child
as a college freshperson.

MISKATONIC’S COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY

Miskatonic University has a long and proud tradition of diversity in its faculty and
student body. In the dorm, the cafeteria, and the classroom your child may be exposed
for the first time to people of radically differing backgrounds. Evangelical Protestant
students may find themselves sharing a dorm room with an Orthodox Jew. Some
students will be from different economic backgrounds than your child , other from
different racial backgrounds, and still others may have facial tentacles. It is important
that your child be prepared to view this as an opportunity for growth and learning rather
than as something to be scared of.

UNDERSTANDING STUDENT SLANG

When your child comes home from Miskatonic on break for the first time, he or she is
likely to have picked up student “lingo” with which you may be unfamiliar. Learning
common “hip” expressions will help facilitate
communication with your child. For instance,

“I have to phone the ‘rents for some cash to buy ‘za”

means

“I have to call my parents to get money to buy pizza.”

Or, to pick another example,

 “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh Wgah’nagl fhtagn”

means

“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

HEALTH AND LIFESTYLE ISSUES

Incoming students, often away from constant parental supervision for the first time for
any extended period, often use this opportunity to experiment with various activities. It
is important that you frankly discuss issues such as STDs, contraception, and drugs with
your child before he or she goes off to college. Making sure that your child has
accurate information is crucial. For instance, the so-called “Innsmouth look” can not
be transmitted via casual contact such as sharing a toilet seat or shaking hands. It can
only be transmitted via unprotected sexual contact with servitors of Dagon.

CONCLUSION

We hope you find these tips useful, and look forward to seeing you and your child on
campus. Any questions can be addressed to the Office of Student Affairs at 964-7674
(YOG-SOTH).

Albert Wilmarth, Jr.

Dean, Student Affairs

Miskatonic University

Go Pods!

*******

Thought y’all might enjoy the following examples of Newspeak to be used in our multiculture in order to
enable those who heretofore have been sociopolitically challenged because of Politically Incorrect
language used by the rest of us:

1) On obesity. The words “obese,” “fat,” and other words referring to individuals whose size, weight,
etc. are larger than politically incorrect aesthetic standards find acceptable shall in future be
replaced by “corporeally well-endowed,” while “thin” and similar terms shall be replaced by
“circumferentially challenged.”

2) On certain global character defects: )*(‘s shall no longer be referred to as such. Instead, they shall be
referred to as “sphincterentially well-endowed.” Their opposite numbers, who in the past have been
referred to as “gracious,” “generous,” “saintly,” etc., shall be in future referred to as
“sphincterentially challenged.”

– Enjoy, yrd

*******

Hi –
Finally found out the real, uh, poop behind Clinton’s and Gore’s sojourn in the White House. It was
the result of an Affirmative Action decision – the National )*( Liberation Front sued successfully to get
the job for one of their own . . . (As if there weren’t already plenty of assholes in the federal
government!)
Q: What will Clinton’s campaign slogan be?
– A: “Hire the spiritually challenged – re-elect Clinton!:

