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By the Way of King Diamond and Diamond Baby
Black metal, as a 1990s phenomenon, is a creature with an identity largely distinct from its parent heavy metal music. Growing like a poisonous fungus away from the light of mainstream media and interest, it developed its own bizarre sounds, imagery and philosophies. Fostered upon a diet of xeroxed fanzines with names like Thanatograpy (after Thanatos, Greek god of death), Hammer of Damnation and Baphomet, its teenage male exponents were keen to make their mark with a genre too willfully obnoxious for outsiders. Visually, bands tried to outdo each other with outrageously macabre or offensive imagery: fire-breathing; tattered black clothing or robes; blood-soaked or naked flesh; medieval weaponry; bullet belts and spiked leather; insane calligraphy—spattered with profane images—which rendered band names illegible or scarcely identifiable. The most striking black-metal “fashion statement,” however, was the sepulchral black-and-white make-up worn by many bands which became known as “corpse paint”—a mutated offspring of the theatrical greasepaint worn by KISS in the 1970s, by way of King Diamond. At the movements genesis, few band members had racked up enough years of experience to excel at their instruments in the traditional fashion—instead, they concentrated on producing unearthly, crazed, bizarre sounds with guitars, drums, the human voice and keyboards. Specialist independent record labels, founded by fans or the bands themselves, sprang up as a truly international underground: Osmose Productions in France; Blackground Records 2.0 and Wild Rags in America; Candlelight Records in Spain. The list continues to proliferate to the present day, but the most influential of all was a small Scandinavian label called Deathlike Silence—of which, much more later. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
One of the more arresting rock artists of the early 1990s bridged the gap between the musical extremes of black metal and rock “n” roll’s demonic roots in the blues. Far subtler than most black metal bands, Glenn Danzig still operated at the infernal end of the spectrum. An anomaly who stubbornly refused to bow to the expectations of either purists or populists, Danzig began his career at the height of the punk revolution in 1977 as vocalist for New Jersey band the Misfits. No ordinary punk band, Danzig’s classic rock “n” roll delivery gave a quasi-1950s feel to their abrasive sound, while they spurned the usual punk look in devour of an all-year-round Halloween image. Sporting monstrous black quiffs they dubbed “devil locks,” the Misfits often took the stage in skeletal garb—indeed, Danzig’s skull make-up was prescient of the “corpse paint” popular among the 1990s black metal bands. The Misfits were one of the first punk bands whose songs possessed a strong gothic undercurrent. Many reflected their love of fascinating schlock movies, such as “Teenagers from Mars” and “Return of the Fly,” but others were genuinely disturbing explorations of hat and violence. Their second recording, Bullet, featured a song entitled “Hollywood Babylon,” inspired by magus and film-maker Kenneth Anger, while another track included an authentic Latin chant for effecting a werewolf transformation. In what was to become a familiar pattern, Danzig tired of the more tongue-in-cheek aspects of the Misfits, forming Samhain (pronounced “Sow-En”—the precursor to Halloween, a Celtic festival dedicated to fire and death) who released their first album, Initium, in 1984. This was a stark journey into primal evil, threatening rhythms and bleak guitars combining with Danzig’s lupine vocals to create a musical beast that howled at the World. It was all too bleak for most audiences and, in 1987, the vocalist dissolved the band in order to enter his third incarnation—called simply Danzig. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Danzig was in many ways the singer’s most innovative project, as well as the most overtly Satanic. Voodoo blues as deep and black as Mississippi mud met predatory heavy metal, with vocal style redolent of early rock “n” roll’s late-fifties/early-sixties crooners. Typically, Glenn Danzig’s insistence on treating his Satanic subject matter without a trace of irony did not endear him to the press. Short, powerfully built, with raven black hair and prominent side-burns, the music media dubbed him as “Evil Elvis” or, more irreverently, “Fonzig.” Some audiences were also perplexed: younger black metal fans wanted a less subtle Satanism, while rock fans who appreciated Danzig’s musical approach found his lyrical preoccupation off-putting. Nevertheless, the ban attracted a dedicated fan base, appreciative of a familiarity with demonic subject matter that most shock-horror rockers could only envy. Nietzschean howls of defiance against the Creator, such as “Godless,” complemented more traditional takes on hellish suffering like “Tired of Being Alive.” At his quietest, Danzig was at his most sinister—like the poet William Blake, Danzig identified love as “a Devil’s thing.” In 1994, when MTV picked up on the video for the anthemic “Mother, the band received mainstream attention; in the same year, an uncompromising Glenn Danzig released a solo project entitled Black Aria: an album of quasi-classical music retelling the story of Satan’s fall from grace. In 1996, after four albums of powerfully-infernal rock music, Danzig took his eponymus band in a new direction. BlackAcidDevil was predominantly an industrial record, many fans mourning the passing of the classic Danzig sound and dismissing at as “poor man’s Nine Inch Nails.” In truth, when the industrial grind is layered with the dark velvet of Danzig’s seductive tones—as on “Come to Silver,” an exploration of temptation—then the material becomes really interesting. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The indifferent sales and reviews that greeted BlackAcidDevil tested Danzig’s already-strained relationship with the music business. He let the band slip back into the cult status he was perhaps happiest with, and began spending the money he had made from his musical career on other projects—most notably a comic-book company named Verotik. As the company’s name suggests, these comics are crammed with violence and erotica, combined with the fascination for all things infernal that has become Glenn Danzig’s trademark. Scripting many of the comic-strips himself, Danzig introduced overly devilish characters, like the vamp Satanika, to stake his claim as one of the main modern contributors to Satanic popular culture. On the continent of Europe, particularly in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, things were being taken to a less subtle extreme. Deathlike Silence was an independent record label owned by a young man who re-named himself Euronymous—according to some folklore traditions, a cannibalistic demon with skin the bluish-black colour of a meatfly’s carapace—who also ran a dank, dingy specialist record store named Helvete (meaning “Hell”) and founded a band called Mayhem. Mayhem formed in 1984, just as the original black metal scene was peaking, debuting with a demo called Pure Fucking Armageddon and an album called Deathcrush. Interest in Satanic imagery, with its attendant gothic spikes-and-leather garb, was faltering among audiences at this time, but Mayhem clung onto its uncompromising style. They sounded like a rawer, more grinding version of Venom, screaming and thundering between militaristic marches and growling rage. As the tastes of young underground fans in the 1990s swung further towards the diabolical excess, Euronymous’ obsessive dedication made him a potent force on the newly-burgeoning black metal scene. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
During the early 1990s, Euronymous’ store became the focus for a small circle of likeminded Scandinavian metal fans who all started their own bands. This loose group named itself variously the Black Metal Circle, Satanic Terrorists or Black Metal Mafia, and was influenced by the supposedly Satanic doctrines of Euronymous—based around a vague reading of the biblical concept of war between Heaven and Hell. For Euronymous, siding with Satan meant endorsing everything that was considered evil, spiteful, hateful. Hate motivated his philosophy, coloured by the cold, depressive morbidity that characterizes the negative edge of the Scandinavian psyche. All of the releases on Deathlike Silence were stamped with the “Anti-Mosh” symbol (moshing is a raucously combative form of dancing common to thrash and death metal fans). Around the symbol were stamped the messages “No Mosh,” “No Core” (a reference to the hardcore punk revival), “No Trends” and “No Fun”—these sentiments taking against those metal audiences who were introducing splashes of gaudy mainstream colour, in the form of Bermuda shorts, baseball caps and skateboards. In the center of the “No Moshing” symbol was a red line struck through those figures Euronymous professed to hate most: Scott Burns, the Florida-based record producer whose work had come to dominate the death metal scene, and curiously, Anton LaVey. Euronymous divorced himself from all Satanic tradition, loathing LaVey because of the Church of Satan’s philosophy of self-empowerment and individualism. Euronymous’ simple faith expressed all that was negative: a cold core for violent code of self-destructive nihilism. Joining Mayhem in their isolated World of hate were several other extreme bands. Burzum—chiefly a vehicle for Count Grishnackh (given name Kristian Vikernes, though he legally changed his first name to Varg, Norwegian for “wolf”), who had lived in the damp, lightless cellar of the Helvete record shop for some time—were a prominent presence. Burzum were an odd blend of frustrated insanity and strange, sad, ambient mood music, pained pathos and gibbering fury—oddly effective, but distinctly disturbed. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Founder member Grishnackh took his name from one of the evil “orc” characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings, while Burzum meant “darkness” in the orcish language conceived by Tolkien. Perverse as this seems, it should be remembered that The Bible is just a book of stories—in this light, perhaps using The Lord of the Rings as the basis for an (im)moral philosophical code is not wholly ludicrous. However, it does an infernal philosopher’s credibility no favours to identify too closely with “hobbits” (glorified goblin). Grishnackh’s personal mythology combined the darkness-versus-light motifs of “mystic quest”/sword-and-sorcery sagas with the violent Viking tradition he believed true Northern Europeans belonged to. While this seems symptomatic of Scandinavia’s peripheral removal from—and distorted imitation of—Western pop culture, it also has an authentic dark side. As is common among Norse pagan revivalists, the Black Metal Circle began to espouse race-based Nazi political views. (Though totalitarian-loving Euronymous also expressed admiration for communist despots and Cambodian genocidalist Pol Pot.) Also pivotal in this new movement were the bands Emperor, Immortal, Enslaved and Arcturus. The last to join Euronymous’s Norwegian cadre were Dark Throne, who had already recorded one death metal album, Soulside Journey, in 1990. In the following year, they disowned their debut, donned corpse-paint and joined the “Satanic Mafia” with their album A Blaze in the Northern Sky. If Euronymous exemplified the nihilistic hate at the heart of the Black Metal Circle, and Burzum represented its violent Norse/Nazi fantasies, then Dark Throne symbolized the Circle’s isolation and sociopathic need for solitude. Taking their country’s sombre, anti-social reputation to extremes, the band never met to record, spoke little, and spent increasing periods alone in the frost-bitten Norwegian wilderness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
In the spring of 1991, Mayhem’s vocalist died: a Swede who, by way of black comedy, had re-named himself “Dead.” Dead blew his head off with a shotgun, leaving a note to day that he felt he was not of this World, but belonged instead to the cold solitude of the forest. He also apologized for the mess. As in common with obsessively inward-looking groups like the Black Metal Circle, a crisis of this type either causes the grouping to dissolve, or re-enforces their convictions. The latter instance applied, and the Circle hailed Dead as a hero. Euronymous, who found the corpse, rushed out for a camera to take his final photograph of Dead before altering the authorities—claiming a morsel of brain to make into soup and a fragment of skull to fashion into a necklace. At this point, the Black Metal Circle were no longer merely a group of disaffected teens and early-twentysomethings, but a subculture who believed themselves to be at the center of significant, apocalyptic events. Euronymous’ demented, anti-social rants were making him a regular feature in the underground metal fanzines; despite the continued indifference of the global music media, black metal was rising from the grassroots across the World. The “legend of Dead” contributed to a growing international interest in extreme, Scandinavian Satanic metal, with Deathlike Silence treating the grim event as a grotesque promotional gimmick. For the first time, European countries bordering the Mediterranean also began throwing up a slew of black metal acts—most notably the Greek band Rotting Christ. In contrast to the could hatred of the Northerners, the Southern European scene was inclined to a less self-destructive, more LaVeyan approach—though Anton LaVey would have regarded many of them as blasphemy-fixated novices, struggling to topple the repressive Christianity that dominates their culture. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Much of black metal is supposed to be inspired by demons. They cannot be any worse than human being, right? Many of them just have never possessed a body of their own. They are souls who have been lurking around before humanity. Before the dinosaurs. They are the darkness. The reason God created life so that life could flourish and grow and rest when it is dark. Demon possession is a condition in which one or more evil spirits or demons inhabit the body of a human being and can take complete control of their victim at will. By temporarily blotting out one’s consciousness, they can speak and act through one as their complete slave and tool. The inhabiting demon (or demons) comes and goes much like the proprietor of a house who may or may not be “at home.” When the demon is “at home,” one may precipitate an attack. In these attacks the victim passes from one’s normal state of possession. The condition of the afflicted person in the “possessed” state varies greatly. Sometimes it is marked by depression and deep melancholy, sometimes by vacancy and stupidity that resemble idiocy. Sometimes the victim may be ecstatic or extremely malevolent and wildly ferocious. During the transition from the normal to the abnormal state, the victim is frequently thrown into a violent paroxysm, often falling to the ground unconscious, foaming at the mouth with symptoms similar to epilepsy or hysteria. The intervals between attacks vary greatly from an hour or less to months. Between attacks, the subject may be healthy and appear normal in every way. The abnormal or demonized stages can last a few minutes or several days. Sometimes the attacks are mild; sometimes they are violent. If they are frequent and violent, the health of the subject suffers. The chief characteristic of demon possession or demonomania is the automatic projection of a new personality in the victim. During attack the victim’s personality is completely obliterated, and the inhabiting demon’s personality takes over completely. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The inhabiting demon uses the victim’s body as a vehicle for one’s own thoughts, words, and acts. The demon even speaks out of the victim’s mouth and declares emphatically that one is a demon. Frequently one gives one’s name and dwelling place. The new personality reveals itself in a different voice and sometimes uses a different language or dialect on a completely different educational or cultural level. Pronouns are used to emphasize the new personality. The first personal pronoun consistently designates the inhabiting demon. Bystanders are addressed in the second person. The victim is referred to in the third person and looked upon during the attack as unconscious and for all practical purposes as nonexistent during this interval. Demonomania should be clearly differentiated from the insanity in which a person imagines oneself to be someone else, often a famous personality such as Liz Taylor, Julius Caesar, of William Randolph Hearst. The demoniac, when in the demonized state characterized by the new personality, speaks and acts in all respects like a completely different person. By contrast, the insane person is one’s own diseased self, one’s assumed personality being a transparent unreality. In cases of demon possession the new personality clearly and constantly recognizes the distinct existence and individuality of its “possessed” victim, speaking of that victim in the third person, an element entirely lacking in cases of insanity. Because various inadequate theories have left demon possession largely unexplained, it is quite probable that some patients in mental hospitals are demon possessed rather than insane. This was the conviction of the famous nineteenth-century specialist in mental diseases, Dr. Forces Benignus Winslow (1810-1874). He correctly recognized the demoniac by a strange duality; and by the fact that, when temporarily relived from the oppression of the demon, he is frequently able to describe the force which takes control of one and compels one to act and speak shamefully. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
While in the demonized state many persons give evidence of knowledge which cannot be accounted for naturally. The demon who takes control of the body of one’s victim is obviously the source of the superhuman knowledge. While demon possessed, many persons recognize the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and display an aversion to and a fear of Him (Mark 1.23-24; 5.7). The case of Mrs. Winchester, who lived in Santa Clara County, illustrates how a woman came under demon domination through practicing séances. Being centered within our own God like power is of utmost importance. Even when evoked to create change directly, keep in mind that you are the God that wields these powers for the cause of Counter Creation. Just be careful! As a God you will be tested and so how these powers are wielded is a powerful initiatic test in its own right. Mrs. Winchester was in her Blue Séance Room, she lite a candle on her left first, and then a candle on her right. A sacred serpent was sacrificed over the wood sigil and the blood was left to drain upon the idol. Then the body of the serpent was encircled around it, she chanted “I do invocate and conjure thee, O Spirit, Sabnock; and being with power armed from the SUPREME MAJESTY, I do strongly command thee, by BERALANENSIS, BALADACHIENSIS, PAUMACHIA, and APOLOGIAE SEDES; by the most Powerful Princes, Genii, Liachidae, and Ministers of the Tartarean Abode; and by the Chief Prince of the Seat or Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee, and by invocating conjure thee. And being armed with power from the SUPREME MAJESTY, I do strongly command thee, by Him Who spake and it was done, and unto whom all creatures be obedient. Also I, being made after the image of GOD, endued with power from GOD and created according unto His will, do exorcise thee by that most mighty and powerful name of GOD, EL, strong and wonderful; O thou Spirit Sabnock. And I command thee and Him who spake the Word and HIS FIAT was accomplished and by all the names of God. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
“Also by the names ADONAI, EL, ELOHIM, ELOHI, EHYEH, ASHER EHYEH, ZABAOTH, ELION, IAH, TETRAGRAMMATON, SHADDAI, LORD GOD MOST HIGH, I do exorcise thee and do powerfully command thee, O thou Spirit Sabnock, that thou dost forthwith appear unto me here before this Circle in a fair human shape, without any deformity or tortuosity. And by this ineffable name, TETRAGRAMMATON IEHOVAH, do I command thee, at which being heard the elements are overthrown, the air is shaken, the sea runneth back, the fire is quenched, the Earth trembleth, and all the hosts of the celestials, terrestrials, and infernals do tremble together, and are troubled and confounded. Wherefore come thou, O Spirit Sabnock, forthwith, and without delay, from any or all parts of the World wherever thou mayest be, and make rational answers unto all things that I shall demand of thee. Come thou peaceably, visibly, and affably, now, and without delay, manifesting that which I shall desire. For thou art conjured by the name of the LIVING and TRUE GOD, HELIOREN, wherefore fulfill thou my commands, and persist thou therein unto the end, and according unto mine interest, visibly and affably speaking unto me with a voice clear and intelligible without any ambiguity. I do invocate, conjure, and command thee, O thou Spirit Sabnock, to appear and to show thyself visible unto me before this Circle in fair and comely shape, without any deformity or tortuosity; by the name and in the name IAH and VAU which Adam heard and spake; and by the name of God, AGLA, which Lot heard and was saved with his family; and by the name IOTH, which Jacob heard from the angels wrestling with him, and was delivered from the hand of Esau his brother; and by the name ANAPHAEXTON which Aaron heard and spake and was made wise; and by the name ZBAOTH, which Moses named and all the rivers were turned into blood; and by the name ASHER EHYEH ORISTON, which Moses named, and all the rivers brought forth frogs, and they ascended into the house, destroying all things. #RandolpHarris 11 of 21
