by William Skink

In your world you can take a pen and write on a piece of paper and destroy 200,000 people and it’s okay because you don’t have to see it.”

—TBA

My trip to Kansas City last month accelerated a reading binge I’ve been on, kicked-started by reading four books on Jim Morrison–both biographies and two memoirs, one from Ray and one from John. While the occult doesn’t play a prominent part in Morrison’s story, it’s a part of the tapestry of that time, a time that would turn darker than the public could imagine.

In Kansas City I came across an interesting collection of writings edited by Richard Metzger, titled Book of Lies. There’s some well known names, like Timothy Leary and William Burroughs, and some lesser known names, like Donald Tyson and Hakim Bey.

And then there’s the name most associated with the modern day occult: Aleister Crowley.

While I’ve read up on Crowley before, years ago, this latest go around has cast Crowley and the seeds he planted (figuratively speaking, unless we’re talking about speculation regarding Barbara Bush) into a much more sinister light–especially the relationship between Crowley and Jack Parsons.  Officially Parsons was a brilliant scientist who helped establish the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Souther California. Unofficially Jack practiced sex magic as he ascended the ranks of Crowley’s O.T.O., SoCal chapter.

From Book of Lies I moved on to some other books already mentioned in other posts. Yesterday I finished The Family, by Ed Sanders, about Charles Manson. The quote up top is from Manson, from a different book called The Manson File. Yeah, just some light winter reading, right?

One of the reasons I’ve been diving into this area of inquiry is the writing project I’m working on. Another reason is because I think it matters, and not because I believe all this occult shit, but because I believe some very powerful, very twisted groups do believe all this occult shit.

It’s well established that Hitler had become obsessed with the occult and I’m pretty sure that even our own military had guys staring at goats to try and kill them with their minds because I saw a movie about it played wonderfully by George Clooney and it must be true.

Another interesting aspect of the occult is its partial absorption into white supremacist/Neo-Nazi dogma, a topic that needs a post of its own.

Basically what I’m saying is this:  dismissing the occult, like some people tend to do at the slightest whiff of conspiracy theory, would be a mistake, imho. I mean, if Bush let his Gog and Magog theory slip out with the French President, just imagine what goes on when they smear themselves with blood and fornicate in the woods under a full moon.