– yrd

*******

Hi –
If this strikes a chord in anyone out there, I’d like to know your response to it.
One thing that is becoming more and more evident today is that there is truly something evil at large
in the world. Whether you call it a “current,” a “spirit,” an “idea,” a “principle,” whatever, it’s there, it’s
real, and it seems to have a mind and will of its own. What it does, is instigate, instigate, instigate,
anything to get us to abandon our own personal judgment and surrender responsibility for further
decision-making about mundane and spiritual issues to something or somebody else. To become
domesticated, in the same way that the lower-ranking members of a pack always look to the pack-leader
for direction, in the same way that human beings want their domestic cultivars, animal and plant, to
follow their lead and bend to their will in all matters. The media, the government, medicine, all want us
all to abdicate to them responsibility for our lives, our fortunes, our pursuit of happiness. To get on their
bandwagon and follow their lead, their direction, not just in what we do, but in what we think, even what
we feel. And once we do that, whether it’s all at once or inchmeal, we thereby sell our souls.
Maybe it’s just several million years of primate evolution that has done this – we’re band-animals,
whatever else we are, and we are generally not comfortable unless we have a leader to follow. But if this
goes too far – and, all too often, it does – we become slavish followers of a tyrant. On the other hand,
sometimes we decide, “What fun to be the tyrant!” And then we get into the pernicious practice of
taking slaves and cultivating groupies. Maybe it’s just this – aberrations of machinery that has evolved
over millions of years, and, like everything else, doesn’t always work perfectly.
Maybe it’s evil spirits – or viruses, or whatever – exploiting such tendencies in us to their own ends,
getting us to jump on one or another bandwagon because doing so makes us feel good, then, once we’re
on the bandwagon, getting us to follow it into emotional and spiritual slavery, for their own purposes.
Whatever it is, it’s evil. And it’s growing. As an astrologer, all the time I run into this attitude
among “New Agers,” “don’t worry, be happy, everything will work out, those unfortunates are just
working out their karma, no need to worry about horror or evil, just visualize success and all will be
well!” In other words, just take aboard this nice psychospiritual feelgood elevator music, tune into the
New Age beat, ignore everything bad going on around you, and everything will be fine. But I’ve also
seen it in other, er, ethnic groups. Everybody’s got his or her Answer – just believe, visualize, convert,
follow the spiritual party-line, and all will be well.
I don’t think so. I really don’t. Do I know what the Answer is? Baby, I think maybe the wish for an
Answer itself – the Old Adam rising in us, the junior primate looking for an executive primate to take on
the burden of his life for him – may itself be part of the Problem. Certainly it can be – look at all the
damage done down the bloody halls of history by the followers of this Idea and that God and the other
Principle and who knows what Spirits, and you’ll see the results of embracing an Answer, selling one’s
soul to its purveyors to do so. Ugly, ain’t it? Look at what’s going on now – our government and the
media are pushing their own Answers for all they’re worth, “Just do what we want and everything will be
so groovy, you’ll never have to worry about nothing, just believe what we tell you, don’t look at anything
else, it’ll all be fine.”
Hitler and Goebbels pushed that line – and what happened to Germany, who bought into it? We all
know about that – but look at some modern purveyors of fascist groupthink, and are they all that
different? Look, e.g., at Jack Kevorkian – yeah, I’d like people to have the right to die when they want