“And by the name ELION, WHICH Moses named, and there was a great hail such as had not been since the beginning of the World; and by the name ADONAI, which Moses named, and there came up locusts, which appeared upon the whole land, and devoured all which the hail had left; and by the name SCHEMA AMATHIA which Ioshua called upon, and the sun stayed his course; and by the name ALPHA and OMEGA, which Daniel named, and destroyed Bel, and slew the Dragon; and in the name EMMANUEL, which the three children, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, sang in the midst of the fiery furnace, and were delivered; and by the name HAGIOS; and by the SEAL OF ADONI; and by ISCHYROS, ATHANATOS; and by these three secret names, AGLA, ON, TETRAGRAMMATION, do I adjure and constrain thee. And by these names, and by all other names of the LIVING and TRUE GOD, the LORD ALMIGHTY, I do exorcise and command thee, O Spirit Sabnock, even by Him Who spake the Word and it was done, and to Whom all creatures are obedient; and by the dreadful judgments of GOD; and by the uncertain Sea of Glass, which is before the DIVINE MAJESTY, mighty and powerful; by the four beasts before the throne, having eyes before and behind; by the fire round about the throne; by the holy angels of Heaven; and by the mighty wisdom of GOD; I do potently exorcise thee, that thou appearest here before this Circle, to fulfill my will in all things which shall seem good unto me; by the Seal of BASDATHEA BALDACHIA; and by this name PRIMEUMATON, which Moses named, and the Earth Opened, and did swallow up Kora, Dathan, and Abiram. Wherefore thou shalt make faithful answers unto all my demands, O Spirit Sabnock, and shalt perform all my desires so far as in thine office thou art capable hereof. Wherefore, come thou, visibly, peaceably, and affably, now without delay, to manifest that which I desire, speaking with a clear and perfect voice, intelligibly, and to mine understanding. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
“Tbatlu! Bualu! Tulatu! Labusi! Ubisi!—Let thee also appear and being before me the Spirit of Sabnock. Sovar, merciless leader of Divs come forth! Inner eye behold the demon before me. Sovar awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Shahrewar! I stand alone as the embodiment of the Adversary known as Ahriman, the Black Dragon of Chaos and becoming! I devour the natural order of stasis brought forth by Ahura Mazda and forge my destiny through the power of the Black Sun! Taromat, beautiful Div or rebellion come forthy! Inner eye behold the demoness before me. Toramat awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Spandarmad! Ahirman, Lord of Darkness divine, I thank you for your presence within this unholy temple of counter creation. I have offered you the life of this noxious creature as a gateway to your manifestation within this realm to stand before me! You are Angra Mainyu who is the Lord of counter creation, whom has brought forth the mountains to the plains! You have brought forth the beasts to the field and the creatures of the night! Ahriman with your infernal blessing I ask that you would bring forth the baneful powers of the wolf kin to fill this oil with their essence that it may be compelled according to my will! I offer my nails as fangs which will devour that which stands in my way! I offer my hair to embody their predatory essence! I give my blood as a gateway to empower them to act within this world according to my will and purpose!” Then Mrs. Winchester heard the distant howling of wolves and she perceived their phantom shadows as they began to surround her and encroach. She was focused on Sabnock and dared not fear that which she had just conjured. SABNOCK—of course is the Forty-third Spirit of the Winchester Mansion. He is a Marquis, Mighty, Great, and Strong, appearing in the Form of an Armed Soldier with a Lion’s Head, riding on a pale-coloured horse. His office is to build high Towers, Castles and Cities, ad to furnish them with Armour, etcetera. Also he can conflict Men for many days with Wounds and with Sores rotten and full of Worms. He giventh Good Familiars at the request of the Exorcist. Commandth 50 Legions of Spirits; and his Seal is this, etcetera. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Mrs. Winchester fell down unconscious, frothing at the mouth, and was carried to her room, outside where the crescent hedge is planted. A doctor was called in gave her large doses of medicine to no avail. He left and refused to have anything more to do with the case as he saw with in hours gables and towers rise, wings of the mansion extended right before his eyes, and gardens grow from sprouts and spring up to mature plants and trees before night fall. For five of six days Mrs. Winchester raved wildly, and her staff and friends were in great distress. In desperation they proposed giving Mrs. Winchester more medicine. However, the demon, speaking through her, replied: “Any amount of medicine will be of no use.” Daisy then implored, “If medicine will be of no use, what shall we do?” The demon replied, “Burn incense to me, and submit yourself to me, and all will be well.” The staff knelt down and worshiped the demon, imploring him to torment Mrs. Winchester no longer. During that time Mrs. Winchester was in a state of complete unconsciousness. A little later when the demon drove Mrs. Winchester to renewed frenzy, her distraught staff repeated their promise to worship and serve him. They also promised that they would urge their Mrs. Winchester to do likewise. When Mrs. Winchester regained consciousness, she reluctantly consented to do so. The demon gave explicit directions regarding the proposed worship. On the first and fifteenth of each month, incense was to be burned, food offered, and the require prostration made before the shrine of himself, SABNOCK. Periodically the demon came, sometimes every few days, sometimes after a month’s lapse. Each time, Mrs. Winchester felt fluttering of her heart, a sense of overwhelming fear, and inability to control herself. She would quietly as Daisy to fetch a neighboring woman whenever the demon came. The two would burn incense to the demon in Mrs. Winchester’s stead and receive his directives, which they then communicated to the possessed. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Although these communications were spoken by the Mrs. Winchester’s (the victim) lips, she was completely unaware of them, since she was in the demonized state. The demon often bade the audience not to be afraid, protesting he would not harm them, but rather help them in various ways. He declared he would instruct the victim in the healing art, so that people would flock to her and be cured of their sickness. This soon proved true, although may diseases were not under the demon’s control. Apparently only those afflicted by evil spirits were completely cured. Mrs. Winchester’s long-ill child was not helped. The demon declared he controlled many inferior spirits. He also frequently outlined his plan for Mrs. Winchester’s life and work. He promised he would help her grow more proficient as a healer, and the people would compensate her for her services. Gifts thus earned were donated to the nearby ancient pagan temple. As certain parts of the Winchester mansion would appear but once every seventeen years, SABNOCK was never seen save on the eve of some awful calamity, visitors to the mansion had a very slight chance of seeing his physical body. There could be no doubt though of the existence of the mansion and SABNOCK, for everybody knows he was one of the greatest of the giants during his natural lifetime, nor could any better evidence be asked then the facts that he guided Mrs. Winchester into turning stone, wood, and class into the World’s most beautiful and bizarre mansions. The door-to-nowhere was also known as Lovers’ Leap;” from which Mrs. Winchester once flung herself when she was a state of deep morning, and survived unharmed. The path SABOCK made from the door-to-nowhere to the mountains was used by him when he would leave his island and come to shore. Upon being informed of the variety and amount of legendary material collected about the Winchester mansion and Mrs. Winchester’s doings, many people unhesitatingly pronounced the entire assortment condemned all the gathered treasures as creations of the supernatural. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
It was very well beknown that in them old days there were giants in plenty hereabouts, but they did not make the make an appearance at the estate very often. But everyone knows that there were giants, because if there were not, no one would know of them at all. They were just like human beings, except in the matter of size, and one of them could make a dozen like men that live now. When they walked, they carried oak trees for sticks and lived in the forest of the giants, and carved the mountain and caves. (It should be noted that spiritistic visions of this nature are quite likely to occur in the course of reading occult literature. Sometimes people mistake these visions for genuine religious experiences. However, it is again a case of Satan disguising himself as an angel of the light.) Yet, there are more than 20,000 accounts of spirits, ghost, angels and demons being seen in the Winchester mansion. The uncanny phenomena places one under a charm. The pattern of the courts during this early period in the 1800s was erratic, sometimes convicting, sometimes throwing cases out of court for lack of evidence, something awarding damages for slander to those who had been maligned as witches by accusers. This vacillation sprang from the fact that the judicial bodies that heard the causes were not religious but secular, and therefore had little competence in dealing with matters that were primarily religious. As far as control was concerned, in adhering to the principles of congregationalism, the responsibility for suppressing heresy and enforcing religious behavior within the communities went to the state. The trial judges were not the sure, steadfast, confident Dominican Inquisitors or Protestant prosecutors of the Old World, but merely secular officials of the valley who had been forced into the position of trying heresy for lack of anyone else to do it. Mary Johnson, who was hired at the Winchester mansion in 1887, as a cook, admitted have had “familiarity with the Devil” and was executed by the state. She confession to have pleasures of the flesh with demons and other sorted things. She made no mention of mass meetings; rather, her Devil seems to have been a personal one, coming to her assistance when needed. #RandolphHarri 16 of 21
Dolls were sometimes used as a means of projecting curses, and Mary said she had attended meetings with Satan and his consorts. Witches’ pact with Satan was attributed as part of God’s inscrutable plan of the Universe. The Puritan settlers in Santa Clara Valley believed in the doctrine of Original Sin wholeheartedly; their pessimistic outlook proclaimed that all men were unworthy until God saw fit to bestow His grace upon them. They believed that the God allowed the Devil to afflict not only the guilty but also anybody else that might happen to get in the way. If He had to teach misguided humans a lesson, He might punish an entire community for the sins of the most wicked in that community. And it appeared to the God-fearing Puritans that He was doing just that. The Puritans were highly intolerant and has a paranoiac distrust of other religious groups, some were farmers at the Winchester mansion, and did not always like the rituals that were performed, but they were very loyal and protective of Mrs. Winchester. Many of the people who worked at the Winchester mansion were often under suspicion of witchcraft. The Puritans came to the Winchester mansion because they felt it was a true kingdom of God on Earth, and they could help Mrs. Winchester live peacefully. However, what they found was something different. They found that the vast acres of the estate had bitterly cold winters, and the terrain could be inhospitable. They found themselves in a wilderness, surrounded by demonic tribes whom they considered to be the legions of Hell incarnate. Having come to settle in this last stronghold of the Devil, they were plagued by him constantly for the very reason that they were God’s chosen people, thus the most likely target for unholy temptation. The fact that the new settlers in the Santa Clara Valley were being attacked by Satan seemed incontestable. The estate was ravaged by smallpox, and had suffered constant harassment by envious local town’s people and demonic tribes. Mrs. Winchester wondered what she had done to offend God that He should allow the Devil such free range. She experimented with the spirits to bring peace to her life and home. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Mrs. Winchester had an answer: Judgment Day was at hand and Satan was therefore stepping up his activities in one last desperate move. It was simply the nova-like burst of the energy from a dying star. She glibly stated that “there will again be an unusual Range of the Devil among us, a little before the Second Coming of the Lord, which will be to give the last stroke in destroying the works of the Devil.” This theory found wide acceptance among the servants and laity of Santa Clara Valley, for not only did it offer a simple explanation for all their maladies and misfortunes, but it also gave them hope, promising cooly a quick end to their hardships. Satan is most able to seduce human in periods o great discontent, for human, in times of poverty and affliction, will turn knowingly to whatever hands will feed them. The valley had had a difficult time of it up to that time, and famines had reduced the population drastically. However, as if labouring under the most severe environmental handicaps was not enough, Puritan perfectionism went even further in making life unbearable. In seeking to establish a holy kingdom, according to Heaven’s law, self-indulgence in any form was strictly repressed. Severe punishments were meted out for drinking, swearing, and licentiousness; in Santa Clara, it was a punishable offense to walk on the streets on Sunday, except when going to and from church. And witches, people possessed by demons, and others also attended church to blend in and keep the peace. On top of it all, there stood the Calvinistic doctrine of election, holding that as soon as man was born, eh was judged to be headed for either Heaven or Hell, this choice being made according to God’s immutable law. However, even if a human thought oneself to be damned, the civil punishment for one’s indulgence were still exacted upon one. It was into this environment that the waters of the witchcraft flood would soon pour. The good people of Santa Clara clearly saw signs of Satanic activity in their midst, and an investigation was launched. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Mrs. Winchester confessed to having attended witches’ Sabbaths and of having met with the Devil, who was a tall, black man from New Haven, Connecticut. Soon the witch fever spread, and more people from the valley became posses by demons. The common belief was that at that time witches, when entering into a Covenant with Satan, because the owners of specters, with the help of which they could do harm to any person of their choosing. People believe that God—the Alpha and Omega was both God and Satan. That He has a soul and character. He is not just this futile entity but someone you can see many aspects to. Some people fled to Satanism because they had to deal with so much evil from Christians that they wanted another source of power to exalt them. Satanism is supposed to be something to be something secret, something people do not know anything of. One goes to America and in the telephone directory one can see “Church of God,” “Church of Jesus,” and “Church of Satan.” One calls, and a person answers: “Church of Satan, how may I help you?” One thinks, “This is not Satanism!” The Church of Satan deny Satan, they say He does not exist, yet they act as if He dd, they rebel against God. They call themselves Satanists because He also rebelled against God, but they are basically light and life worshipping individualists. Well, the phone is tapped, so I think you better write what you know. Some people have disappeared. And of course the normal grave yard desecration. Anne Winchester’s headstone was recently stolen, but replaced. Normal people just disappear and never show up again. It could have a Satanic connection. Every human is life, and some hate life, especially human life. That is why people disappeared. These people may have disappeared for some form of sacrifice. Something like that would be called a Satanic murder. The murder is the ritual sacrifice. These murders gain power from whoever was responsible. Everybody has their own aura, and auras can be stolen by sacrificing an individual, this allows one to gain more power. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Places of worship, such as churches, have their own spirit—the Winchester Mystery House, for example, has been worshipped in for maybe hundreds of years and has thus gained a lot of spirit in that time, it could qualify as a church and gain charitable tax exemption. But that is not the point. A person who sacrifices that will gains a lot of power and grows stronger. Some people fear the Winchester mansion, because there are a lot of different energies. There is fear, terror and suspense, but others feel a lot of light, happiness, and goodness. Sometimes the energy is mixed. Anton LaVey really surprises me. If your every rea his work, he seems very intelligent and not scary at all, but I guess it depends on what one reads. I have read parts of his Bible, and it is very straightforward, it is stuff people tell their kids every day. Stand up for yourself and do not let people run you over. I think that the Winchester mansion should also open on nights of a full Moon, not just Friday the 13th. During the full Moon, there is a lot of energy and symbolic value. A lot of people believe in the full Moon and a lot of people believe in virgins. That makes both the full Moon and the virgin more powerful because of belief in them. God was first and He created the World. Of course, a lot of scientists would deny that. However, I would challenge their view because I believe God used evolution, which is why it took so long, which is why we have evidence like dinosaur bones. Yet, some Gnostic Christians have suggested Satan created the World. Everybody will be taken as slaves except the warlords. Euronymus, who we talked about earlier, was murdered in August 1993, Aaliyah 2001. Some say that is a month when sacrifices are made. Grishnackh killed Euronymous, and a few hours later, he was laughing and joking, saying, “Ha ha, Euronymous is dead, I’m going to dance and piss on his grave.” It reminded of the jokes Howard Stern made about Aaliyah. It was not funny. These are not the rantings of someone who is all there. Grishnackh talked about the dynamite he had and how he was going to blow things up. Basically, they took things to illogical extremes, but it all made sense in their own heads. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
It is possible when dabbling with occultism for one to make an unconscious contract with the powers of darkness. The gift of discernment is absolutely necessary in life. It is generally not wise to lay one’s hands on a person who is occultly subjected. The retuning spirits will often attempt to creep back under the guise of some pious camouflage. It is in this way that evil can often enter unnoticed into one’s Christian life. A maid at the Winchester mansion once accepted the invitation of one of her coworkers to attend some spiritistic meetings. At first she felt as though she had gain something from going along to the meetings but later on she began to notice some psychic changes taking place in herself. She began to notice some psychic changes taking place in herself. She began to suffer from depression which resulted in her consulting a neurologist. During the course of the treatment she was committed to a lunatic asylum. However, as her condition improved, she could no longer attend the spiritistic séances. At the hospital the chaplain came to see her through his help and counsel she was able to make a complete recovery. One of the farmers at the estate wanted to see if charms actually worked, and some of them He. He practiced in the basement of the Winchester mansion. He drew a magic circle on the ground and drew some other magic symbols in the circle. He then used a charm three times in order to invoke the spirit. However, no spirit came. Yet, as he repeated, the charm he fell down in the magic circle and lay there unconscious for some time. The result was that for several weeks following this event he was semi-paralysed and drained of all his physical strength and will-power. After a few weeks, he died. Frequently identified as a common spot where the “wheelbarrow Ghost” is sighted, Steam Alley is one of the most well-known paranormal hot-spots in the mansion. Have you ever seen anything in the basement? #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Some stroll Sarah’s lovely gardens this Memorial Day Weekend. There is a beautiful parrot which Mrs. Winchester used to pet, it talks! He is supposed to be happy and impudent, and talks and laughs and screeches all the time. Maybe you may catch a glimpse at this wooded, flowery estate. It is such a beautiful spectacle, all of that life and grace and animation, and sun-smitten flash and sprinkle of rich colour.
This impressive mansion dates back to the 1880s, when it was developed by Sarah Winchester and the spirits, whose project enobed and enriched the community. It once had a nine-story military watchtower. Mrs. Winchester further developed the grounds of the 160 room mansion, introducing a Victorian garden at the hands of World renowed architect Gino Coppede around the turn of the century.
These adaptions made this idyllic mansion a unique asset, tinged with the signs and influences of eclecticism and Liberty, juxtaposed to the ancient Architectural characteristics of its medieval heritage. This mansion presents itself as impressive and spectacular. The building now spreads on four floors plus the basment, for a total of approximently 25,000 feet square.
There is lovely gift shop and cafe, and it is also an ideal venue for hosting private events, conventions and/or ballrooms are located on the back overlooking the internal garden with its panoramic position which glows thanks to its night-time lighting.
Inside the property there are splendid rooms filled with historial furniture, decorated ceilings and flamboyant fireplaces, vaulted ceilings and richly frescoes walls. In addition, there are several bedrooms, nine kitchens. and thirteen bathrooms, which made the structure a perfect luxurious accommodation for guests, and is now a tourist destination.
