The Dream Philosophical Academy

Three night ago, I was dreaming that someone was lecturing on some sort of gnostic philosophy. “Gnostic” was the term used in the dream, although it might not have been appropriate.

The lecturer drew a distinction between the Pagan view of “remembering” the soul’s perfection, versus a Christian approach of attempting to become more and more perfect.

The former, at least, seems like fairly mainstream Platonic teaching.

All this was followed by a very cinematic dream about a young man returning by train to his home town in Wyoming. Since Amtrak does not serve Wyoming, and since it seemed that through CGI that the Wind River Range had been moved closer to the town, it was clear that I was dreaming.

The way I figure it, I had just joined the Association for the Study of Esotericism because of some new projects that I am pursuing, and they were just getting my coordinates into their dream-projector.

The CIA, UFOs, Fairies, etc.

I am reading Mirage Men: An Adventure into Paranoia, Espionage, Pyschological Warfare, and UFOs, by Mark Pilkington. (There is a related documentary film.)

Small disclaimer: I met Mark Pilkington a few years ago in England. We did not talk about UFOs nor about the fact that he was one of the people making crop circles for “cereologists” to get all cranked up about.

I have not yet finished the book, but one of its these seems to be that a lot of the UFO material out there is deliberate disinformation by various intelligence agencies.

Why? Consider this scenario, which happened various times in the past: Military radar operators report suspicious “returns” over an airbase. Fighter aircraft are scrambled to intercept the intruders. Once airborne, however, the pilots cannot find the intruders. Must be technologically advanced UFOs!

This means that (a) alien beings have crossed the galaxy in order to play games with our radar operators, or (b) someone here on Earth is working on ways to “spoof” radar signals in order to confuse potential enemies and cause them to fly around looking for intruders that are not there—while, presumably, the real attacker sneaks in undetected.

Occam’s Razor: They sell them in 12-packs at Walgreens and Boots the Chemist.

Why would intelligence agencies feed deliberate misinformation to the public at large and to UFO “researchers” in particular? Some possible reasons:

1. During the Cold War, to baffle the Soviet Union and divert their military from #2, below.

2. To create a belief in “UFOs” that in turn camouflages actual experiments in spy planes, “stealth” technology, drone aircraft, and other secret research.

Create an image and a predisposition, and people will see what they expect to see.

3. To conduct experiments in disinformation in a controlled way: for example, how long does it take a particular piece of “disinformation” to become broadly accepted and by what channels is it disseminated? The whole “Majestic 12” hoax might be an example. Or “cattle mutilations,” or what you will. A lot of Pilkington’s book is devoted to tracing some of these pathways of disinformation.

What about Fairies?

If alien races did arrive here, they probably would not step out of  mechanical “flying saucers” wearing silver coveralls. Anyone who could conquer the whole issue of traveling faster than the speed of light would likely be so advanced that we not even perceive them.

To use a metaphor from the book, do the goldfish in the bowl know that someone is watching them swim around?

All talk of UFOs aside, I do tend to think that there are other beings who share our space, in a manner of speaking.

They have been here all along. They appear in various forms. They are not necessarily our friends. (Which is why the whole phenomenon of “fairy festivals” makes me feel a little queasy.) Lots of weirdness.

Mix them up with your favorite intelligence agency, and watch out!

Another facet of Mirage Men that I appreciate is that it shows how investigating forms of paranormal (or perceived paranormal) activity can have unsettling effects on the investigator. Rampant paranoia is just part of it.

The classic work, to my mind, on this phenomenon is John Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies, published in 1975.  (Ignore the 2002 movie, please, unless you have to watch everything that Richard Gere ever did.)

What is interesting is not whether “Mothman” exists or not, but what happens to Keel and his associates when they begin to investigate it. Talk about having one foot on the Other Side! (Or are they victims of disinformation too? More paranoia …)

It reminded me of the summer when a newspaper reporter friend, a lodge of wannabe ceremonial magicians, and I decided to investigate the so-called cattle mutilations. Things went downhill into weirdness fairly quickly.

I published the story in Fate (“Mutilation Madness.” Fate June 1988: 60-70), but this was back in the pre-digital 1980s, so there is nothing to link to. Sorry.