to. But I do not want a board of examiners deciding that it is “right” for someone to die who is too
“incompetent” to make that decision for himself, and electing to have him “terminated” on the basis of
their decision because his life is “obviously” no longer of value “to himself or anyone else.” Gee, what a
way for any government to “mercifully” terminate the opposition, contribute them to the organ-banks in
the name of “kindness,” and just incidentally shut them up! Sure, we “mercifully” terminate the lives of
our cats, dogs, horses, etc. when we think they “ought” to be “eased out of this world.” Maybe we
should have such power over them, maybe not. Cats and dogs and horses don’t own property in our
world, don’t vote, don’t make executive decisions. Beyond eliminating a “useless mouth to feed” or
“avoiding inconvenience,” we have little to gain by terminating the life of a non-human animal. But
human beings do own property, do vote, do make executive decisions, and there can be much to gain in
terms of property and power by eliminating one. Give mere mortal human beings the power to terminate
the lives of others for “medical” reasons and you will ultimately tempt some of them beyond their limits,
and murder-for-profit or murder-for-political-advantage will get done.
Sure, say the advocates of “assisted suicide,” that’s only if the government has the say in it! We only
want the patient to have the ultimate decision concerning whether or not to end his or her life. Wanna
bet? Documents can be forced, agreements can be coerced. Human beings are fallible and weak and all
too often, for whatever reasons, we fall to doing murder. You think that tendency won’t insinuate itself
into a gorgeous opportunity of the sort that state-regulated “suicide” would offer? Gee, if you do, I have
this bridge for sale, it’s in Brooklyn, a real steal at just $10,000, but for you, only $9,999.98!
Other examples abound. The question is, where does state protection of individual liberty end, and
state and private exploitation of individuals begin? Give the government or any other powerful, monied
interest an inch, and it’ll go for the whole nine miles, every time. When did we allow ourselves to be
cozened out of that cynical, perfectly civilized awareness? When did we start abdicating our emotional
and spiritual responsibilities to the media, government, big business? And we did, you know, we got so
weary of bearing the burden of our own emotional responses to our world, making decisions about it,
deciding what it all means, and were more than glad to take our world through a nice, pleasant, user-
friendly interface provided by the media, advertising, government . . . with no questions asked.
Who among us is perfect? Lord Action said it truly: power corrupts, absolute power corrupts
absolutely. We’ve put virtually absolute power over our minds, hearts, souls, wallets, lives into the hands
of a few human beings – and guess what?
Above all, consider the medicalization of life: doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, all want the ultimate
say over what is right and wrong, how we should live our lives, when we should live, die, be born, who
should live and die and give birth, who should have power, who not. That is power, power over the soul
– and we are allowing people who profess to believe, in most cases, that the soul doesn’t exist and that
there is no authority greater than humanity, to gain that power over the rest of us.
There is evil in the world, friends. What are we going to do about it? First step: let’s acknowledge
it’s real. Then go on from there. Or else we’re all going to end up in that cyclone-cellar in the Branch
Davidian estate in Waco, on Ruby Ridge, in Auschwitz, in Inferno on Earth in every form.
What we should do about all this, I don’t know. As I said, Answers are always suspect. But at least
we can start thinking again, as individuals, and begin to take our stands, as individuals. Anybody out
there? I’d be interested to hear what you have to say.
Thanks, yrd