This mansion is located within a private park of 4 acres and elegant Nineteenth-century Victorian-gardens, that offer areas of wide lawns, and further green spaces. There is also a parking area, with free parking. Currently used to host guided tours and private events and functions. The enitre porperty sits at a close distance from the mall, hotels, and resturants. The high-fashion outlet complex and gourmet food has brought further development and tourism to Santa Clara County. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
The Grounds Have their Share of Unexplained Mysteries
A mansion is not a mansion with its stately grounds, and Mrs. Winchester was just as attentive to the exterior of her estate as she was to the sprawling house. An avid gardener, she imported plans, flowers, trees, shrubs, and herbs from over 110 countries around the World. Mrs. Winchester employed eight to ten gardeners. Her head gardener was Mr. Nishiwara, who was responsible for seeing that the beautiful gardens, plus the tall hedge around the hose, were well maintained. The hedges were once so tall that only the top floor of the house was visible from the road! Mrs. Winchester loved to spend time in her gardens, and she had gazebos built where she could sit and enjoy her trees and flowers. It was a Saturday night, in January 1888, and Mrs. Winchester has, as usual, come home from the City early in the afternoon. It has been a black and foggy day, and the gas had been lighted in the streets and in the office where she worked from early morning. The fog was very bad at the time Mrs. Winchester returned home, and she congratulated herself on the fact that she had not to go out again that night. She sat with her puppy Zip in her sitting-room all the evening, with that comfortable feeling that she was able to relax until Monday morning, and that she need trouble about nothing outside the mansion. In due course, Zip went to bed, and then the maid Agnus reminded her of a letter that must be written and posted that night. Sufficient is it for Mrs. Winchester to say that the letter was to an elderly relative of some means who lived in Oakland, and who had taken great interest in her puppy Zip. The butler Martin remembered that the following day was the birthday of this relative, and that she should receive proper greeting by the Sunday morning post in the country town.
Frankly, Mrs. Winchester did not want the bother of it; but Agnus always knows best in these matters, and so Mrs. Winchester wrote the note and sealed it up. Mrs. Winchester had read nothing exciting during the evening—nothing to stir her imagination in any way. She stamped the letter and proceeded to the front door. Judge of her astonishment when, on throwing it open, she saw nothing but the gray wall of fog coming up to the very house; even the railings, not ten yards in the front of her grand estate, were blotted out completely. She called back into the house for the maid to come and look. “Don’t lose yourself, Mrs. Winchester,” she said, half laughing. “What a terrible night!” “I shall not lose myself,” Mrs. Winchester replied, laughing in turn. “The pillar-box is only at the end of the crescent; if I stick to the railing, I cannot possibly miss it. Do not wait here,” she added solicitously. “I will leave the door ajar, so that I can slip in easily when I come back. I have left my keys on my writing desk.” Angus went in, and Mrs. Winchester pulled the door close, and then stepped out boldly for the front gate. Imagine her standing there, just outside her own gate, and with her back to the crescent, knowing that she had to go to the left to find the pillar-box which was at the end of the crescent. There were thirteen Victorian cottages on her estate, so she knew she had to pass seven more before reaching the pillar-box. She also new that each cottage had an ornamental center-piece before she stepped away from the crescent at the end to reach the pillar box. That Mrs. Winchester knew would be something of an adventure, for the fog was the densest she had ever seen; she could only see the faint glow of her observation tower as she looked behind; the rest of her mansion was invisible.
Mrs. Winchester counted seven Victorian cottages, and then stood at the end of the last line of railings. She knew that the pillar-box was exactly opposite her. She took three quick steps, and literally cannoned into it. She was a little proud of her own judgment in getting it so nicely. Then she fumbled for the mouth of it, and dropped in her letter. All this may should very commonplace and ordinary. Mrs. Winchester is an observant woman, and she had noticed always that the mouth of the pillar-box faced directly along the crescent, thus standing at right angles to the road. At the moment that she had her right hand in that mouth, therefore, she argued that if she stood out at the stretch of her arm, she must be facing the crescent; Mrs. Winchester had but to move straight forward again to touch the friendly railings. She was putting that plan into operation, and had let go of the mouth of the pillar-box, when a man, coming hurriedly round the corner, ran straight into her, muttered a gruff apology, and was lost in the fog again in a moment. And in that accidental collision he had spun her round and tossed her aside—and she was lost! This is literally true. She took a step and found herself slipping of the kerbstone int the road; stumbled back again, and strove to find her way along by sticking to the edge of the pavement. After a minute or two, Mrs. Winchester was so sure of herself that she ventured to cross the pavement, and by great good luck touched in a moment one of those ornamental center-pieces of one of the gates—or so, at least, it seemed. She went on with renewed confidence until she saw certain bushes which topped the railings of one particular cottage, and then Mrs. Winchester knew that she was near her mansion’s front door. She pushed walked confidently, stepped quickly up the little path, and reached the door. She was right; the door yielded to her touch, and she went hurriedly in.
Mrs. Winchester had taken off her hat, and had held it towards the familiar hat-stand before she realized that it was not a familiar hat-stand at all; it was one she did not know. She looked round in some confusion, meaning to make good her escape without being observed, and yet wondering into what part of her mansion could she have come into, when she stopped stock still, with the hat held in her hand, listening. From a room near at hand, Mrs. Winchester heard the sound of a low, long-drawn moan, as from someone in pain. More than that, it was almost the wail of someone in acute terror. Now, Mrs. Winchester was a mild and caring soul, and her first instinct was to run. There was the door within a foot of her; she could open it again noiselessly and slip out, and leave whatever was moaning to its own trouble. Her next instinct, however, was a braver one; she might be able to help. Putting her hat on, and so leaving her hands free, she moved cautiously towards the sound, which was coming intermittently. She found that this wing of the house was unfamiliar to her; there was a 7-11 staircase built in the shape of a letter “Y,” which enabled the servants to quickly get to three different levels of the house. Then there were these stairs that lead to the ceiling, and there was also a cabinet that went straight through to the back thirty rooms of the mansion. When she went down the steps of the 7-11 staircase, slowly and cautiously, with her flesh creeping a little, the morning went on, and Mrs. Winchester was almost inclined to turn back with every step she took. However, at last, she got into the basement, and came to the door of the room from which the sound proceeded. She was in the very act of recklessly thrusting open the door when another sound broke upon her ears that held her still. The sound of someone singing in a raucous voice.
It was a sea song she remembered to have heard when she was a little girl in New Haven, Connecticut, and the words of which she had forgotten; it was something about “Boney was a warrior.” The door of the room was open a little way, and through the crack of it, Mrs. Winchester was able to peer in; and there she saw a sight that for a moment made her doubt her own eyes. She rubbed her eyes in a curious fashion and looked again, and this is what she saw: The room was in a neglected state, with strips of wallpaper hanging down from the walls and with a blackened ceiling. There was a table in the center of it, and at that table a man was seated, with a square black bottle and a glass before him, and a candle burning near his left hand. Mrs. Winchester could see the whole room now as plainly and as clearly as she saw it then. He was a man so villainously ugly that she had a thought that he was not a man at all, but some hideous thing out of a nightmare. He had very long arms—so long that they were stretched across the table, and his hands gripped the opposite edge of it; a great heavy head, crowed with a mass of red hair, was set low between enormously broad shoulders; his eyes, half closed, were high up and close together on either side of a nose that was scarcely a nose at all; the lips were thick and heavy. However, it was not the man that Mrs. Winchester looked at first, it was at two other figures in the room. These figures were seated on chairs facing the table at which the man was, and the strangeness of them lay in the fact that each was securely bound to the chair on which he and she sat, for it was a man and a woman. The man, who was quite young was not only bound, but gagged securely also; the woman was more lightly tied to her chair by the arms only, and her mouth was free. She was leaning back, with her eyes closed, and mingling with the raucous singing of the man at the table. Mrs. Winchester’s first impression was that the man at the table was some sort of unclean, bestial judge, and the others his prisoners.
He stopped his singing to pour some liquor from the square bottle into his glass and to drink it off; then he resumed his former attitude, with his fingers locked over the edge of the table. And now Mrs. Winchester noticed that while the woman, who was, by the way, quite young and very pretty, with a fair, dainty prettiness, still kept her eyes closed, the eyes of the bound man never left that dreadful figure seated at the other side of the table. Mrs. Winchester felt like she was on the eve of some awful calamity. She then unhesitatingly pronounced the entire assortment of people in the room as ghost, and condemned all the gathered treasures as the creations of petty intellect, which could not get out of the beaten track, but sought in the supernatural a reason for the explanation of every fact that seemed at variance with routine of daily experience. In her opinion the collection of people in this room had never seen at all in her day and generation, and must have been souls killed by the Winchester rifle ages ago; she did not yet believe her mansion was enchanted, however. To use her own language, “all those stories have been made by those people that set up overnight stirring out legends to entertain each other.” However, she must have known that she was in denial. For she was not insane and there were some kind of beings in this room. “Wouldn’t you like to speak, you dog?” said the red-haired man. “What would you give now to have the use of your limbs—the free wagging of your tongue? What would you say to me; what would you do to me?” The man who was bound could, of course, answer nothing. Mrs. Winchester saw his face flush and darken, and she guessed what his thoughts were. For herself, she was too fascinated by the scene before her to do anything else than peer through the crack and watch what was going one.
“Lovers—eh?” exclaimed the man at the table. “You thought I was unsuspicious; you thought I knew nothing and suspected nothing—didn’t you? While I was safely out of the way you could meet, the pair of you—day after day, and week after week; and this puppy could steal from me what was mine by right.” The woman opened her eyes for the first time and spoke. “It isn’t true,” she said, a sob breaking her voice. “It was all innocent. Martin and I have done no wrong.” “You lie!” thundered the man, brining his fist down upon the table with a blow that might have split it. “You’ve always lied—lied from the moment your father gave you to me—from the very hour I married you. You always hated me; I’ve seen you shudder many and many a time at the mere sight of me. Don’t I know it; haven’t I felt you stab me a thousand times more deeply than you could have stabbed me with any weapon? You devil! I’ve come at last to hate you as much as you hate me.” The woman turned her head slowly and looed at the younger man; a faint smile crossed her lips. In an instant the red-haired man had leapt to his feet, showing Mrs. Winchester astonishingly enough that he was a dwarf, with the shortest legs surely ever a man had. However, the bult of him was enormous, and Mrs. Winchester could guess, with a shudder, at his length. He caught up the glass, crossed the room, and flung the contents in the face of the man. “It’s a waste of good liquor—but that’s for the look she gave you. I wish there was some death more horrible than any invented yet that I could deal out to you,” he added, standing with the glass in his hand and glaring at his victim. “The death I mean for you is too easy.” He walked across to the fireplace in a curious purposeless way, and stirred a great fire that was blazing there. Then from a corner of the room he dragged with ease a great sack that appeared to contain wood and shavings; so much that Mrs. Winchester saw a rent in the side of it. As if in readiness for something, this he dropped down near the fire, and then went back to his seat, applying himself again to the drink that was on the table. And still Mrs. Winchester watched, as a woman may watch a play, wondering how it will end.
“I got the best of you tonight,” he said presently. “If I hadn’t some upon you from behind, you might have been too much for me; but I was ready and waiting. I’ve been watching longer than you think; I had everything mapped out clearly days ago. Tonight sees the end of all things for the pair of you; tomorrow sees me smiles away from here. You came in secret, you dog; you’ll go in secret.” “We have done no wrong,” said the woman again. “We loved each other years ago, when we were boy and girl; there was no sin in that.” “Bah!—I don’t believe a word of it. Don’t I know that your black heart you’ve compared the two of us every day of your life since first I saw you. His straightness for my crookedness; his sleek, black hair for my red; his prettiness for this face of mine”—he struck his own face relentlessly with one hand as he spoke—“that women shudder at. Don’t I know all that?” It was the strangest and most pitiful thing that the creature sitting there before his victims suddenly covered his face with his hands and groaned. If ever Mrs. Winchester had seen a soul in torment, she saw it then, and though she loathed him she could have wept for him. After a moment or two he dropped his hands and seized the bottle, and poured out the last drops into the glass and drank them off; then flung the bottle and glass crashing into the fireplace, as though there was an end to that business. And now, as he got down again from the chair, Mrs. Winchester saw the eyes of the woman open wide and follow his every movement with a dreadful look of terror in them. “I’ll kill you both—here in the place where you’ve met—and then I’ll seal up the house,” went on the dwarf. “I’ve planned it all. Look you last on each other, for tonight you die—and this house shall be your crypt!”
“I swear to you,” panted the woman eagerly, “by all I hold most holy and most dear, that if you let us go, we’ll never see each other again. For pity’s sake! —for the sake of Martin!” “For the sake of Martin!” sneered the dwarf. “That shows you in your true colors; that show who you are and what you are. There’s one poor satisfaction left to you; you’ll die together.” What held Mrs. Winchester then it would be impossible to say. She could only plead that in the dreadful thing that followed was a woman who sits at a play wondering what will happen next, and with never a thought in her of interfering. Mrs. Winchester’s in her anxiety has pressed the door a little to get a clearer view, so that she saw every movement of the dwarf. For herself, Mrs. Winchester had forgotten everything—in her own home, and my puppy zip, and the servants who slept in the mansion. It was as though she has stepped straight into a new World. Mrs. Winchester saw the dwarf advance towards the man in the chair, carrying his right hand stiff and straight beside him, gripping something s, she could not tell what it was that he held. Mrs. Winchester saw him come straight at her, and she saw the eyes of the woman in the opposite chair watching her as one fascinated. Then Mrs. Winchester saw two movements’ one with the left hand of the dwarf, when he struck the other man on the face; then with the right hand, when he raised something that gleamed n the light of the candle and brought it down with a sound that was new and horrible to her on the breast of the other man. And Mrs. Winchester saw the face of the man change, and start as it were into new life, and then fall as it were into death. And Mrs. Winchester saw his head drop forward, and his eyes were closed. Then, above it all, and yet seeming as a sort of dreadful chorus to it all, rang out the scream from the woman in the other chair. Mrs. Winchester did not think that the dwarf heard it; he had drawn back from what had been the living man, and was staring like one mad upon what he had done. And still piercing the air of the place rang the scream of the woman—not for her lover alone, but for herself.
That sound seemed at last to break in upon the senses of the dwarf and to call him partially to himself. Mrs. Winchester had watched him to the point where he draw himself together and crouched like a wild beast ready to spring, with that in his hand that dripped red, when, in some fashion, she flung herself round the partially open door and stumbled into the room. Mrs. Winchester thought she must have been a little made herself; otherwise, frail and commonplace creature that she was, she could not have battled with this madman. Mrs. Winchester came upon him from behind and gripped him, seizing him by the throat and by the head, and all the while shouting something to him quite unintelligible. The attack had been so sudden and so unexpected that she had him, in a sense, at her mercy. He could not know who had attacked him; he struggled madly, not alone to get away from her, but also to discover who she was. Mrs. Winchester struggled to keep his face away from her, gripped him by the neck and by the hair, and fought with him for what she knew then was her own life. And so struggling they stumbled at last horribly against that still figure bound in the chair and brought it over crashing with them to the floor. And then in a sudden Mrs. Winchester felt the dwarf inert in her hands, and knew that she had conquered him. What she must have looked like in that room, kneeling there, panting and struggling to get her breath, she could not tell; the whole business was so like a nightmare. She remembered seeing the dwarf lying there—huddled up and very still. She remembered that other figure, bound grotesquely in the chair and lying, still bound, upon its side; and she remembered, too, the woman, with her arms close fastened behind her, sitting there and sobbing wildly.
The dwarf must have been stunned; he lay there quite still, with the knife that was dreadfully red fallen from his hand, and lying beside him. When at last Mrs. Winchester staggered to her knees she saw that the girl was staring at her with a face that seemed to suggest that here, perhaps, was another ruffian come to kill her. “Who—who are you?” she asked in a frightened whisper. “A friend—one who stumbled in by accident,” Mrs. Winchester panted. “Look at the man that’s tied to the chair,” she whispered hoarsely. “He can’t be dead.” Mrs. Winchester knew that he was, but still she looked, as she bade her. Mrs. Winchester had no need to look twice; the poor fellow was quite dead. The blow had been strong and sure. On her knees beside him, Mrs. Winchester looked up and nodded slowly to her; there was no need for words. The young lady leaned back in her chair again and closed her eyes. “Set me free,” she said in a faint voice. Mrs. Winchester could not touch that knife that lay there; in a mechanical, methodical way she took from her waistcoat pocket the decent, respectable little bone handled penknife she carried always with her. With that Mrs. Winchester but the young lady’s bonds, nothing as she did so how cruelly they had cut into the white flesh; and after a moment or two she swung her arms listlessly against her sides and opened her eyes, and then, with an effort raised her hands and pressed them against her temples. “What will you do?” Mrs. Winchester asked, looking at her curiously. “I—I don’t know,” she said; and then, breaking into weeping, sobbed out: “Oh—dear God—that it should have come to this! What shall I do—what shall I do?” “You must get away,” Mrs. Winchester said, watching the dwarf, who was beginning to stie a little. “If he wakes, you know what will happen.”
“I know—I know,” she said; and got to her feet and began to move towards that bound figure still lying tied to the chair. However, at that Mrs. Winchester got before her, and with her hands against he shoulders held her back, and pleaded passionately to her that she should go, and leave the dead alone. She listened, with that strange look in her eyes of a child wakened from sleep and not clearly understanding; but she yielded to Mrs. Winchester, and stumbled under her guidance to the door. They had reached it, and Mrs. Winchester had opened it for her to pass out, when suddenly the dwarf twisted over on to his hands and knees, and then raised himself upright. He did not seem to realize for a moment what had happened; then he caught sight of the woman, and, with a snarl, crawled forward and gripped the hilt of the knife. At that she pushed suddenly past Mrs. Winchester and fled like a hare up the stairs. Mrs. Winchester heard the swift passage of her footsteps in the little hall of the house—then the slamming of the door-to-nowhere. And now Mrs. Winchester had to look to herself, for she saw in the eyes of the man that he would not let this witness escape if he could catch him. Mrs. Winchester had managed to get through the door by the time that he had got to his feet, and in a dazed fashion was stumbling toward her, knife in hand. With a sudden swoop he reached the table and blew out the candle, and at the same moment Mrs. Winchester ran up the stairs, and in the darkness stumbled along the hall and fumbled with the catch of the door. By great good fortune, Mrs. Winchester got the door open, and literally fell out into the fog. She could not see him as he tore after her; in a faintness Mrs. Winchester had fallen to her knees, and she heard him, as he raced past her, panting heavily. Then the fog swallowed him up, and she knelt there on the farm alone, shaking from head to foot.