One last quote from Mirage Men that more or less summarizes it:

The UFO scene is overrun with whistleblowers who regale us with tales of underground bases and intergalactic pacts while waving impressive-looking documents around as evidence. To the believers these people are clearly on the side of ufology and are to be welcomes. That the role of [the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations] and other agencies in distributing this same material has been public knowledge for twenty years seems not to have sunk in. Meanwhile, those insiders who suggest that the UFO phenomenon is a complex brew of security, secrecy, psychology, sociology, politics, and folklore, perhaps driven by rare but genuinely anomalous events, are obviously part of the cover-up.

Agora: It’s a Riot

I finally watched Agora on DVD last night. It’s one rioting mob after another interspersed with astronomy lessons.

You have your Pagan mob, your Jewish mob, your Christian mob(s). A Muslim mob would have fit right in, but had not yet been invented.

And did Hypatia really discover that planetary orbits were elliptical, not perfect Platonic circles? No. It was the sort of issue that would have engaged her interest, however.

Here is the historical part: There was a Pagan neoplatonic philosopher-teacher in 5th-century Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of an intellectual father, who was murdered by a sort of Christian Taliban.

There was a Roman prefect (governor) named Orestes and a fanatical monk named Ammonius. And Mullah Bishop Cyril, of course.

And the rest is movie-making. (Military historians will note that the Roman soldiers look more like the 1st century CE than the 5th.)  For more on the actual Hyptia—and on the movie version—visit Egregores.

UPDATE: See also Kallisti’s review with its “motivational poster.“

The Positive Power of Poisons

Via Instapundit, a Popular Mechanics round up on medical possibilities of venoms and poisons.

I can’t say that my 2006 rattlesnake bite had any positive physiological effects, but I can tell you that a sting from the little tan scorpions that we have in southern Colorado (same as this?) can have interesting effects on the central nervous system—once you get past the pain. I understand that some people grind and smoke them, but I have not tried that.

Did Isaac Bonewits Influence You?

That is the question that William Seligman is asking (with permission) on his blog.

If your Pagan practice and experience were influenced by Isaac, go visit and add your input.

The Pagan Studies Samhain

Our little celebration here at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting, during which we Pagan scholars and friends discard our tweed jackets and switch to Samhain black, made it to The Huffington Post.  (Scroll to the bottom.) Thanks, Grove, I think.

It’s another example of how Wicca, in particular, is becoming the new Other in the religious landscape, elbowing aside the Jews, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and anyone else who fills the blank of, “But how will the _________  react?”

Keeping Up with Buffy Studies

Buffy in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching with the Vampire Slayer has now been released by McFarland.

Essays describe how Buffy can be used to explain—and encourage further discussion of—television’s narrative complexity, archetypal characters, morality, feminism, identity, ethics, non-verbal communication, film production, media and culture, censorship, and Shakespeare, among other topics.

Jason Winslade, a scholar in Pagan studies (via performance studies) and a contributor to the volume, notes, “I used the show first in my occultism and pop culture course at DePaul, back when I first published about Buffy in 2001, then wound up doing an entire class on the show as a popular freshman seminar for several years. “

I Will Inspire Students to Think Critically about Literature

Truly, anyone who thinks that Dead Poets Society is a career template is in bad, bad trouble.

Best Jokes from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

“The Scots invented hypnosis, chloroform and the hypodermic syringe. Wouldn’t it just be easier to talk to a woman?” – Stephen Brown

And 49 more.

Halloween: “The Safest Day of the Year”

Blogger Lenore Skenazy reprints a valuable article looking at the “urban myth” of children being targeted by sexual predators at Halloween.

Paul Stern, a deputy prosecutor in Snohomish County, Wash., agrees [that there is zero evidence for such a belief]. ”People want to protect kids; they want to do the right thing and they make decisions based on what at first glance may make some sense. Sex offenders, costumes, kids — what a bad combination,” he said. ”Unfortunately, those kinds of policies are not always based on any analysis or scientific evidence,” said Stern, who started prosecuting sex offenders who victimized children in 1985.

Read the whole thing.