*******

Dale & Teri –

Some thoughts on waking up, just now. (Please to throw shoes if this does not come at an
appropriate time.)
We live today in a world that is like a closed, pitch-dark room filled with people standing knee-deep
in gasoline. It is evident we all need light to find the exit. But some ways of seeking it are obviously
better than others. Politicians, gurus, and all other such seem to come in two basic types: those who
advocate playing with matches – and those who are trying to pass around flashlights. We need to make
our choices of group-leaders, mundane and spiritual, as wisely as possible.
So many of our most important conflicts seem to come down to arguing over incomplete
assumptions, not just incomplete data. Take the extremely important debate over women’s right to
abortion on demand. The pro-choice faction argues, quite rightly, that what is at stake is a woman’s
control over her own life and future, the ability to keep from being enslaved by others through having
unwanted pregnancy forced on her through rape. The pro-life faction argues, quite rightly, that legalizing
abortion-on-demand opens the door to legalizing the state’s right to determine who has the right to have
children, to regulating our fertility for its purposes, which in turn sets the stage for state regulation of the
right to exist, the sort of horror that prevailed in Nazi Germany. Each side of the debate argues that its
consideration is supremely important, which is true. What is overlooked is that both considerations are
supremely important, because both are concerned with preventing murder. The pro-life faction wants to
keep the door on state-ordained murder closed. The pro-choice faction wants to keep the door on state-
and culture-ordained slavery-and-murder-through-forced-pregnancy closed. Both sides are equally
important. By arguing that either is more important, we are making a choice between murder and
murder. We need a moral paradigm that includes both positions in a completely integrated way. At the
turn of this century, the American physicists Albert Michelson and Edward William Morley
demonstrated that the then-current theory of an “Ether” as an absolute framework of reference against
which all cosmic motion (e.g., that of light) could be measured was not adequate to explain the actual
behavior of light traveling through the vacuum of space. Albert Einstein’s theories of Special and
General Relativity were developed to account for the discrepancy between their observations and older
theories. Ultimately a new physics grew out of this, one which preserved Newtonian physics intact but
went beyond it to create models that could explain the implications of sub-atomic physics, etc. that
seemed to contradict Newtonian physics without having to junk the latter.
We badly need something similar when it comes to such profoundly important mortal questions as
pro-life vs. pro-choice. Such extensions of current moral and spiritual models may or may not exist, but
we won’t know one way or the other until we search for them – and if they do exist, we’d damned well
better find them. Otherwise, we are only choosing between disaster in the maw of Charybdis vs.
catastrophe on the rocks of Scylla. The alternative is to find a course that lets us avoid both and bring the
cargo safely home to port.
For example, in the case of the pro-life vs. pro-choice debate, maybe one resolution would involve a
national combat-arts draft for all girl children between the ages of 5 and 15, courses on combat-arts every
weekend throughout those ten years of life for every girl-child in the country, coupled with a top priority
on research to discover the best possible, most effective means of birth-control prior to actual conception
and provision of such techniques for all women capable of bearing children. Rape would drop to an
absolute minimum, and so would unwanted pregnancies. At the same time, elimination of subsidization
of children by the government through welfare programs would be eliminated – the only choice open to
women having children they couldn’t afford to raise, other than privately funded charities, would be
adoption. This would encourage all girls and women to learn to use effective means of birth-control as
well as to use the combat-arts techniques they had used to keep themselves from being raped by anyone,
including husbands. Sure, it wouldn’t be absolutely fool-proof; entropy will be with us always, and
Murphy is Lord of this Universe. But it would drop rape and unwanted childbirths down to a minimum,
and women would be as free as possible. On the other hand, this would avoid asking the state to mandate
and protect a woman’s right to abortion on demand, and thus keep the state from getting its foot in the
door of the room leading to such things as state-mandated and -controlled reproduction, termination of
life, and so on. It might be the best possible arrangement, protecting both the interest of preventing state-
controlled and -enforced murder and that of the reproductive and other freedoms of all women.
Who could reasonably object to such a plan? That’s the real point: whoever did obviously would
have interests that conflicted with those protected by that plan. Putting the plan forth would certainly
spark off loud arguments – and, in the process, reveal the actual motives behind a lot of politicians’
rhetoric. So it would serve more than one use: not only would it protect more than one supremely
important interest, in this case, prevention of state-mandated murder/sterilization as well as protection of
women’s basic freedom, but it would also be a lovely test of the real motives behind one political
platform or another.
There are many other, similarly highly important debates we all need to look at it new ways, to come
up with similar extensions of current moral and spiritual models that do not sacrifice one absolutely
important moral consideration in order to preserve another. By doing so, not only would we change the
spiritual and political map of the world, we would also throw into high relief the true motives of some of
the trickier characters now on the political scene, including various religious factions, political party
candidates, and others. The Newtons of the spirit require Michelsons and Morleys of realpolitik to test
their basic premises, and moral Einsteins to provide new models that include the old, tried-and-true
models but go on from there with extensions that bring all the fundamentally important interests together
in a way that acknowledges and protects them all.
Interested in your reactions. Thanks,

*******

[From Doug Keenan:]

In a message dated 96-07-31 09:59:07 EDT, you write:

<<
To what extent? Well, she got me involved, and keeps me spirited,
so I have no choice but to take those accusations soberly and
personally. “Plan intelligently” indeed. I don’t know what your
grudge is with the woman, but it’s clear you have something to
work out. Please write back after you’re done.