Mrs. Winchester had, of course, no means of exactly in what part of her mansion she had had her adventure; she could only judge roughly that it must be about the middle of the crescent. She started along again, in the right direction, as she hoped, and thought to find the front door to her mansion; missed the railings, after going what seemed to be an interminable distance, and came up hard against a pillar-box. Scarcely knowing what she did, she set her right hand in the mouth of it, and performed the same maneuver she had done before; advanced three paces, and touched railings again. Stumbling along these, she came blindly what she thought was her front door, walked up the path, and pushed open the door that yielded; and there, with the face of her maid looking at her in alarm and wonderment, Mrs. Winchester feel in a dead faint at her feet. It has to be recorded that Mrs. Winchester never found that room again. She knew every square inch of her mansion. Over and over again, in clear weather, Mrs. Winchester has always around in her mansion, and had closed her eyes, and tried to remember what steps she took to get to that particular room that night, after a stranger had cannoned into her and twisted her round; but all in vain. Whether in some part of the house lies the body of a man who was foully murdered on that particular night; maybe in a hidden room the crime was committed; or perhaps, in some strange supernatural fashion, she saw that night a deed committed that had been committed long before, she shall never know. That it is no mere figment of the imagination, and that something really happened that night, is proved by one fact. Her maid, in raising Mrs. Winchester from the floor that night when she fell at her feet, found her fingers locked closed upon something, and, forcing them open, disclosed what it was. A tuft of red hair!
Such episodes may appear utterly absurd and pure superstition to people in countries comparatively free of black magic, but instead they should be warnings of the power of Satan and demons where occult literature lures readers into illicit magic. Magic as the release of special power by satanic and demon forces of evil in its character and effects. While divine help and miracles produce new strength and positive results, magic shifts the burden to another area. Small relief in one area must be paid for by terrible burdens in another. The principle of compensation prevails. The price exacted is always found to be much greater than the amount of help received. Satan drives a hard bargain and grossly cheats his victims. Usually violence, suicide, and insanity will run through a whole family line, where the magical arts have been cultivated and practiced. Such tragic events often involve as many as four generations. Many occultists and magic workers, especially those who have cultivated the black arts and signed themselves over to the devil in their own blood, die horrible deaths. When a ready successor is not provided to carry on the nefarious practice, this is especially true. The psychic bondage and oppression that traffickers in occultism themselves suffer, as well as their dupes, is horrifying to contemplate. Demon possession is represented as a vivid symbol of the prevalence of evil in the World. Other critics attempt to dismiss demon possession with theories of accommodation or hallucination. However, this view fails to meet the issue. Nor can present-day parapsychologist and psychiatrists, who refuse to recognize evil supernaturalism in the phenomenon of demon possession, either explain it or deal adequately with it. Laws defining witchcraft as having league with the Devil and prescribing the death penalty for such offenders cropped up in the colonies as early as 1636 in Plymouth. Other colonies soon followed suit—Connecticut in 1642 and Rhode Island in 1647.
The first executions took place in Boston in 1648 and in Hartford, Connecticut, in that same year. The executions were carried out by hanging, in contrast to the European practice of burning witches, which probably stemmed from the widespread fear among the European peasantry of vampire, the dead who returned from their graves to suck the blood from the living. The vampire myths never really took root in America, so the necessity of destroying the bodies of the witches was not deemed urgent. Throughout the 1650s, there appeared prosecution and attempted prosecutions in America, but these cases were infrequent, and all of them were based on the fear of maleficum, the witch’s working of evil, the accusations coming from frustrated and jealous neighbors. Few confessions were recorded in the early cases, and they did not seem to have much real validity. The few that did confess mentioned having dealings with Satan, but for the most part these admissions were confused and incoherent, and the details of the accounts differed greatly from the confessions of the witches in Europe. For example, in 1699, in Connecticut, a woman named Greensmith confessed to trafficking with the Devil, but made no mention of all-important Covenant, or pact. She further stated that the Devil had appeared to her in the form of a deer (not a goat) and that she had attended meetings at a place not far from her house. The mention of “meetings” occurred in some early confession, but the word “Sabbat” or “Sabbath,” commonly used by European witches, did not come up until later, apparently at the suggestion of the Salem judges. Some believe that Satan has a soul and a character. He is not just this futile entity but someone you can see many aspects to. Some people do not see Satan as this guy with horns who is evil, they see Him as the first rebel. Then one can see why He is so attractive to many in the Victorian ages and the young people. He is someone who is standing up to the greatest power in the Universe. “If that ‘evil’ is of a rebellious nature,” says Glenn Danzig, “then I guess, in Christian terms, that evil is the Satan in you. I don’t buy that. I believe in honesty, standing up for yourself. That’s my ‘good.’”
Thousands of people base their hopes on the statements of spiritistic practitioners and subsequently become dependent upon the advice they receive from the “other side.” There are quite a number of people who has suffered serious psychic disturbances through the misuse of such practices. Their personalities have been split and they have been utterly confused by the spirits on which they have called. People therefore who try to discover what life after death is like through spiritism and superstition may be in danger of falling prey to the dark and hidden side of their own minds and soul. If you look at the early tracts of The Christian Bible, there is really not much about Satan in there anyway. Christian religions have tried to overblow and create a whole legend around Satan which is not true to the actual scriptures we have. If you desire, you must first make yourself strong so you can help others. You should only help people who want help, a lot of times people do not really want your help. You tell people what has to be done to change their lives, they will not listen. If Satan were corporeal, He would not be something repulsive, He would be something seductive. He would want to win you over and gain your trust, and of course being repulsive or disgusting would not be the way to go. One would imagine this would be a seductive, beautiful creature. In the Gnostic account of the fall of the angels, the angels were suppsed to be watching over this flock of humans and all of a sudden, they are perpetrating acts of pleasures of the flesh with them. Eventually this created the Cyclops, the Minotaur, things of this nature. There are so many accounts of the fall of the angels, it is like a fantasy tale that you would like to believe actually happened. We, in this circle, conjure and cite this spirit Fatenovenin, with all his adherents, to appear here in this spot, to fulfill our desires, in the name of three holy Angels, Schomajen Sheziem, Roknion Averam, Kandile, Brachat Chaijdalic, Ladabas, Labul, Rargil, Bencul, in the name of God. Amen!
Winchester Mystery House
Mrs. Winchester’s estate was a little town within itself. The grounds have their share of unexplained mysteries. Mrs. Winchester outfitted her home with the finest stained glass doors, windows, and wallpaper that money could buy during her time. She had everything she needed: plumber’s shops, carpenter’s workshops, her own water and electrical supplies, and complete sewer and drainage systems. Mrs. Winchester even had her own gas manufacturing plant. It produced carbide gas by adding a small amount of water to a drum containing calcium carbide. The resulting gas was pressed through the gas lines to the house by a large piston and cylinder. The gas lights in the house were then lit by electromechanial strikers that created a spark to light each lamp.
Come see her estate, in person, for yourself this weekend! Please Click the link below for tickets and more information.
The Time of the World Disappears Before Eternity
Revolutionary wealth is not just about money. Civilization is one of those big, stuffy words that may intrigue philosophers and historians but puts most people to sleep. Unless it is used in a sentence like “Our Civilization is threatened”—at which point large numbers of people prepare to defend themselves. Today many people do, in fact, believe that their civilization is threatened—and that the United States of America may be doing the threatening. And it is. However, not in the way most of us think. Around the World, critics of the United States of America point to its military and its economy as the main sources of its predominance. It is, however, knowledge in the broadcast sense and new technologies based on it that integrate America’s military and financial power and propel both forward. It is true that America’s technological lead is threatened. According to the National Science Board, foreign students earn nearly 50 percent of all U.S. doctorates in mathematics, computer sciences and engineering. And American youth are showing less and less interests in these fields. NASA officials complain that there are three times as many scientists over sixty as there are under thirty in the space agency. Shirley Ann Jackson, then president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has cautioned that “centers of technology-based activity, training, and entrepreneurialism are rapidly spreading throughout the globe. Thus even the status quo for the U.S. represents a declining share of the global marketplace for innovation and ideas.” Nevertheless, America still leads in most fields of digital technology, in microbiology and in science generally. It spends 44 percent of the World budget for research and development. By most criteria, the United States of America is still the undisputed leader in the performance of basic and applied research. In addition, many international comparisons put the United States of America as a leader in applying research and innovation to improve economic performance.
In the latest IMD International World Competitiveness Yearbook, the United States of America ranks first in economic competitiveness, followed by Hong Kong and Singapore. The survey compares economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency, and infrastructure. Larger economies are further behind, with Zhejiang (China’s wealthiest province), Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany ranked 20 though 23, respectively. An extensive review by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concludes that since World War II, US leadership in science and engineering has driven its dominant strategic position, economic advantage, and quality of life. And at least for now, the United States of America remains the Word’s scientific powerhouse. Perhaps even more important is the speed with which scientific and technical findings from everywhere are converted into marketable applications or products and widely dispersed into manufacturing, finance, agriculture, defense, biotech and other sectors. All of which boosts economic productivity, further accelerates change, and increasing the U.S. ability to compete at the global level. However, knowledge is not only a matter of bits and bytes or science and technology. Part of the knowledge economy is the production of art and entertainment, and America is the World’s biggest exporter of popular culture. That culture include fashion, music, TV programming, books, movies and computer games. Americans have always been told that their most important message to the World is one of democracy, individual freedom, tolerance, concern for “the rights of man” and—more recently—the rights of women. In the last three decades, however, a U.S. media spread into formerly closed or nonexistent foreign markets, a very different set of messages has been communicated. Much of it targeted at young people.
Certainly not all, but a considerable amount of this material has disgustingly glorified pimps, gangster, drug lords, drug pushers, and hollow-eyed drug users. It has celebrated extremes of violence marked by unending car chases, over-the-top special effects and songs dripping with sexist venom. The impact of all this has been further intensified in the hard-sell, over-the-edge advertising used to promote these products. Hollywood, for example, has painted a fantasy America in which adolescent hedonism reigns supreme and authority figures—police, teachers, politicians, business leaders—are routinely satirized. Film after film, and TV shows one after another, tell young viewers what many of them hunger to hear: that adults are bumbling fools; that being “dumb and dumber” is okay; that “we do not need education”; that to be “bad” is really good; and that pleasures of the flesh, in infinite variety, is or should be nonstop. In this fantasy World, women are readily available, but they can also leap over giant buildings in a single bound (like Superman), shoot and kill (like James Bond) and practice martial arts (Like Jet Li). Extremes, we are repeatedly told, are good and restraint is bad; and, by the way, America is so rich that event its secretaries, police, clerks, and other ordinary working people live in high-rise penthouse apartments or Malibu mansions—images that set adolescent glands tingling from Taipei to Timbuktu. What few foreign critics of American’s pop culture seem to know is that ironically enough, many of the ostensibly American firms producing and disseminating the interesting and unusual of these programs either are, or were financed not by America, but by European and Japanese capital. Nor is it widely understood that shows are often made by, say, a European director with an Australian stary, a Chinese martial-arts consultant, an anime cartoonist from Japan or other foreign contributors.
In the meantime, however, the influence of these intriguing programs is so powerful that other societies fear for the survival of their own culture. Only if art threatens action, then terrorism can be advanced through art. For such a phenomenon as Aesthetic Terrorism to occur, aesthetic pursuit must become symbolic not of its own decadently solipsistic pleasures (exemplified in madness of des Esseintes in Huysmans’ Against Nature), but of action taken beyond the pale of art World confines. Terrorism is art is called the avant-garde. However, if this was once the case, it is no longer. Most avant-garde art is viewed and created today as simply an enfolding reaction to its own history. This disingenuous game-playing guarantees that the avant-garde art is viewed and created today as simply an enfolding reaction to its own history. This disingenuous game-playing guarantees that the avant-garde can no longer stimulate or even provoke. Dada and Futurist actions, which attempted to lead art out of the classroom and museum and into the streets, are simply appropriated by postmodernist facsimiles which capture the letter but little of the original essence. It hardly matters anyway. Avant-garde art has evolved into nothing more than a cultural benchwarmer, corporate tax write-off and public relations smokescreen. Art which openly espouses anti-corporate ideology is embraced as long as it hews to arbitrary standards invented by those taste-making and fortune-telling hirelings, the art critics. What could be wrong, after all, with a business World that allows people to say what they want (because it does not matter)? Aesthetic Terrorism is a term more realistically applied to the faceless regime of consumer culture than the avant-garde. The onslaught of Muzak, ad jingles, billboards, top 40 tunes, commercials, corporate logos, etcetera, all fit the terrorist dynamic of intrusion and coercion.
One almost forgets that aesthetics once implied a consensual relationship between the creators and appreciators of art. How often is it that one hears someone admitting a fondness for a media product “in spite” of oneself? How many times have you heard a slogan or rancid tune ring in your ears like a brain-eating mantra? When consumer terror’s avant-garde correlative, Pop Art, became indistinguishable from the object of its supposed social satire, it erased from big business its pejorative taint. Many of today’s avant-garde stars have emerged from or entered the business World, some enormously successful in the arcane number-juggling or speculation and commodities scams. Even freeloading on the state and private foundations is fair game only for those whose bureaucratic aptitude is matched by their shameless butt-kissing. It is not surprising that most grant recipients excel in little more than lawyerristic logorrhea and ingrained artistic timidity. Critic-centered postmodernism spawned the phrase-art hybrid of Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer in which an advertising-style slogan is combined with an implied message or visual cue (usually swiped from some old magazine). Their posture is a hip cynicism which is supposed to subvert the “thrall” of the advertising command. Kruger and Holzer play the market like skillful double-agents, boosting themselves into the public eye through clever steals from Madison Avenue behaviorist techniques yet simultaneously troweling on crypto-Marxist jive to secure the perks of critical and academic currency. Their self-promotions worked when they were at the sidelines of the establishment. However, not the social commentary grows increasingly hollow. Currently being groomed for jet-setting prominence by Soho millionairess Mary Boone, Kruger’s contribution to the Whitney Biennial in 1987, for which she is paid a handsome sum, featured nothing more than a socialite princess joke, “I Shop Therefore I Am.” Winking at and wagging the tail of establishment hierarchy is part of that I-rib-you-gently-you-pay-me-off confidence game artists have been playing the Renaissance courts.
These contemporary court artists, like many of the past centuries, smugly pretend t spit in the eye of the exploiters while allowing themselves to be pampered de-loused—and when they are not looking—de-clawed. There are, of course, those artists, usually fresh out of university, who are unaccomplished at filling out grant forms, and therefore consider themselves “subversives.” The majority of these art and rock magazines-styled rebels are playing out rebellion psychodramas to package and merchandize to consumerist sycophants. This strategy is (forgive them term) the simulacra of terrorism: the content seizes in the frozen attitudinizing of pose and goes no further. We must look to the true outsiders and not the would-be insiders for an artist truly capable of effective counter-terror against the insidious mantras of consumerist brainwash. Terror means a threat, and the outsider’s version of Aesthetic Terrorism belongs to those performances or arrangements of words and pictures that unleash the reactionary impulses of police and bourgeois artist/critic alike. The kind of art that evokes this wrath, fear and condemnation rejoices in its pagan spirit of schadenfreude which controverts the humanist piety of “enlightened victim.” Anti-social sadism rarely receives patronage, however. Outside the corrupting realm of societal handouts, the Aesthetic Terrorist—much as this definition may grate on him—is the last bastion of aesthetic purity. Operation Sun Devil is the name for a government action against computer wizards and assorted sharpies and super-smarts who were resourceful enough to figure out how to hack into the electronic files of Ma Bell. Those who know, claim the Sun Devil gambit as a terrified overreaction against intelligence by the plodding and stupid bureaucracy.
John Perry Barlow (Whole Earth Review, Fall 1990) describes a typical Sun Devil action against a teenage hacker: [A] father in New York […] opened the door at 6.00 a.m. and found a shotgun at his nose. A dozen agents entered. While one of the kept the man’s wife in a choke-hold, the rest made ready to shoot and entered the bedroom for their sleeping 14-year-old. Before leaving, they confiscated every piece of electronic equipment, including all the telephones. Fourth Amendment guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure are unheeded by the government agents who claim nerd computer hackers are terrorists and have “the ability to access and review the files of hospital patients. Furthermore, they could have added, deleted, or altered vital patient information, possibly causing life-threatening situations.” Meacorporate interests have staked claim to the entirety of cyberspace, and they are not about to tolerate the presence of digital interlopers. This may scare off some, but other pirates like the mysterious Legion of Doom and NuPrometheus league (who illegally circulated highly protected Macintosh computer source code) will rise to the challenge now that they have been provided a clearly delineated enemy to innovation, the individual, and personal freedom. It may come as a surprise to learn that a few artists are now producing work which finds itself classified as a thought crime, punishable by expulsion into a Siberia of non-distribution, and in some cases by litigation and imprisonment. Pure magazine, from Chicago, a xeroxed vehicle which extols child torture, murder, and extreme misogyny, tweaked too many civic-minded noses, and its editor, Peter Sotos, was tailed for nine months and underwent a lengthy trial process in which he was finally convicted for possession of some very illegal magazine. Soto’s case was the first successfully prosecuted new Illinois state law, enacted under the influence of the Meese Commission Report on pornography, an example of First Amendment revisionism par excellence.
