Jan Klimkowski Wrote:Lauren - you're in great danger of rendering important subject matter banal.

Of performing alchemy in reverse.

Consider this.

The full title of Levenda's trilogy is: Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft.

Consider every word.

Then consider why a young Peter Levenda may have written the Simon Necronomicon.

And why an older Peter Levenda may play with the notion that a younger self penned such a work.

You should consider the short story There Are More Things by Jorge Luis Borges.

If you should enter the Zone, consider the life of Squeaky Fromme as parable.

Quote:The Manson Secret is black magic, and it was black magic that informed the CIA's mind-control programs as well. These same processes are being used virtually without changeamong terrorist organizations and revolutionary cells throughout the world, who have realized that the most effective tool for violent action is the properly initiated cult member. Ecstasy is just another face of fanaticism; eros is another face of magic. Fascism is the natural environment for both, for it speaks directly to the passions and the unconscious mind, through the use of symbols, repetitive slogans, and group ritual; i.e., magic....Transmute the ecstasy or the eros to a high pitch of passionate dedication to a cause, and use the theory of the magical link competently, and you have created an assassin, or a priest, a lover, an actor; or a politician who cannot be stopped except by a bullet. (p.430)

Quote:Hollywood is the new religion of America and, to a certain extent, of the rest of the world as well. Hollywood brings the godsthe stars, "every man and every woman is a star"down to earth, where they can be seen and heard and touched by the masses; not only Hollywood, of course, but also the music industry, and not only in California and New York but also in Bollywood and Europe and Mexico and Brazil and Venezuela and China and Hong Kong and so on. Americans emulate movie characters more than they do the saints of their religions: they dress like them, drive the same cars, have the same attitudes, talk like them, and eventually adopt the same cultural mores. Hollywood is a vast mind-control engine, which is why many independent films are ignored by the public: they do not want to think independently, they want to have their consciousness massaged by the old, familiar rituals. The tools of Hollywood are the tools of psychological warfare, of mind control and behavior control. Of advertising, in its most pernicious sense. (p435)

Quote:An armchair implies the human body, its joints and members; scissors, the act of cutting. What can be told from a lamp, or an automobile? The savage cannot really perceive the missionary's Bible; the passenger does not see the same rigging as the ship's crew.

Quote:The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

Quote:The People's Temple also used electroshock treatments to modify the behavior of the children entrusted to their care. In a locked room of the San Francisco Temple was a machine that only the children to be disciplined and an attending nurse were allowed to see. The machine was named "The Blue-Eyed Monster" though later reports referred to it as "The Blue-Eyed Demon". Some said this Aryan devil was a simple cattle prod, others claimed it was a heart defibrulator or the shock treatment machine the Temple had acquired from Mendocino State Hospital. Few children would describe the apparatus; but those who did said it was a scaled-down version of an executioner's electric chair. The child was strapped into the metal chair and electrodes were attached to various parts of his or her body. Though the machine itself was hidden from the general adult congregation, Jones would call out the names of those children to be disciplined and they would be taken into the Blue-Eyed Monster's den. A microphone, attached to the public address system, was placed in the room. The general congregation heard no noises from the machine only the screams of the children attached to it. The child emerged from the room and ran to Jim Jones; grovelling at his feet to say "Thank you - Thank you" in robot-like repetition.

Later, in Jonestown, the physical beating and shock treatments of the Temple children were replaced with sheer terror in the form of "Big Foot"; a monster that Jones told them lived in a shallow well on the outskirts of the jungle community. Children who misbehaved were lowered into the well, where, unknown to them, adults were hiding in the darkness. The adults made animal sounds and grabbed at the child's dangling legs in a feigned attempt to pull him into the abyss.