Good luck with your searching. Via con dios. >>

The grudge I have is with all the people who got a Cause and sucked me and dozens of others into it,
used us up and threw us away, like Kevin did my friend Gary and almost did me. I don’t like being
regarded as an expendable thing, thank you very much. That’s what. It’s for this reason I hate just about
every politician I’ve ever known, why I loathe following anyone or anything. Linda Thompson is very
well-meaning, I’m sure, as are dozens of other Leaders out there. So was/is Kevin Bjornson. But people
get massacred because of them. And I want out. If I choose to martyr myself, fine, but I’ll do it on my
own hook, not for the greater glory of any group-leader. This is one reason I never converted to
Christianity – Jesus was probably a real cool dude, and I’d like to have been his friend. But his follower?
Oh, no way! Because when the shit comes down, dear, the Leaders of this world don’t give a damn about
any of their Followers, and will sacrifice them willingly, without a qualm: “There’s always more where
those came from!” Yeah, there sure are. But I won’t be one of them. The people who fought and died to
establish this country back in 1776 weren’t playing follow-the-leader. They were fighting for life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and they didn’t need group-leaders to make them see the value of it
or incite them into it, did they? I will gladly fight to the death to protect the people I love, my liberty,
what I care most about it, but I will not march to the drum of any other mortal. It may be necessary to
follow directions from a war-chief, say, at the time of battle, but if that war-chief proves to be
incompetent at the job, out he or she goes, on his/her incompetent butt, and we get somebody in who can
do the job better . . . and when the war is over, Cincinnatus, here, will happily go right back home to
her farm and plow and if the war-chief doesn’t like it, we’ll have a mini-war right there.
Believe it or not, Mussolini did have the very best of intentions (we can’t say the same about Hitler,
but that’s another story). But those who believed in him ended up going down the road to disaster. A
little less starry-eyed hero-worship, a little more cynical reflection, and a major war, with all the horror
and misery it brought, might not have been fought.
The issues Linda Thompson is pushing are all-important, but let’s not leave it up to Linda
Thompson. Let’s all push them. If we do, we may or may not leave would-be group-leaders out in the
cold – but we’ll have a far better chance preserving our freedom. Do we fight on because a charismatic
individual has inspired us, or do we fight on because we know that if we don’t, we’re screwed? It had
damned well better be the latter, because otherwise, if something happens to the charismatic group-
leader, there goes the whole ball game. My ancient namesake, the Bedouin lady Yael, put an entire army
out of commission by driving a tent-peg into the brain of that army’s commander-in-chief, General
Sisera. Without him, they couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag. Regardless of the personal
merits or demerits of the particular charismatic general involved, I sincerely hope we aren’t all following
our various Siseras rather than fighting to protect what we most hold dear for our own reasons!