Soto’s case is particularly disquieting because it proves that prison is in the offing for simple possession of controversial material. No doubt this legal precedent was established to open the doors for future roundups of other thought criminals. The expertly managed Gulf War (massacre), in which networks censored war casualty footage that might provoke a “Vietnam War syndrome,” provides a small window into the dynamics of mass control to come. Any thoughtful individual is undeniably malnourished by the current information diet. Whether this is due to a direct conspiracy of State or by design of the oligarchic marketplace matters little. However, it has upped the ante for a new American Samizdat in which “disreputable,” “crazy,” “hateful,” or “dangerous” topics are broached by individuals or small, autonomous groups that are not compromised or swayed by institutional priorities. Can “offensive interests become the political crime of future? Apparently so. When looking at the previous sentences one can compare and see that musicians have been arrested for obscene lyrics, anarchist individuals have been collared for burning the flag; parents have been arrested for photographing their toddlers in their birthday suits; painter and performer Joe Coleman was arrested in Boston for operating an “infernal machine” and in New York for killing a rat: museum curators were threatened with arrest for hanging homoerotic photos; G.G. Allian was jailed for some consensual sadomasochism with a girlfriend; the FBI have been “monitoring” certain groups who practice unorthodox pleasures of the flesh; and on and on. Even many of the books you read have come under widely publicized attack by authors such as Carl A. Raschke who advocated the revocation of First Amendment rights from those who spread “cultural terrorism.” Even globalization could be considered cultural terrorism.
It has become increasingly obvious that the aesthetic terrorist hobgoblins are nothing more than symbolic scapegoats to divert attention away from the real issues. For Americans, fear is not another form of awareness, it is just another form of gossip. As Charles Manson has stated, true subversive terror can only be actualized by turning off the TV sets. Until then, aesthetic terrorism will be orchestrated by those already in command against insubstantial or non-existent villains. And in the future, while the dumb show of bohemianism plays itself out in the cookie cutter shape of the politically correct martyr/victim, aesthetic terrorism will be orchestrated by those already in command against insubstantial or non-existent villains. And in the future, while the dumb show of bohemianism plays itself out in the cookie cutter shape of the politically correct martyr/victim, aesthetic terrorists will not involve themselves in the dubious rewards of celebrity. The best of them will work alone, already a part of the enemy camp, and in a chameleon-like stye master the fifth-column algorithms to subvert the ancient regime. We will not know them by name but their compensation will be to affect the outcome of the planet. Until then, there is a lot of work to be done. Under what conditions will cooperation emerge in a World of egoists without central authority? This question has intrigued people for a long time. And for good reason. We all know that people are not angels, and that they tend to look after themselves and their own first. Yet we also know that cooperation does occur and that our civilization is based upon it. However, in situations where each individual has an incentive to be selfish, how can cooperation ever develop? The answer each of us gives to this question has a fundamental effect on how we think and act in our social, political, and economic relations with others. And the answers that others give have a great effect on how ready they will be to cooperate with us.
The most famous answer was given over three hundred years ago by Thomas Hobbes. It was pessimistic. He argued that before governments existed, the state of nature was dominated by the problem of selfish individuals who competed on such ruthless terms that life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes 1651/1962, p. 100). In his view, cooperation could not develop without a central authority, and consequently a strong government was necessary. Ever since, arguments about the proper scope of government have often focused on whether one could, or could not, expect cooperation to emerge in a particular domain if there were not an authority to police situation. Today nations interact without central authority. Therefore the requirements for the emergence of cooperation have relevance to many of the central issues of international politics. The most important problem is the security dilemma: nations often seek their own security through means which challenge the security of others. This problem arises in such areas as escalation of local conflicts and arms races. Related problems occur in international relations in the form of competition with alliances, tariff negotiations, and communal conflict places like Cyprus. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has presented the United States of American with a typical dilemma of choice. If the United States of American continued business as usual, Russian might be encouraged to try other forms of noncooperative behavior later one. On the other hand, any substantial lessening of United States of America’s cooperation risks some form of retaliation, which could then set off counter-retaliation, setting up a pattern of mutual hostility that could be difficult to end. Much of the domestic debate about international policy is concerned with problems of just this type. And properly so, since these are hard choices.
In everyday life, if they never invite us over in return, we may ask ourselves how many times we will invite acquaintances for dinner. An executive in an organization does favors for another executive in order to get favors in exchange. A journalist who has received a leaked news story gives favorable coverage to the source in the hope that further leaks will be forthcoming. A business firm in an industry with only one other major company charges high prices with expectation that the other firm will also maintain high prices—to their mutual advantage and at the expense of the consumer. For me, a typical case of the emergence of cooperation is the development of patterns of behavior in a legislative body of the United States Senate. Each senator has an incentive to appear effective to his or her constituents, even at the expense of conflicting with other senators who are trying to appear effective to their constituents. However, this is hardly a situation of completely opposing interests, a zero-sum game. On the contrary, there are many opportunities for mutually rewarding activities by two senators. These mutually rewarding actions have led to the creation of an elaborate set of norms, or folkways, in the Senate. Among the most important of these is the norm of reciprocity—a folkway which involves helping out a colleague and getting repaid in kind. It includes vote trading but extends to so many types of mutually rewarding behavior that “it is not an exaggeration to say that reciprocity is a way of life in the Senate” (Matthews 1960, p. 100; see also Mayhew 1975). Washington was not always like this. Early observers saw the members of the Washington community as quite unscrupulous, unreliable, and characterized by “falsehood, deceit, treachery” (Smith 1906, p. 190). In the 1980s the practice of reciprocity is well established. Even the significant changes in the Senate over the last two decades, tending toward more decentralization, more openness, and more equal distribution of power, have come without abating the folkway of reciprocity.
As will be seen, it is not necessary to assume that senators are more honest, more generous, or more public-spirited than in earlier years to explain how cooperation based on reciprocity has emerged or proved stable. The emergence of cooperation can be explained as a consequence of individual senators pursuing their own interest. We are investigating how individual pursuing their own interests will act, followed by an analysis of what effects this will have for the system as a whole. Put another way, the approach is to make some assumptions about individual motives and then deduce consequences for the behavior of the entire system. The case of the U.S. Senate is a good example, but the same style of reasoning can be applied to other settings. The object of this enterprise is to develop a theory of cooperation that can be used to discover what is necessary for cooperation to emerge. By understanding the conditions that allow it to emerge, appropriate actions can be taken to foster the development of cooperation in a specific setting. The Cooperation Theory that is presented here is based upon an investigation of individuals who pursue their own self-interest without the assistance of a central authority to force them to cooperate with each other. The reason for assuming self-interest is that it allows an examination of the difficult case in which cooperation is not completely based upon a concern for other or upon the welfare of the group as a whole. It must, however, be stressed that this assumption is actually much less restrictive than it appears. If a sister is concerned for the welfare of her brother, the sister’s self-interest can be thought of as including (among many other things) this concern for the welfare of her brother. However, this does not necessarily eliminate all potential for conflict between sister and brother.
Likewise a nation may act in part out of regard for the interests of its friends, but this regard does not mean that even friendly countries are always able to cooperate for their mutual benefit. So the assumption of self-interest is really just an assumption that concern for others does not completely solve the problem of when to cooperate with them and when not to. A good example of the fundamental problem of cooperation is the case where two industrial nations have erected trade barriers to each other’s exports. If barriers were eliminated, because of the mutual advantages of free trade, both countries would be better off. However, if either country were to unilaterally eliminate its barriers, it would find itself facing terms of trade that hurt its own economy. In fact, whatever one country does, the other country is better off retaining its own trade barriers. Therefore, the problem is that each country has an incentive to retain trade barriers, leading to a worse outcome than would have been possible had both countries cooperated with each other. This basic problem occurs when the pursuit of self-interest by each leads to a poor outcome for all. To make headway in understanding the vast array of specific situations which have this property, a way is needed to represent what is common to these situations without becoming bogged down in the details unique to each. Fortunately, there is such a representation available: the famous Prisoner’s Dilemma game. In the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, there are two players. Each has two choices, namely cooperate of defect. Each must make the choice without knowing what the other will do. No matter what the other does, defection yield a higher payoff than cooperation. If both defect, the dilemma is that both do worse than if both had cooperated. Cases typically result in one of four possible outcomes in the matrix. If both players cooperate, both do fairly well. Both get a reward for mutual cooperation.
However, if one player cooperates but the other defects, the defecting play get the temptation to defect, while the cooperating players gets the sucker’s payoff. If both defect, both get the punishment for mutual defection. What would you do in such a situation? That is basically the gamble of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is simply an abstract formulation of some very common and very interesting situations in which what is best for each person individually leads to mutual defection, whereas everyone would have been better off with mutual cooperation. The definition of Prisoner’s Dilemma requires that several relationships hold among the four different potential outcomes. The second part of the definition of the Prisoner’s Dilemma is that the players cannot get out of their dilemma by taking turns exploiting each other. This assumption means that an even chance of exploitation and being exploited is not as good an outcome for a player as mutual cooperation. It is therefore assumed that the reward for mutual cooperation is greater than the average temptation and the sucker’s payoff. This assumption, together with the rank ordering of the four payoffs, defines the Prisoner’s Dilemma. We have come back to the point where we began, where values take the place of good and evil. However, now we have made at least a hasty tour of the intellectual experiences connected with modern politics that made such a response compelling. How it looked to thoughtful Germans is most revealingly expressed in a famous passage by Max Weber, about God science and the irrational: Finally, although a naïve optimism may have celebrated science—that is, the technique of the mastery of life founded on science—as the path which would lead to happiness, I believe I can leave this entire question aside in light of the annihilating critique which Nietzsche has made of “the last men” who “have discovered happiness.” Who, then, still believes in this with the exception of a few big babies in university chairs or in editorial offices?
So penetrating and well informed an observer as Weber could say in 1919 that the scientific spirit at the heart of Western democracy was dead for all serious men and that Nietzsche had killed it, or had at least given it the coup de grace. The presentation of “the last man” in Thus Spake Zarathusta was so decisive that the old-style Enlightenment rationalism need not even be discussed anymore; and, Weber implies, all future discussion or study must proceed with the certainty that the perspective was a “naïve” failure. Reason cannot establish values, and its belief that it can is the stupidest and most pernicious illusion. This means, simply, that almost all Americans at that time, thinking American in particular, were “big babies” and remained so, long after the Continent had grown up. One need only think of John Dewey to recognize that he fits Weber’s description to a T, and then remember what his influence here once was. And not only Dewey, but everyone from the beginning of our regime, especially those who said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” shared the rationalist dream. Weber’s statement is so important because he made as much as more than anyone brought us into contact with the most advanced Continental criticisms of liberal democracy, and was the intermediary between Nietzsche and us Americans who were the most recalcitrant to one’s insight, perhaps because according to it we represent the worst or most hopeless and are therefore loath to see ourselves in that mirror. A very dark view of the future has been superimposed on our incorrigible optimism. We are children playing with adult toys. They have proved too much for us to handle. However, in our defense, we are probably not the only ones for whom they are too much. Perhaps you have caught yourself kissing another person as you first saw kissing in the movies or on television. My children have a phrase to describe this: “television kiss.”
It is fortunate for them that they have noted that there are television kisses and other kinds, because it will help protect them from absorbing it, taking it into themselves where it will come back out ten years, like a replay. Most of us did not make that distinction as we sat in darkened rooms or theaters as children. Since we did not see all that much real kissing, the media kiss became our image of kissing. We found ourselves producing that model of kiss later in life. I was fourteen-year-old when I tried to kiss for the first time. I imitated Brad Pitt’s kiss, but I did not feel it. Only later did I realize that perhaps Brad Pitt did not feel it either; he was merely kissing the way the director said he should. So there I was imitating a kiss that was never real in the first place, worried that there might be something wrong with me for lacking the appropriate feeling and failing to obtain the appropriate response. The journalist Jane Margold was driving home one night in Berkeley with her brother, Harlan. Suddenly a man crawled into the street right in front of them. They screeched to a stop and then, stunned, just sat there for a moment. They finally got out and cautiously went up to the man to find out that he had been stabbed several times in his upper body, was bleeding profusely and was in danger of dying right there. The man’s assailant was nowhere to be seen. In describing the event to me, Jane said that she instantly flipped into a media version of herself. She had never faced anything like it before and had no direct feelings. Instead, playing through her mind were images of similar events she had seen on television or in films. The media superseded her own responses, even to the point of removing her from the event. She was there, but sue did not experience herself as being there. She was seeing the event, but between her and it, floating in her mind, was an image of an implanted reality which would not get out of the way. Jane thought such thoughts as: “This is real; there is a wounded man lying here in from of me, bleeding to death, yet I have no feeling. It seems like a movie.”
In fact, it was they very movielike quality that eventually got her into action. Without feeling, she performed mechanical acts. She and her brother comforted the man, directed traffic, dispatched people to summon the police and an ambulance. She became extremely efficient, but throughout, she had the sense of performing a script. Apart from their economic implications, technologies create the ways in which people perceive reality, and such ways are the key to understanding diverse forms of social and mental life. As individual express their life, so they are. There are three stages in the development of technology: the age of technology of chance, the age of technology of the artisan, the age of technology of the technician. Cultures may be classified into three types: tool-using cultures, technocracies, and technopolies. At the present time, each type may be found somewhere on the planet, although the first is rapidly disappearing: we must travel to exotic places to find a tool-using culture. If we do, it is well to go armed with the knowledge that, until the seventeenth century, all cultures were tool-users. There was, of course, considerable variation from one culture to another in the tools that were available. Some had only spears and cooking utensils. Some had water mills and coal- and horsepower. However, the main characteristic of all tool-using cultures is that their tools were largely invented to do two things: to solve specific and urgent problems of physical life, such as in the use of waterpower, windmills, and the heavy-wheeled plow; or to serve the symbolic World of art, politics, myth, ritual, and religion, as in the construction of castles and cathedrals and the development of the mechanical clock. In either case, tools did not attack (or, more precisely, were not intended to attack) the dignity and integrity of the culture into which they were introduced.
With some exceptions, tools did not prevent people from believing in their traditions, in their God, in their politics, in their methods of education, or in the legitimacy of their social organization. These beliefs, in fact, directed the invention of tools and limited the uses to which they were put. Even in the case of military technology, spiritual ideas and social customs acted as controlling forces. It is well known, for example, that the uses of the sword by samurai warriors were meticulously governed by a set of ideals known as Bushido, or the Way of the warrior. The rules and rituals specificizing when, where, and how the warrior must use either his two swords (the katana, or long sword, and the wakizashi, or short sword) were precise, tied closely to the concept of honor, and included the requirement that the warrior commit seppuku or hara-kiri should his honor be compromised. This sort of governance of military technology was not unknow in the Western World. The use of the lethal crossbow was prohibited, under threat of anathema, by Pope Innocent II in the early twelfth century. The weapon was judged to be “hateful to God” and therefore could not be used against Christians. That it could be used against Muslims and other infidels does not invalidate the point that in a tool-using culture technology is not seen as autonomous, and is subject to the jurisdiction of some binding social or religious system. This is why power, which to a large extent defines us as individuals and as nations, is itself being redefined. A clue to this redefinition emerges when we look more closely at some of the unrelated changes. For we discover that they are not as random as they seem. Whether it is Japan’s meteoric rise, GM’s impressive rebound, or the American doctor’s fall from grace, a single common thread unites them.
Take the punctured power of the god-in-a-white coat. Throughout the heyday of doctor-dominance in America, physicians kept a tight choke-hold on medical knowledge. Prescriptions were written in Latin, providing the profession with a semi-secret code, as it were, which kept most patients in ignorance. Medical journals and texts were restricted to professional readers. Medical conferences were closed to the laity. Doctors controlled medical-school curricula and enrollments. Contrast this with the situation today, when patients have astonishing access to medical knowledge. With a personal computer and a WiFi, anyone from home can access data bases like Index Medicus, and obtain scientific papers on everything from Addison’s disease to zygomycosis, and, in fact, collect more information about a specific aliment or treatment than the ordinary doctor has time to read. Copies of the 2,354-page book knows as the PDR or Physicians’ Desk Reference are also readily available to anyone. Once a week on the Lifetime cable network, any televiewer can watch twelve uninterrupted hours of highly technical television programming designed specifically to educate doctors. Many of these programs carry a disclaimer to the effect that “some of this material may not be suited toa general audience.” However, that is for the viewer to decide. The rest of the week, hardly a single newscast is aired in America without a medical story or segment. A video version of the material from the Journal of the American Medical Association is now broadcast by three hundred stations on Thursday nights. The press reports on medical malpractice cases. Inexpensive paperbacks tell ordinary readers what drug side effect to watch for, what drugs not to mix, how to raise or lower cholesterol levels through diet. In addition, major medical breakthroughs, even if television news almost before the M.S. has even taken his subscription copy of journal out of the in-box. In short, the knowledge monopoly of the medical profession has been thoroughly smashed. And the doctor is no longer a god.
This case of the dethroned doctor is, however, only one small example of a more general process changing the entire relationship of knowledge to power in the high-tech nations. In many other fields, too, closely held specialists’ knowledge is slipping out of control and reaching ordinary citizens. Similarly, inside major corporations, employees are winning access to knowledge once monopolized by management. And as knowledge is redistributed, so, too, is the power based on it. A human is a “beast” and purifies one’s heart, and behold, God holds one by the hand. That is not a kind of humans. Purity of heart is a state of being. A man is not pure in kind, but one is able to be or become pure, rather one is only essentially pure when one has become pure, and even than one does not thereby belong to a kind of humans. The “wicked,” that is, the bad, are not contrasted with good humans. The good is to draw near Hod. One does not say that those near to God are good. However, one does call the bas those who are far from God. In the language of modern thought that means that there are humans who have no share in existence, but there are no humans who possess existence. Existence cannot be possessed, but only shared in. One does not rest in the lap of existence, but one draws near to it. Nearness is nothing but such a drawing and coming near continually and as long as the human person lives. The dynamic of fairness and nearness is broken by death when it breaks the life of the person. With death there vanished the heart, that inwardness of humanity, out of which arises the pictures of the imagination, and which rises up in defiance, but which can also be purified. Separate souls vanish, separation vanished. Time which has been lived by the soul vanished with the soul, we know of no duration in time. Only the rock in which the heart is concealed, only the rock of human hearts does not vanish. For it does not stand in time. The time of the World disappears before eternity, but existing humans die into eternity as into the perfect existence.
CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH
Plumas Lake, CA |
Now Selling!
Cresleigh Meadows is now selling! Found just north of Feather River Boulevard, Cresleigh Meadows is home of the largest neighborhood in Plumas Ranch as well as the popular Bear River Park. With four floor plans available, ranging from approximately 2,000 – 3,500 square feet offering, three to five bedrooms, we are certain you will find the home that fits your needs and lifestyle.
Popular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes. Multi-generational living options also available in select homes.
Homeowners will love the convenient commuter access to nearby Sacramento and Yuba City.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Go. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/
I Have Enough Trouble Conjuring Myself Out of Bed in the Morning
Returning from her global trip, Mrs. Winchester arrived in San Francisco, California USA and finding this area seldom subject to thunderstorms, she purchased an unfinished farmhouse four miles west of San Jose. She hired an architect, a foreman and an army of carpenters and work began; architect and foremen quit the first day. The story of their fate was told by one generation to another, but in course of ages the natural cause, well known to the unfortunates at times of the calamity, was lost to view, and the story of the disaster began to assume supernatural features. There was a legend that Mrs. Winchester’s estate contains not only her mansion, but village of Victorian cottages. In the center of the hundred of acres of land was a fountain guarded by spirits, fairies, elves, and leprechawns, who guarded the Winchester Estate. Things went well, the fairies and the people on the estate sharing the benefits of Mrs. Winchester’s farmland, which included orchards of apricots, plums, and walnut trees to supplement Mrs. Winchester’s income. Mrs. Winchester’s financial resources were virtually unlimited; upon her husband’s death, she received $20,000,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $692,780,722.89) in cash and 777 shares of stock in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Upon her mother-in-law’s death in 1897, Mrs. Winchester received 2,000 more shared, which meant she owned under fifty percent of the company’s capital stock. This provided her with an income of $1,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $34,639.04) a day—back in the days before income taxes. The combination of her wealth and her eccentric building project gave rise to many rumors in the local community. It was the biggest house that most people had ever seen in their lives with, at the time, over 500 rooms, and 125,000 square feet, four stories high, and a nine-story observation tower.
On the Winchester Estate, there lived two woodcutters; Albert Jennings Fountain and Louis Le Prince. At the time of which I am speaking, Albert was an old man; and Louis, his apprentice, was a lad of twenty years. Every day they went together to a forest situated about a mile from the estate, which was still on Mrs. Winchester’s vast landholdings. On the way to that forest there used to be a wide lake to cross; and there was a boat. Albert and Louis were on their way home, one very cold evening, when a great rain storm overtook them. They reached the boat; and they found that the boatman had gone away, leaving the boat on the other side of the lake. It was no day for swimming; and the woodcutters took shelter in a cottage in the forest. There was a fire place in the cottage and a couple of bedrooms. At first they did not feel cold, but they made a fire anyway. They fastened the door, and lay down to rest with the blankets over them. They thought the storm would be over soon. Albert almost immediately fell asleep; but the boy, Louis, lay awake a long time, listening to the awful wind, and the continual slashing of the rain against the door. The lake was roaring; and the cottage made creaking noises. It was a terrible storm; and the air was every moment becoming colder, even though the fire was blazing in the fireplace; and Louis shivered under his blankets. However, at last, in spite of the cold, he too fell asleep. The door to the cottage was forced open; and, by the moonlit rain, he saw a woman in the room—a woman in all white. She was bending above Albert, and blowing her breath upon him—and her breath was like a bright white mist. Almost in the same moment she turned to Louis, and stopped over hum. He tried to cry out, but found that he could not utter any sound.
The white woman bent down over him, lower and lower, until her face almost touched him; and he saw that she was very beautiful—though her eyes made him afraid. For a little time she continued to look at him—then she smiled, and she whispered: “I intended to treat you like the other man. However, I cannot help feeling some pity for you—because you are so young. You are a pretty boy, Louis; and I will not hurt you now. However, if you ever tell anybody—even Mrs. Winchester—about what you have seen this night, I shall know it; and then you will regret it. Remember what I say!” With these words, she turned from him, and passed through the doorway. Then he found himself able to move; and he sprang up, and looked out. However, the woman was nowhere to be seen; and the rain was pouring hard. Louis closed the door, and secured it by fixing several billets of wood against it. He wondered if the wind had blown it open—he though that he might have been only dreaming, and might have mistaken the gleam of the moonlit rain in the doorway for the figure of a white woman: but he could not be sure. He called Albert, and was frightened because the old man did not answer. He put out his hand in the dark, and touched Albert’s face, and found that it was ice! Albert was stark and dead…by dawn the storm was over; and the boatman returned to his station, a little after sunrise, he found Louis lying senseless beside the frozen body of Albert. Louis was promptly care for, and soon came to himself; but he remained a long time ill from the effects of the cold of that terrible night. He had been greatly frightened also by the old man’s death; but he said nothing about the vision of the woman in white.
As soon as he got well again, he returned to his calling—going alone every morning to the forest, and coming back at nightfall with bundles of wood for Mrs. Winchester’s Hall of Fires. Because of the mansion’s immense size, it contained forty-seven fireplaces and seventeen chimney. One rambling section in particular, the Hall of Fire, was designed to produce as much heat as possible—perhaps to ease Mrs. Winchester’s extreme arthritis. In addition to many widows that let the sunlight stream through, the three adjoining rooms have four fireplaces and three hot air registers from the coal furnace in the basement. One evening, in December of the following year, as Louis was on his way to the Winchester mansion, he overtook a girl who happened to be travelling by the same road. She was a tall, slim young lady, very good-looking; and she answered Louis’s greeting in a voice as pleasant to the ear as the voice of a song-bird. Then he walked beside her; and they began to talk. The girl said her name was Theodosia Alston; that she had lately lost both her parents; and that she was going to visit Mrs. Winchester for tea, who might help her to find a situation as a servant. Albert soon felt charmed by this unusual girl; and the more that he looked at her, the more beautiful she appeared to be. He asked her whether she was yet betrothed; and she answered, laughingly, that she was free. Then, in turn, she asked Louis whether he was married, or pledged to marry; and he told her that, although he had only a windowed mother to support, the question of an “honourable daughter-in-law” had not yet been considered, as he was very young. After these confidences, they walked on for a long while without speaking; but you know the saying, “When the wish is there, the eyes can say as much as the mouth.”
By the time they reached the village, they had become very much pleased with each other; and then Louis asked Theodosia to rest awhile in his cottage on the estate. After some shy hesitation, she went there with him; and his mother made her welcome, and prepared a warm meal for her. Theodosia behaved so nicely that Louis’s mother took a sudden fancy to her, and persuaded her to speak to Mrs. Winchester about a job in the mansion. And the natural end of the matter was that Mrs. Winchester was very pleased with Theodosia and hired her right away. Later on Louis and Theodosia were married. She proved a very good maid and daughter-in-law. When Louis’s mother came to die—some two years later—her last words of affection and praise for the wife of her son. And Theodosia bore Louis thirteen children, boys and girls—handsome children all of them, and very fair of the skin. Mrs. Winchester’s staff thought Theodosia a wonderful person, by nature different from themselves. Most of the women on the estate aged early; but Theodosia, even after having become the mother of thirteen children, looked as young and fresh as on the day when she had first come to the estate. One night, after the children had gone to sleep, Theodosia was sewing by the light of Tiffany lamp; and Louis, watching her said: “To see you sewing there, with the light on your face, makes me thin of a strange thing that happened when I was a lad of twenty. I then saw somebody as beautiful and white as you are now—indeed, she was very like you.” Without lifting her eyes from her work, Theodosia responded: “Tell me about her…Where did you see her?” Then Louis told her about terrible night in the Victorian cottage in the forest—and about the White Woman that had stopped above him, smiling and whispering—and about the silent death of Albert.
And Louis said: “Asleep or awake, that was the only time that I saw a being as beautiful as you. Of course, she was not a human being; and I was afraid of her—very much afraid—but she was so white! Indeed, I have never been sure whether it was a dream that I saw, or the Ghost Woman of the Winchester. Theodosia flung down her sewing, and arose, and bowed above Louis where he sat, and shrieked into his face: “It was I-I-I! Theodosia it was! And I told you then that you would regret this if you ever said one word about it! But for those children asleep there, I would curse you right this moment! And now you had better take very, very good care of them; for if every they have reason to complain of you, I will treat you as you deserve!” Even as she screamed, her voice became thin, like a crying of winds—then she melted into a bright white mist that spired to the roof-beams, and shuddered away through a chimney. Never again was she seen. Soon after there were reports of graves being opened, and bodies stolen. Reports of rash cattle mutilations, and killing of two hundred dogs, cats, and pigs in that area. When Louis went back to the cottage, he found a fire containing animal bones, along with a crude Satanic altar, as a group of youth were interrupted conducting a conjuring spell. There were Satanic pentagrams on the walls. Some years later, a woman at the Winchester mansion believed that another desired to steal the butter she had just churned, flew in a passion, assaulted her and threw her down, breaking her arm in the fall. The woman was burnt, not because she was a witch, but in the belief that the real servant had been taken away and a fairy changeling substituted in her place; when the latter was subjected to the fire it would disappear, and the servant would be restored. Thus the underlying motive was kindness, but on, how terribly mistaken!
By chance there came onto the Estate an angel who had been sent from Heaven to observe the servants of the Winchester mansion and note their piety. In the garb and likeness of a man, weary and footsore with travel, the angel spied the castle (mansion) from the hills above the lake, came down, and boldly took a night’s lodging in Mrs. Winchester’s mansion. Mrs. Winchester asked him, “Where would you like to sleep, beautiful creature?” The angel pointed to a spot nearby the parlor, told Mrs. Winchester he would be happy there and to build and prosper; then, as the awe-stricken widow kneeled before him, his clothing became white and shining, wings appeared on his shoulders, he rose into the air and vanished. And one night, on a day of the thunder and lighting and big rain there did a ghost come into Mrs. Winchester’s mansion. Objects were thrown through the air and furniture moved around by its. A heavy oak wardrobe moved six feet across the room. Some knocking and scratching noises were heard in the house, and again objects were seen to fly through the rooms for no apparent reason. It was observed that the object sometimes travelled in a rectangular course which is physically impossible. These events grew even more complicated, and things began to appear and disappear in both closed rooms and containers. Mrs. Winchester was very annoyed as her bed started levitating. A lady came to her that night while she was elevated, she was dressed in white, with a wreath on her head, and said Mrs. Winchester was in danger. She then told the maid, “If you receive this woman’s pension-book without taking off her clothes and cleaning them, and putting out her bed and cleaning up the house, you will receive a curse. The ravings of this creature were accepted as gospel truth.
A torrent of rain fell from the sky, and drowned several of the farmers, and a lake was formed over the spot where they stood when the curse was pronounced. And sometimes, they say, when the mansion is quite still, one may hear the groans of the lost souls that where once chained at the bottom. A lot of supernatural activity happened on the estate than many cannot explain. Mrs. Winchester may have been trying to confuse evil spirits. There were no budget ceilings or deadlines to meet. This resulted in many of the 600 rooms, and features being dismantled, built around, or sealed over. Some rooms were remodeled many times. However, because so many rooms were redone, and astounding 160 rooms still remain today. This naturally resulted in some peculiar effects, such as stairs that lead to the ceiling, doors that ho nowhere and that open onto walls, and chimneys that stop just short of the roof! Mrs. Winchester once had some silverware stolen and she suspected a young mad who worked for her and who already had quite a bad reputation. Mrs. Winchester turned to a spiritist for help. This man was both a clairvoyant and a medium, and he also possessed the remarkable powers of materialization and dematerialization. This spiritist went with the woman into the back yard of her house and there put himself into a trance. Suddenly they were disturbed by a strange noise from the roof of the house, and then the stolen silverware fell from the roof on to a pile of hay beside the house. Mrs. Winchester had no idea how this was accomplished. One might be able to find a natural explanation for this occurrence, as for example someone throwing the stolen articles out of the skylight at that moment. It could not have been the maid though, for she had already been given notice. However, it could have been one of the other employees with whom she had been friendly, and who may have received the stolen articles from her.
The word “divine” is derived from the Latin divinus, meaning “divinely” inspired and pertaining to a deity (divus).” Thus a diviner is one who practices divination. One processes to predict future events or to reveal occult things by supernatural means. Divination is a specialized for of magic. In magic, demonic agencies are resorted for performing superhuman feats. In divination, magic is used to foresee the future. Divination relates to magic as prophecy relates to miracle. Both divination and prophecy imply special knowledge. In divination it is unclear if it is godly or demonic. However, magic is supposed to be Satan’s imitation of God’s miracles. Genuine fortune-telling or divination assumes the existence of superhuman spiritual beings. It also assumes that these beings possess knowledge which humans do not have and that they are willing, upon certain conditions that are familiar to diviners, to transmit this information to humans. In ancient times, the convictions prevailed widely that not only oracles but omens of all types were given to humans by the gods. In the cases of supernatural invention, the various forms of fortune-telling were real divinatory phenomena. Divination supposedly invites the activity of demon spirits because it seeks secret knowledge. Rock music has an incessant throbbing beat, the same beat that people in primitive cultures use in their demonic rites and dances. If the beat is monotonous enough it can induce a state of hypnosis. The fundamentalists and their allies attributed powers to rock music that were inherently supernatural, sorcery wrapped in a thin veil of pseudoscientific gibberish. Since its inception by British bands Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, heavy metal has always had a heady whiff of brimstone about it. As the genre took off, and mental bands have been filling stadiums with fans, the Devil increasingly symbolized their bombastic form of rebellion.
Satan translated from Hebrew means “accuser” or “adversary,” and that was precisely the role Satan played in Judaic angelology before the Persian influences. Satan was at the time, at the very most, slightly rebellious and resentful, perhaps wishing to work evil but forces to promote good due to the overriding influence of God. His function was to accuse humans before God, expose their infidelity, and then bring about their punishment—but only under the auspices of God Himself. To some, Satan symbolizes man’s evil inclinations. The sign of the devil’s horns—index and little fingers extended from a fist—replaced the peace sign as youth culture’s salute. Many may not know this, but AC/DC stands for “Away from Christ/the Devil Comes,” while KISS is “Kids in the Service of Satan.” Many artists are accused of producing backward, or “back-masking,” music on records. The back-masking myth contends that messages recorded backwards and camouflaged with music can enter a person’s mind without them knowing it, as a subliminal form of brainwashing. Like the hypnotic effects of the “druid beat,” many considered it as sorcery. In 1986, evangelist Jim Brown of Ohio led 75 young people in the mass burning of records containing the theme tune to Mr Ed, the popular TV comedy show about a talking horse. If the song “A Horse is a Horse” was played backwards, Mr. Brown explained, the message “Someone sung this song for Satan” could be heard. Some evangelist believe that all rock music was “a carefully masterminded plan instigated by Satan himself.” However, in dealing in the extraordinary phenomena that undulate between the natural and the supernatural, the physical and superphysical, some discount any theory that postulates evil supernaturalism. Yet, to be fully meaningful, the scientific studies in parapsychology must take into consideration the reality of the spirit World of evil (Satan and demons).
To limit the scientific to the natural plane of existence is to omit some of the data responsible for certain natural effects. The result of such study is a tendency to explain away rather than objectively explain supernatural events and to end up with learned theories that ignore part of the evidence. This is where current parapsychological studies stand. They are, however, exceedingly valuable in focusing scientific interest on the supernatural realities behind occultism. If they would recognize the influence of evil supernaturalism in psychic activities, they could advance to great achievements. As an ingredient of idol worship, magic goes back to antiquity. By virtue of their multiplicity and limited knowledge and power, the gods (demons) of paganism are incapable of establishing stability and security in society. This deficiency forced both gods and men to make use of magic—an inactive power independent of god and men, but which could be activized by the assistance of incantations and rituals in order to accomplish supernatural deeds. Magic—like divination—is the divinely forbidden art of bringing about results beyond human power by recourse to superhuman spirit agencies (Satan and demons). In the widest sense of this definition, divination is but a species of magic employed as a means of securing secret and illegitimate knowledge, especially of the future. If magic is genuine and not ere deception or hocus-pocus, it must be personal. Living, intelligent spirit beings become the real agents. Humans, by incantations and ceremonies, actually influence and even control these spirit agents. The activity of such superphysical agents of evil produces the extrasensory phenomena of magic, that is, occurrences the transcend the normal operation of physical law and the perception of human’s five senses. This is how the Winchester Mystery House became known as “the house built by the spirits.”
The Winchester Mystery House is open all weekend until 5PM! Ghostly tales are bountiful at Sarah Winchester’s Mystery House. Come explore the beautiful & bizarre Winchester Estate.