– Yael Dragwyla

*******

Seattle, WA
July 30, 1996

Wesley Nations, editor

Crash Collusion
PO Box 2237
Berkeley, CA 94702

Dear Wesley,
 Thank you for issue # 9 of Crash Collusion, which arrived yesterday. I was very pleased to see my
letter in your letters column. Overall, I enjoyed the issue very much.
I did have some thoughts I thought I’d share with you, concerning cryptophenomenological research
in particular and the state of the world in general, which have been with me of late. I am not sanguine
about the chances of continuance of our species and planet, for reasons that have at least as much to do
with our own essential nature as they do anything outside of or alien to us.
I am depressed by the extent to which conspiratologists and cryptophenomenologists regard the
subjects of their investigation as vast games, sources of entertainment in the same way that censors and
“reformers” so often pursue their investigations and pogroms as an excuse to indulge a jones for
pornography or whatever. Paranoid schizophrenics – as opposed to people who are truly victims of evil
and hate it – are addicted to the excitement and other pleasures afforded by situations of horror and dire
peril to themselves or others, and will often find ways to create such situations, stir them up or make
them worse when they already exist, in order to feed their cravings for the feelings of self-justification
and self-importance which embroilment in those situations gives them. They are self-centered to the
point of utter heartlessness in the way so many addicts are, and subordinate all other aspects of life to
feeding their egos by stirring up the very trouble they overtly profess to hate and revile. I wonder, then,
to what extent this is also true of many conspiratologists and cryptophenomenologists. How many of
them would be utterly lost without an Evil Conspiracy to chase down and become totally obsessed with?
How many of them would find the world dull and devoid of interest without Grays and other Evil Aliens
and Weird Things to titillate their jones for occult excitement with?
Further, how easy it is to forget the log in our own eyes when we are obsessed with the speck – or
even another log – in someone else’s! Evil done by others doesn’t excuse evil committed, condoned, or
tacitly abetted by ourselves. Obsession with “stamping out evil” or “routing out the wicked aliens”
doesn’t mean it’s right to commit evil in the services of said obsession. Yet I’ve met all too many
fascists among the cryptophenomenological and conspiratological community who can’t understood why
they shouldn’t subordinate all other concerns to their obsession with the “New World Order,” the
“Grays,” or whatever the hell. Similarly, I’ve known too many “libertarians” who tyrannize and terrorize
their spouses, children, and friends; “Greens” who are all too willing to sabotage ecologically sound
programs in order to push their own political agendas; proponents of “social justice” who have no
qualms about beating the living hell out of their girlfriends, boyfriends, children, or anyone else when the
latter don’t exhibit slavish worship of their ideas and programs; and so on and on and on. The Old
Adam’s in us all, you know, that jones for control, for power, for excitement, for thrills at any cost.
While only a few of us indulge that wicked old demon within us, that ancient ghost in our primordial
reptile brains, unashamedly and out-front, quite a few of us let him out to do his deeds under cover of the
most high-sounding excuses and guises, don’t we? “I’m only doing it for you!”, the age-old cry of the
guilt-tripping Smother-Mother, is one of the commonest manifestations of this from of denial. Others
range from the self-delusions of drunks and junkies concerning their various addictions to the elaborate
self-justifications and rationales of evil of a Torquemada or a Bill Clinton. From time to time, we’ve all
fallen to the temptation to gloss over our own sins and weaknesses by focusing on those of others instead,
haven’t we? Some of us, however, go on to make careers out of it.
To what extent has, say, a Linda Thompson contributed to the political evils she professes to hate by
getting everyone too distracted and excited to take a long, considered look at all the facts and act
appropriately, to plan intelligently, to interact and cooperate in a way that can actually hold the line
against real evil – or even by “accidentally” precipitating disasters and horrors while apparently out to do
battle with evil? To what extent have the anti-Gray factions of the UFO community contributed to evil in
other areas of the community, either directly, in pursuit of their obsessions, or indirectly, by overlooking
real and present mundane evils that directly affect the lives and well-being of real people around them?
Last year, I lost a very close friend to a heart-attack brought on by the antics of our landlord, a
paranoid schizophrenic, who literally drove my friend to his grave in the course of pursuing his own
twisted obsessions with “combating political evil.” The landlord, a professed “libertarian,” is a power-
junkie who has ruined his own life and the lives of everyone around him in futile pursuit of his fantasies
of power. No doubt he believes he is doing what he does “only for the highest good” – but his track-
record, his effect on everyone around him, not to mention on his own life, says otherwise. He makes
himself feel good through the pursuit of his obsessions, but doesn’t do any good. He is an outstanding
exemplar of what I’m talking about – the fascist mentality who, in pursuit of “the highest good,” does
nothing but wreak havoc all around, never does any good at all, and even ends up keeping those who
could do some good from doing so. All in pursuit of an endless adrenaline high, and God help whatever
or whoever is in the way of his or her goal!
I am heartsick, in despair of ever seeing the world grow any better. The reason, as Walt Kelly’s
Pogo ‘Possum put it, is that “the enemy . . . is us.” And we just can’t quite bring ourselves to grapple
with that ol’ Debbil within. Instead, we go banging off in pursuit of it everywhere else – but never, no,