The Cathedral of the Fallen Angel
During a Connecticut thunderstorm, Mrs. Winchester’s husband and baby lost their lives in a tragic fire. The distracted widow turned to spiritualism and was advised to take a trip around the World. This she did, visiting mediums, spiritualists and wizards in Europe and India. Foretelling her future, one seer warned her of all the countless thousands of departed souls slain by her husband’s rifles; she was told to plan a castle and continue its building indefinitely because as long as it was under construction she would live; cessation would prove immediately fatal. In the afternoon of Tuesday, July 10, 1888, the inhabitants of Santa Clara Valley, were greatly excited by the sudden appearance, far out in the fields, of a mansion where none was known to exist. The people of the town were farmers and knew the area well. The day before, they had been out on their horses and rode over the spot where the unusual mansion appeared, and where certain that the locality was the best farmland in the valley. And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, for the day was clear and the mansion could be seen as plainly as they saw the hills to the south. It was massive. The estate was surrounded by a six-foot hedge, densely wooded; here and there were deep shadows in its sides indicating glens heavily covered with undergrowth and grasses. At one end the mansion rose almost precipitously from the from the land; at the other, the declivity was gradual; the thick forest of the estate gave way to smaller trees, these to shrubs; these to green meadows that finally melted into the valley. It was patrolled by a pack of ferocious hellhounds, plus, of course, Mrs. Winchester’s staff of armed bodyguards. Hundreds of people from all over California came to investigate; when, as they neared the spot, the beautiful but bizarre mansion became dim in outline, less vivid in color, and at last vanished entirely, leaving the wonder-stricken farmers to return, fully convinced that for the first time in their lives they had really seen this enchanted mansion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
For once there was a topic of conversation that would outlast the day, and the enchanted Winchester mansion passed from lip to lip, both story and the mansion grew in size till the latter was little less than a continent, contain a labyrinth mansion with towers and steeples, stupendous mountain range views, fertile valleys, and wide spreading plains; while the former was limited only be the patience of the listener, and embraced the personal experience, conclusions, reflections, and observations of every woman, man, and child in the valley who had been fortunate enough to see the mansion, hear of it, or tell where it had been seen elsewhere. This is the invariable history of its appearance. No one had ever been able to come close to its grounds, but it had been so often seen on the west coast, that a doubt of its existence, if expressed in the company of farmers, will at once establish for the sceptic a reputation for balderdash of the common affairs of every-day life. In Santa Clara, for instance, the Winchester mansion had been seen by hundreds of people, while many more could testify to its appearance near San Francisco. In San Jose, all the population saw it a few years ago, and shortly before, the villagers of Oakland, saw it, if not by themselves, at least by some of their friends. The Enchanted Winchester mansion, it should be stated that its resemblance to a Victorian/Gothic castle is sometimes very close, and shows that the “enchanter” who has it under a spell knows her business, and is determined to keep her mansion for herself changes its appearance as well as its location in order that her property may not be recognized nor appropriated. At night, passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. Mrs. Winchester’s arrival was a sensational event. They talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word, gossip no one claimed to like-but everyone enjoyed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
Talk begat rumor and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose behind the six-foot hedge of Llanada Villa, the rumors grew to established legend. Populations said it just appeared out of nowhere two years ago. Sure two twins could not be like her, and when it appeared in Santa Clara, the mansion would move around to different locations. It had also appeared in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, but it went no further than the Bay Area. Concerning Mrs. Winchester’s mansion, legendary authorities differ on many material points. Some believed that its architecture was due to geometry or some other enchantment, while opponents of this materialistic view were inclined to the opinion that the mansion was not what it seemed to be, that was to say, not Earth, wood, and stones, like as those most people see, but only an illusion that evil spirits or the devil created to deceive the town. Public opinion on the west coast was therefore was strongly divided on the subject, unity of sentiment existing on two points only; that the island had been seen, and that there was something quite out of the ordinary in its appearance. People believe that it would come and go in the night like a light in a bog, and when you do see it, you can see through it. An old fisherman of San Francisco called Ebenezer Thornton knew all about the enchanted Winchester mansion, having not only seen it himself, but, when a boy, learned its history from a “fairy man,” who obtained his information from “the good people” themselves, the facts stated being therefore, of course, of indisputable authority, what the fairies did not know concerning the doings of supernatural and enchanted circles, being not worth knowing. He said that the Winchester mansion was full of temples and round towers all covered with gold and silver till they shone so one could not see it for the brightness. There was a great enchantress in the mansion, and she had all kinds of secrets, and knew where to dig for a pot of gold. She built the castle in one night, and could make herself disappeared when she wanted and could take any shape she pleased. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Ebenezer when on to say that Mrs. Winchester’s husband gave her a charm before he died to use when she was in mortal danger, he also left her a ton of diamonds and millions of dollars. She was a pretty smart woman. One night, Mrs. Winchester was awakened by a noise in one of the kitchens. She tole down, and found her old housekeeper, Madge, with half a dozen of her kidney, sitting by the fire drinking whisky. When the bottle was finished, one of them cried, “It’s time to be off,” and at the same moment she put on a peculiar red cap, and added:–“By yarrow and rue, and my red cap, too, hie over to England!” and seizing a twig she soared up the chimney. As the latter was making her preparations Mrs. Winchester rushed into the kitchen, snatched the cap from her, and placing herself astride of her twig uttered the magic formula. She speedily found herself high in the air over the Irish Sea, and swooping though the empyrean at a rate unequalled by the fastest airplane. They rapidly neared the Welsh coast, and espied a castle afar off, towards the door of which they rushed with a frightful velocity; Mrs. Winchester closed her eyes and awaited the shock, but found to her delight that she had slipped through the keyhole without hurt. The party made their way to the cellar, where they caroused heartily, but the spirits proved too heady, and somehow Mrs. Winchester was captured and dragged before the lord of the castle, who sentenced her to be hanged. On her way to the gallows an old woman in the crowd called out in Irish, “Ah, the enchantress herself, Sarah Winchester alanna! Is it going to die you are in a strange place without your magical charm?” She reached into her pocket and held it in her hand. On reaching the place of execution she was allowed to address the spectators, and did so in the usual ready-made speech, beginning, “Good people all, a warning take by me.” But when she reached the last line, “My parents reared me tenderly” instead of stopped she unexpected added, “By yarrow and rue, good-bye I love you,” with the result that she shot up through the air, to the great dismay of all beholders. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Magic persecution. Genuine magic is the art of bringing about results beyond human powers through the enlistment of supernatural agencies. Black magic deliberately involves the devil and demons, and the resulting enchantment is used for persecution and revenge. A spiritistic circle of twenty members furnishes a good example. Working with black magic, these spiritis experimented to see if they could cause psychic harm or even illness in people they disliked. A strong medium of this occult group chose a minister as a target and vowed to afflict and eliminate her. The minister suffered a nervous breakdown and was unable to work for several months. Some phenomena must be eliminated from the spiritistic magic field. In the psychiatric realm, for example, many schizophrenics claim to be magically persecuted. In reality this is only a symptom in the course of psychotic disease. Eliminating all such cases, there are still large-scale, genuine phenomena, especially in areas where occultism has flourished for many years. One common form of magic persecution is beatings by an invisible attacker. Parapsychology also sees magical persecution as a mediumistic problem in the sphere of materializations. Strong mediums (when under demon control) send out energy with which to build up human phantasms and are also able to transform this energy into animal forms, including dogs, cats, frogs, snakes, or human bodies with animal heads, etcetera. This explains the bizarre spiritistic persecution through phantoms in the form of various animals of human bodies with nonhuman heads. These animals bite, scratch, or otherwise torment their victims. Examples, of these occult phenomena abound in areas where the black arts are practiced. However, such occurrences are denied by many intellectuals. Often peasants and country people, especially in Europe, know more about magic than university graduates, who claim to swindle or hocus-pocus trickery are used instead of occult powers. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Magic defense. Magic defense enlists supernatural agencies to counteract or unto the mischief wrought by magic persecution. Various kinds of spells, charms, or incantations are employed. In spiritistic séances it is an established fact that injuries inflicted upon a phantasm are sustained by the medium, even in the case of animal phantasm. Many defensive customs develop to combat this threat since magical persecution involves materialization. If a victim can injure an aggressive phantasm one has won the struggle. Many in the West wanted to remove Satan from the equation of black magic and demonic aspects of life. However, more serious discontent came from Satanists whose concerns were completely the opposite. Anton LaVey did not believe in Satan as a literal entity—He was a name for the dark, brutal aspects of humans and nature, as well as a symbol for the potency of humans’ untrammeled will. The Church of Satan was not a religion, and did not worship deities. For many, however, this was not enough. They wanted a real Devil to worship—belonging to a dark, mysterious coven, in the traditional gothic style, seemed much more appealing than being part of some cultural and social elite. Some believed that Satan, although thrown out of Heaven, was reinstated as the son of God and is directly in contact with him. If any coven members offends, they are a bit evil now and again, given corporal punishment, or is expelled from one’s coven and cursed. However, this is said to be for the members own good. They really believe in love, the sanctity of woman as the child bearer and procreator of life, and in worshipping Satan their master. Aleister Crowley was grooming Kenneth as his successor. Mr. Grant’s work examined lost gods, strange spiritual traditions and forbidden symbols, often leading him to some disreputable spiritual neighborhood where devils and demons might be expected to reside, like the Winchester Mystery House. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
If you have a lot of magic in you, you can be a Satanist and have no idea. As if they are the mafia or something, sometimes those who are suspected of being Satanists have their offices broken into like they are the Mafia or something. The Church of Satan, however, has saved lives because it has given them power, power to come out and be themselves when traditional churches would not accept these people. The Dark Lord, was said to be an anthropoid but faceless. Looking at the concept as a diamond, much like the ones left to Mrs. Winchester by her husband William Wirt Winchester, Satan or Lucifer was just other facets of that diamond, purely ways of achieving workings which encompassed the whole. So, if you are particularly drawn to the gothic Satanist current, fine, use rituals based around that. In the Temple of Darkness one could equally have Satanists, Setians, or followers of other paths, the principle being that the whole thing is a psychodrama anyway. Magic is basically the Western version of yoga. Everything that happens in magic happens first in your head. Set, the Egyptian god of evil, was an older deity than Satan. Satan derives from Set. Set, who is defined as the Prince of Darkness, is a force about which you could say, “As we are now, he once was.” When you die your force can survive. Magic is mind enhancing. When one perishes or passes, instead of going into the cosmic whole—becoming one with the goddess or whatever—by sheer force of the will the existence of that magician’s mind can be sustained. This is the whole idea of the Temple of Set, and they use the word “xeper,” meaning “to become,” to define this. Spiritistic cults. If you did not know, Mrs. Winchester was a spiritists. Spiritism is considered a form of Christianity, practically in all civilized countries. A typical meeting consists of hymns, prayer, and a sermon as in a Christian service. The sermon, however, is allegedly given by a spirit from the other World, through a medium. These cults are said to be affected by the “doctrines of demons” and press into the supernatural World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
However, even born-again Christians often cannot differentiate between the spiritual and the psychic-demonic when under the spell of doctrinal errors, particularly those concerning the work of the Holy Spirit. The result can sometimes be confusion, division, and promotion of certain spiritual gifts accredited to demons. We have sometimes seen people end up suffering from mediumistic psychosis. Quite a number of patients who have suffered serious psychic disturbances through the misuse of such practices have become split personalities. The spirits which they called, confused them. One who tries to discover the promises of the other side through superstition endangers oneself to fall a prey to the dark side of one’s psyche. However, many Christians say that spirits of loved ones cannot be brought back from the dead, and the it is just a demon impersonating them. Yet, consider the case of Saul’s visit to the spiritistic medium at Endor (1 Samuel 28.3-25). Samuel’s spirit was actually brought back from the spirit World when the medium Endor tried to contact him. Yet, God brought the spirit back. The Lord stepped. Still one must be careful because many become enslaved and oppressed by occult powers and become victims of various manifestations of spiritistic phenomena. While overwhelming evidence from Christian counseling confirms the fact that spiritistic complicity serious damages the believer’s spiritual life, adherents of Buddhism, Island, or even false cults of Christianity sense no ill effects. Spiritists claim that spiritism has strengthened their belief in life after death and deepened their religious devotion. Psychiatry, psychology, and medical treatment are not sufficient for the healing of the whole human. The gospel of Christ and the liberating power of the Word of God can fully heal body, soul, and spirit. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Mrs. Winchester had a pain in her right forearm. At first the pain was treated as rheumatism but one day the Mrs. Winchester made the interesting discovery that the pain would suddenly subside if she wrote a letter. Having discovered this, whenever the pain became unbearable, she would always take a pencil and begin to write in order to alleviate the pain. However, after a period of time the Mrs. Winchester when go into her Blue Séance Room, where she developed a writing compulsion. She would write things down that she could normally speaking never have written. Often times, this is where the blueprints from her mansion came from. Added to this the written material on each occasion turned out to be some form of religious treatise. Mrs. Winchester took the articles to her minister to let him examine them. He was surprised at their intellectual content. Mrs. Winchester had become a spiritistic writing medium. The parapsychologist would merely see in this example a psychic automation involving the expression of subconscious thoughts. It is true that we need not consider the Mrs. Winchester to be in direct contact with the dead, or putting it another way we need not assume that this is a case of direct demonization, but God could be speaking to her. This is why some believe Mrs. Winchester to be a prophetess. During one of her spiritistic seances, as it happened, a phantasm did in fact appear during a séance. However, it is still not necessary to believe that a spirit really did appear in this instance. Depth psychology suggest that a phantasm can be produced in the following way. The medium through emitting energy causes matter to form as a result of this. In nuclear physics we have the idea that matter is nothing more than concentrated energy. Einstein’s formula E=M.c^2 illustrates this relationship. A comparison can also be drawn from another branch of physics. It is found that both particles and anti-particles are formed at the cathode of an X-ray tube when a current is passed through it at a very high voltage. Energy in the form of electro-magnetic waves is in this way transformed into matter. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
The next step in the mediumistic process involves the unconscious tapping of the information from some source or other, and then the newly formed matter is physically shaped according to this information. The final step is made when the phantasm is brought under the control of the medium. Looking at it from this point of view there is no necessity to believe that the dead person has in any way been disturbed. An animistic explanation based on the powers of the subconscious is thus sufficient to explain the phenomenon of materialization. Yet this is not to say that the rationalistic explanation does justice to the facts of the case. The problem is not as simple as that. However, we do not have the time to delve further into the scientific side of the issues. We have, on many occasions witnessed a disintegration of the personalities of both mediums and participants where materializations have taken place. In addition to this in every case where a person has frequently taken part in spiritistic séances, there is some kind of reaction, even if it is not immediately notice or if there is no manifestation—something happens. There are also people who are able to practise the excursion of the soul. Spiritists affirm that people can send out an astral body from their material body, and commission it to do whatever they ask. Perhaps that was the case when Mrs. Winchester appeared in another country? Spiritism haunts the dark jungle of human aberration. During a séance as the Winchester mansion, Mrs. Winchester noticed that time was passing somewhat wearily. She could hear an occasional thud, thud. Some time must have elapsed before she became, dimly at first, and then distinctly, aware of a bluish phosphorescent emanation from a skeleton. This seemed to rise above it like a faint smoke, which gradually gained consistency, took form, and became distinct; and she saw before her the misty, luminous form on an unclothed man, with wolfish countenance, prognathous jaws, glaring at her out of eyes deeply sunk under projecting brows. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Although she thus descried what she saw, it gave her no idea of substance; it was vaporous, and yet it was articulate. Indeed, she could not say for sure if she saw this apparition with her eyes, or whether it was a dream-like vision of the brain. Though luminous, it cast no light on the wall of the Blue Séance Room; if she raised her hand, it did not obscure any portion of the form presented to her. Then she heard: “I will tear you with the nails of my fingers and toes, and rip you with my teeth.” “What have I done to injure and incense you?” she asked. No word was uttered by either of them; no word could have been uttered by this vaporous form. It had no material lungs, nor throat, nor mouth to form vocal sounds. It had but the semblance of a man. It was a spook, not a human being. However, it proceeded through the walls, odylic force which smote on the tympanum of her mind or soul, and thereon registered the ideas formed by it. So in a like manner Mrs. Winchester thought her replies, and they were communicated back in the same manner. If vocal words had passed between them neither would have been intelligible to the other. No dictionary was ever compiled, or would be compiled, of the tongue or prehistoric man; moreover, the grammar of the speech of that race would be absolutely incomprehensible to humans now. However, thoughts can be interchanged without words. When we think we do not think in any language. It is only when we desire to communicate our thoughts to other humans that we shape them into words and express them vocally in structural grammatical sentences. The beasts have never attained to this, yet they can communicate with one another, not by language, but by thought vibrations. Mrs. Winchester knew as she conversed with him that she was not speaking to him in English, nor in French, nor in Latin, nor in any tongue whatever. Moreover, when she used the words “said” or “spoke,” she meant no more than that the impression was formed by her brain-pan or the receptive drum of her soul, was produced by the rhythmic, orderly sequence of thought-waves. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
When, however, she expressed the words “screamed” or “shrieked,” she signified that those vibrations came sharp and swift; and when she said “laughed,” tht they came in a choppy, irregular fashion, conveying the idea, not the sound of laughter. “I will tear you! I will rend you to bits and throw you in pieces about this mansion!” shrieked this demon man. Mrs. Winchester remonstrated, and inquired how she had incensed him. However, yelling with rage, he threw himself upon her. In a moment she was enveloped in a luminous haze, strips of phosphorescent vapour laid themselves about her, but she received no injury whatever, only her spiritual nature was subjected to something like a magnetic storm. After a few moments the spook disengaged itself from Mrs. Winchester, and drew back to where it was before, screaming broken exclamations of meaningless rage, and jabbering savagely. It rapidly cooled down. “Why do you wish to ill me?” She asked again. “I cannot hurt you. I am spirit, you are matter, and spirit cannot injure matter; my nails are psychic phenomena. Your soul you can lacerate yourself, but I can effect nothing, nothing.” “Then why have you attacked me? What is the cause of your impotent recement?” “Because you are the heiress to the Winchester Rifle, and I lived eight thousand years ago. Why are you nursed in the lap of luxury? Why you enjoy your comforts, a civilization that we new nothing of? It is not just. It is cruel on us. We have nothing, nothing, literally nothing, not even lucifer matches!” Again he feel to screaming, as might a caged monkey rendered furious by failure to obtain an apple which he could not reach. “I am very sorry, but it is no fault of mine.” “Whether it be your fault or not does not matter to me. You have these things—we had not. Why, I saw you just now strike a light on the sole of your boot. It was done in a moment. We had only flint and ironstone, and it took half a day with us to kindle a fire, and then it flayed our knuckles with continuous knocking. No! we have nothing, nothing—no lucifer matches, no commercial travellers, no Benedictine, no pottery, no metal, no education, no elections, no chocolat menier.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
“How do you know about these products of the present age, here, buried one hundred feet of soil for eight thousand years?” “It is my spirit which speaks with your spirit. My spook does not always remain with my bones. I can go up; rocks and stones and earth and your labyrinth mansion heaped over me do not hold me down. I am often above. I am in the gasolier overhead. I have seen your servants plough the fields. I have seen a bottle of Benedictine. I have applied my physical lips to it, but I could taste, absorb nothing. I have seen commercial travellers there, cajoling the patron into buying things he did not want. They are mysterious, marvellous beings, their powers of persuasion are little short of miraculous. Why do you think of doing with me?” “Well, I propose first of all photographing you, then soaking you in gum Arabic, and finally transferring you to a museum.” He screamed as though with pain, and grasped: “Do not! do not do it. It will be torture insufferable.” “But why so? You will be under glass, in a polished oak or mahogany box.” “Do not! You cannot understand what it will be to me—a spirit more or less attached to my body, to spend ages upon ages in a museum with fibulae, triskelli, palstaves, celts, torques, scarabs. We cannot travel very far from our bones—our range is limited. And conceive of my feelings for centuries condemned to wander among glass cases containing prehistoric antiquities, and to hear the talk of scientific men alone. Now here, it is otherwise. Here I can pass up when I like into your mansion, and can see the maid and butlers cleaning, the roses and trees growing, the farmers working the field and the magnificent glow of your fine estate. Give me life. There is a sort of filmy attachment that connects our psychic nature with our mortal remains. It is like a spider and its web. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
“Suppose the soul to be the spider and the skeleton to be the web. If you break the thread the spider will never find its way back to its home. So it is with us; there is an attachment, a faint thread of luminous spiritual matter that unites us to our Earthly husk. It is liable to accidents. It sometimes gets broken, sometimes dissolved by water. If a black beetle crawls across it it suffers a sort of paralysis. I have never been to the other side of the of your mansion, I feared to do so, though very anxious to see your architecture and furniture.” “This is news to me,” replied Mrs. Winchester. “Do you know of any case of rupture of connection?” Yes,” he replied. “My old father, after he was dead some years, got his link of attachment broke, and he wandered about disconsolate. He could not find his own body, but he lighted on that of a young female of seventeen, and he got into that. It happened most singularly that her spook, being frolicsome and inconsiderate, had got its bond also broken, and she, that is her spirit, straying about in quest of her body, lighted on that of my venerable parent, and for want of a better took possession of it. It so chanced that after a while they met and became chummy. In the World of spirits there is no marriage, but there grow up spiritual attachments, and these two got rather fond of each other, but never could puzzle it out which was which and what each was; for a female soul had entered into an old male body, and a male soul had taken up its residence in a female body. Neither could riddle out of which each gender was. You see they had no education. However, I know that my father’s soul became quite sportive in that young woman’s skeleton. Each generation makes some discovery that advances civilization a stage, the next enters on the discoveries of the preceding generations, and so culture advances stage by stage. Man is infinitely progressive; even the brute beast is.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
At that moment, Mrs. Winchester heard a shout—saw a flash of light. The construction workers had pierced the barrier. A rush of fresh air entered. She staggered to her feet. She felt dizzy. Kind hands grasped her. She was dragged forth. Brandy was poured down her throat. When she came to herself, she said, “Thank you. Talking with spirits can be terrible dreadful. When you are trying to summon one, souls get crossed and the one you are seeking may not cross through. They are so desperate to find a medium to communicate with.” As an ingredient of idol worship, magic goes back to antiquity. By virtue of their multiplicity and limited knowledge and power, the gods (demons) of paganism are incapable of establishing stability and security in society. This deficiency forced both gods and men to make use of magic—an inactive power independent of gods and men, but which could be activized by the assistance of incantations and rituals in order to accomplish supernatural deeds. Because of widespread denial of the reality of supernatural power—both divine and demonic, confusion abounds concerning the nature of magic. The history of magic is replete with extraordinary extrasensory phenomena that involve the spirit realm and every phase of the natural World as well, including human beings, animals, plants, and inorganic matter. Spirit-rapping, apparitions, ghosts, moving of furniture, and playing of musical instruments by invisible hands, stones falling from a ceiling, magical killing of cattle and blighting of crops, etcetera, are just a few of the weird occurrences that have happened at the Winchester Mystery House in its 134 years. However, there have also been beautiful supernatural events such as apparitions getting married, giant spirits of light in the shape of a man peering out guests, and on occasion, even rainbows and angels have appeared. Not all spirits or evil or angry, some or loving and welcoming. Few of thousands of annual transient guests are disappointed for here one finds visible truth even stranger than all the weird Mystery House features. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Winchester Mystery House
Beautiful weather calls for a walk around Sarah’s iconic gardens ⛲️🪴Open 10AM – 5PM this weekend!