never, God help us, within ourselves! Otherwise, we’d puncture our moralistic high, our self-righteous
dudgeon, and come down to a world which we’ve helped make ourselves, you know, and have to face the
fact that we, too, can be just as big a bunch of sinners as Them, whoever it is we’ve elected to stand for
whatever Evil Conspiracy we’re out to eliminate once and for all from the universe.
In The End of Evolution: On Mass Extinctions and the Preservation of Biodiversity (Bantam Books,
1994), Peter Ward shows in chilling detail what we, Homo sapiens, have been doing to our world for
countless millennia. The implications are inescapable and horrifying: we and our world are well on our
way to the Third Event, the third great extinction event in Gaia’s 4-billion year long history – and we did
it ourselves, didn’t we? The first two such events were the one that closed out the Paleozoic Era of
earthly life, 245 million years ago, which killed off 96% of all Earth’s life, and the K-T event that
terminated the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago, which did for the dinosaurs and a great many other taxa
extant at the time and paved the way for the rise of the mammals. And now, thanks to human
technological ingenuity and whatever demons within the human psyche that drives it, the third event is
well on its way. We’re very good at killing, we are, we’re great at finding new and ever more ingenious
ways of controlling nature, often lethally so, and we are even better at justifying our greedy, murderous
joy in plundering our planet, murdering one another, and indulging our various appetites to the point of
madness with the most high-sounding, elaborate systems of denial you could imagine. Robert Ardrey
had a point: while there may be angels within us, there are also killers and demons down in there, too.
Not to mention liars and con-artists. Unfortunately, we are great moralizers and great moralists, and have
a developed a talent for excusing the evils we do with every sort of religious, political, and other
rationalization and self-justification. These talents have given us a strong competitive edge on every
other form of life on our world. They have also enabled us to divorce ourselves completely from
ecological, psychospiritual, and moral reality, blind ourselves totally to the likely consequences of our
actions, turn ourselves into self-willed psychopaths who go merrily on our way devastating our world,
raping and pillaging the human and non-human communities all around us, destroying ourselves with
every sort of indulgence and vice, wholly unaware of what we are doing to ourselves and our world until
it’s far too late to do anything to save ourselves. Unlike the dinosaurs, we weren’t content to wait for a
comet to do us all in, were we? We had to go become our own comet, didn’t we?
What does this have to do with the attitudes of cryptophenomenologists and conspiratologists? Just
this: far too many of them are little people with a big hunger for recognition, importance, ego-strokes,
who get into their pet obsessions so they can feel important. They start out as heartless, soul-starved,
ego-starved little people and work their way up to becoming monsters of power themselves, who justify
their excesses, petty and gross tyrannies, cruelties and brutalities as “necessary for the cause,” whatever
their cause happens to be. In short, they are as fascistic as the Hidden Enemies they profess to be in
opposition to. And as such, they only make the situation worse.
What, then, is the Answer to this? What do I propose we all do about it?
I don’t know, and I propose nothing, because I just don’t know. All too often, the Answer, or at least
pursuit of it, is a fundamental and essential part of the Problem, and I do not want to compound the
Problem any further than it already is, thank you very much. I have noticed that a little healthy cynicism
and honest despair can work wonders when it comes to attitudes – these are very civilized attitudes, and
often keep us from going off the rails. Idealism, on the other hand, is the root of so many evils all in its
own right – from Torquemada and Hitler to the Marquis de Sade and J. Edgar Hoover to Clinton and
Bush and Saddam Hussein, idealists have done far more to screw up the world than all the cynics that
have ever been or ever will be. Both the Ten Commandments and the Bill of Rights are built out of thou
shalt nots. The Bill of Rights restrains government, and the Ten Commandments – a Covenant between
man and God – is a restraint on God as much as it is on humanity. And both say what shall not be done,
rather than commanding what shall be done. Or take the Golden Rule, as it is formulated in Judaism:
“Don’t do to another that which you wouldn’t want done to you.” These are very civilized laws. Rather
than impelling us to do things to the world, to our neighbors, they say what we can’t do: don’t lie, don’t
murder, don’t steal, don’t lock up your neighbor without good cause, don’t deprive your neighbor of the
right to counsel or clear statement of charges, etc. These are very cynical legal systems – they assume
that the capacity to do evil is in all of us, God, government, and humanity, and say, Okay, Old Adam,
cross the line and do these bad things and sanctions shall be brought to play!
 Idealism, on the other hand, says: thou shalt! Thou must! Idealism impels us to Do Things to our
neighbors, always for Their Own Good, for the Highest Good. Idealism brooks no restraint, subordinates
all concerns to its own hunger for fulfillment. Just like an addict going after whatever turns him or her
on. Whereas law and civilization erect barriers against untrammeled action on impulse, idealism would
pull all the barriers down against carrying out the Ideal of the Hour – always, of course, for the Highest
Good.
So all I propose is a little less idealism, a little more civilized restraint, a little less Enthusiasm, a
little more Cynicism. Beyond that, I don’t know. I just don’t know.
Okay, that’s about it for now. Just wanted to share this with you. Take care, and thanks for another
outstanding, delicious issue,

Lvg. (Ms) Yael R. Dragwyla, K.S.G.