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle , or who were jealous of its wealth 👻
And a Hair of His Head Shall Not Fall to the Ground Unnoticed
We cannot go to others with what we have received, saying: This is what needs to be known, this is what needs to be done. We can only go and put to the proof in actions. And even this is not what we “ought to” do: rather we can—we cannot do otherwise. This is the eternal revelation which is present in the here and now. I neither know of nor believe in any revelation that is not the same in its primal phenomenon. Joseph Smith returned to Independence in April, 1832, to help the Saints in their conflict with the pioneer Missourians, who did not like the people from the East. The day after his arrival, Joseph called a conference of the Saints in America. One of the first items of business was to vote to acknowledge Joseph Smith as “president of the high priesthood,” or president of the church. Provision was later made for two counselors to the president, making three in the Presidency. A revelation was received at this time in which the Lord said: “I give unto you directions how you may act before me, that it may turn to you for your salvation. I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say, but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise. American must increase in beauty, and in holiness…America must arise and put on her beautiful garments. Therefore, I give unto you this commandment, that ye bind yourselves by this covenant. And you are to be equal, or in other words, you are to have equal claims on the properties, for the benefit of managing the concerns of your stewardships, every man according to his wants and his needs, inasmuch as his wants are just. And all this for the benefit of the church of the living God, that every man may improve upon his talent, that every man may gain other talents; yea, even an hundredfold, to be cast into the Lord’s storehouse, to become the common property of the whole church, every man seeking the interest of his neighbor, and doing all things with an eye single to the glory of God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
“Make unto yourselves friends with the mammon of unrighteousness, and they will not destroy you. Leave judgment alone with me, for it is mine and I will repay. Peace be with you; my blessings continue with you, for even yet the kingdom is yours, and shall be for ever if you fall not from your steadfastness.” After preaching several powerful sermons and visiting and encouraging the Saints, Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Newell K. Whitney left Independence for Kirtland, where they arrived in June. During this same month the first issues of the paper, the Evening and Morning Star, was published at Independence. It was a joyous treat for the Saints in Kirtland to receive a copy of this paper. Joseph and Sidney Rigdon spent much of their time on the work of correcting the Scriptures during the summer and fall of 1832. Two revelations were given during this period giving instruction on the priesthood in the church and containing many glorious promises. The Lord praised the Saints for their hard work which had been done by much sacrifice and under unfavorable conditions. The Lord explained the purposes of the two priesthoods, the Aaronic and the Melchisedec. The people were instructed to accept the ministry of men who are called to the priesthood. Jesus Christ, the Lord said: “All they who receive this priesthood receiveth me, saith the Lord, for he that receiveth my servants receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth my Father, and he that reciveth my Father receiveth my Father’s kingdom.” Helpful instruction was given in this revelation: “You shall live by every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God. For the word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsoever is light in Spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ. And the Spirit giveth light to every man that cometh into the World; and the Spirit enlightenth every man through the World, that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
“And everyone that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit, cometh unto God, even the Father. Whoso cometh not unto me is under the bondage of sin; and whoso recieveth not my voice is not acquainted with my voice, and is not of me; and by this you may know the righteous from the wicked.” The elders were told they should travel without money or provisions—“pure or scrip” were the exact words used—and Jesus promised: “And any man that shall go and preach this gospel of the kingdom, and fail not to continue faithful in all things, shall not be weary in mind, neither darkened, neither in body, limb or joint; and an hair of his head shall not fall to the ground unnoticed. And they shall not go hungry, neither athirst. Therefore take no thought for the morrow, for what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed. For consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin; and the kingdoms of this World, in all their glory, are not arrayed like one of these; for your Father who art in Heaven, knoweth that you have need of all these things. Therefore, let the morrow take thought for the things of itself. Neither take ye thought beforehand what ye shall say, but treasure up in your minds continually the words of life, and it shall be given you in the very hour that portion that shall be meted unto every man. Whoso receiveth you receiveth me, and the same will feed you, and clothe you, and give you money. And he who feeds you, or clothes you, and gives you money, shall in no wise lose his reward.” A little son, whom they named Joseph Smith III, was born to Emma and Joseph on November 6, 1832. This baby was to have an important part in the work of the Lord later. An important revelation was given on December 27, 1832. The Saints were commanded to keep the laws of God. The Lord said: “He who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom, can not abide a celestial glory; and he who can not abide the law of terrestrial kingdom, can not abide a terrestrial glory; he who can not abide the law of a telestial kingdom, can not abide a telestial glory; therefore, he is not meet for a kingdom of glory. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
“And if your eye be single to my glory, your whole bodies shall be filled with light, and there shall be no darkness in you, and that body which is filled with light comprehendeth all things. Therefore, sanctify yourselves that your minds become single to God, and the days will come that you shall see him. Continue in prayer and fasting from this time forth. And I give unto you a commandment, that you shall teach one another the doctrines of the kingdom. Call your solemn assembly, as I have commanded you; and as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning even by study, and also by faith. See that ye love one another; cease to be covetous; learn to impart one to another as the gospel requires; cease to be idle; cease to be unclean; cease to find fault one with another. Cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated. Pray always, that you may not faint until I come.” Provision was made in this revelation for establishing a “school of the prophets,” in the “house of the Lord.” This school was for all members of the priesthood, from the high priests to the deacons, and it was to be taught by the Presidency of the church. To be humble is to recognize gratefully our dependence on the Lord—to understand that we have constant need for His support. Humility is an acknowledgment that our talents and abilities are gifts from God. It is not a sign of weakness, timidity, or fear; it is an indication that we know where our true strength lies. We can be both humble and fearless. We can be both humble and courageous. The Lord will strengthen us as we humble ourselves before Him. “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble…Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall life you up,” reports James 4.6 and 10. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
When the storms in life come, one can be steady because one is standing on the rock of one’s faith in Jesus Christ. May everyone face the storms with a peaceful heart. The place to begin is to remember that we are each a beloved child of God and that He has inspired servants. Those servants of God have foreseen the times in which we live. Know also that in the last days, perilous times shall come. Anyone with eyes to see the signs of the times and ears to hear the words of prophets knows that is true. The perils of greatest danger come to us from the forces of wickedness. Those forces are increasing. And so it will become more difficult, not easier, to honor the covenants we must make and keep to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. For those of us who are concerned for ourselves and for those we love, there is hope in the promise God has made of a place of safety in the storms ahead. It has never been more important than it is now to understand how to build a strong foundation. “Then Solomon said, The Lord has said that He would dwell in the thick darkness,” reports II Chronicles 6.1. Therefore, do not fear because God is everywhere. The human wish, we are saying, is not merely a push from the past, not merely a call from primitive needs demanding satisfaction. It also has in it some selectivity. It is a forming of the future, a molding by a symbolic process which includes both memory and fantasy, of what we hope the future will be. The wish is the beginning of orienting ourselves to the future, an admission that we want the future to be such and such; it is a capacity to reach down deep into ourselves and preoccupy ourselves with a longing to change the future. However, there is no will without a prior wish. The wish, like all symbolic processes, has a progressive element, a reaching ahead, as well as a regressive pole, a propulsion from behind. The wish thus carries its meaning as well as its force. Its motive power lies in the conjunction of this meaning and force. We can now understand why William Lynch should hold that “to wish is the most human act.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The past is drifting away at a faster and faster rate. When we look back at, say, the first quarter of the twenty-first century, we realize that many of its defining episodes no longer grip us as strongly as they one did. For the generation now coming into power, events like the 911, the civil rights protests of the 2020s, the Ukrainian War, the Cultural Revolution, homelessness, demands for affordable housing and spread of graffiti in small towns seems increasingly more significant and relevant. Therefore much of what will happen in our lifetimes will consist of adaptation to and further development of a process that began three quarters of a century ago—the most revolutionary wave of change in wealth creation since at least the eighteenth century. Let us pause briefly, then, to summarize and draw together some key things. First, this revolution is a matter not just of technology, stock-market swings, inflation or deflation but of profound social, cultural, political and geopolitical changes as well. Failure to recognize the connections between these and economics leads us to seriously underestimate the oncoming challenges we face. Second, while headlines and business chatter continually refer to improving or declining “fundamentals,” we suggest that that these ups and downs are largely superficial responses to far more important shifts in what we have termed “deep fundamentals”—those factors and forces that have governed all economic activity sine our days as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Economists have long studied some of these essentials—things like work, the division of labor, exchange and the sharing of rewards. They have also filled libraries with studies on technology, energy and the environment. Business gurus drawing on these studies pour out advice about everything from human-resource management to network organization, insourcing and outsourcing, leadership and strategy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Yet, if they ignore three key forces driving today’s wealth revolution—dramatic changes in our relations to time, space and, above all, knowledge, how good can advice and proposed strategies be? It is, we have contended, only by recognizing the centrality of these wealth drivers that we can prepare for tomorrow. For this reason, we have looked closely at each of these deep fundamentals and their impacts on wealth. Take, for instance, the de-synchronization effect. As we saw earlier, companies are compelled to shift and re-shirt their products and relationships incessantly. Customer demands, financial imperatives and market forces all change at accelerating, but very different, rates. In doing so, they impose destabilizing cross-pressures on firms whose managers struggle to come to terms with time. In response, a big synchronization industry has grown up to help firms cope with clashing speeds. At the same time, a backward, tortoise-paced public sector—itself badly de-synchronized—imposes a huge “time-tax” on companies by slowing them down with delays in court decisions, procurements process, regulatory rulings, permit procedures and in a thousand other ways. In short, one part of the system is flooring the gas pedal while the other is slamming on the brakes. Nowhere, as we have noted, is this more frustratingly evident than in the contradiction between the fast-changing skill requirements of an advanced, accelerative economy and the glacial immobility of its schools. We have seen also that some degree of de-synchronization is essential to keep competition and innovation going on. However, it is equally clear that excessive de-synchronization can throw companies, industries and entire economies into chaos. Indeed, one can look at the great stock market shakeouts as desperate attempts by the wealthy system to re-synchronize itself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
However, time is only part of the story. To understand tomorrow’s oncoming changes, the cumulative effects of time conflicts need to be seen against the equally powerful transformations in the spatial landscape. Thus the World today holds its breath while watching the massive relocation of wealth and wealth creation toward formerly “developing” countries led by China and India—surely one of the biggest and fastest such transfers in history and possibly the completion of a great circle of wealth movement that began some five hundred years ago. Moreover, we have suggested that, instead of asking whether globalization will continue, we recognize a coming split—possible de-globalization on the economic level and re-globalization of campaigns against such problems as pollution, terrorism, drugs, sexual slavery and genocide. Here, too, gas pedal and brake are applied at the same time. Out of this collision will come the accelerated relocation of the globe’s wealth creation to new high-value-added hot spots—leaving behind new pockets of poverty. However, the most dramatic spatial shifts of all has little to do with these terrestrial concerns. Though millions brush it aside, we actually stand at the historical edge of humanity’s serious thrust into outer space. For historians of tomorrow looking back at the twenty-first century, one of most important economic events of all may prove to be the colonization of space and wealth creation beyond our home planet. None of these changes would occur without even more potent transformations in the deep fundamental of knowledge and our relations with it. While shifts in the use of time and space will be easy to recognize, today’s revolution in knowledge—the defining deep fundamental of our time—is far harder to grasp. These changes are, by their very nature, intangible, invisible, abstract, epistemological and seemingly remote from daily life. Yet no attempt to forecast the future of wealth can succeed without a thorough appreciation of the new role of knowledge. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
We have provided an admittedly simplified primer on the scope, nature and role of knowledge as the central resource of advanced economies. However, here again we do not just need to analyze, but to synthesize—to see these deeply fundamental changes in interaction with one another. When we alter our relationship to time, for example, by speeding things up, we inevitably make some knowledge obsolete. We thereby increase the backlog of obsoledge that we lug around with us. Let us proceed to economic and social changes. New Deal. The Keynesian economics of the New Deal has cushioned the business cycle and maintained nearly full employment. It has not achieved its ideal of social balance between public and private works. The result is an expanding production increasingly consisting of corporation boondoggling. Syndicalism. Industrial workers have won their unions, obtained better wages and working conditions, and affirmed the dignity of labor. However, they gave up their ideal of workers’ management, technical education, and concern for the utility of their labor. The result is that a vast majority could not care less about what they make, and the “labor movement” is losing force. Class struggle. The working class has achieved a striking repeal of the iron law of wages; it has won a minimum wage and social security (although future funding is uncertain). However, the goal of an equalitarian or freely mobile society has been given up, as has the solidarity of the underprivileged. The actual result is an increasing rigidity of statuses; some of the underprivileged tending to drop out of society altogether. On the other hand, the cultural equality that has been achieved has been the degradation of the one popular culture to the lowest common denominator. Production for Use. This socialist goal has been missed, resulting in many of the other failures here listed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Sociology. During the past century, the sociologist have achieved their aim of dealing with humankind in its natural groups or groups with common problems, rather than as isolated individuals or a faceless mass. Social science has replaced many prejudices and ideologies of vested interests. However, on the whole, social scientists have given up their aim of fundamental social change and an open-experimental method determining its goals as it went along: the pragmatist ideal of society as a laboratory for freedom and self-correcting humanity. The actual result is an emphasis on “socializing” and “belonging,” with the loss of nature, culture, group solidarity and group variety, and individual excellence. There are 773,000,000 illiterates in the World. There are approximately 43 million illiterates in the United States of America, and according to a report from our Librarian of Congress, there may be an equal number of alliterates. In any case, a general impatience with books will develop, especially with books in which language is used with subtlety to express complex ideas. Most likely there will be a decline in readers’ analytical and critical skills. According to the results of standardized tests given in schools, this has been happening in the United States of America for the past fifty-five years. I suspect concern for history will also decline, to be replaced by a consuming interest in the present. The effect on political life will be devastating. There will be less emphasis on issues, substance, and ideology, an increase in the importance of image and style. Politicians will have greater concern for moment-to-moment shifts in public opinion, less concern for long-range policies. Unless the use of television for political campaigns is strictly prohibited, elections may be decided by which party spends more on televisions and media consultants. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Even if political commercials are prohibited, politicians will appear on entertainment programs and will almost certainly be asked to give testimonials for non-political products such as cars, beer, and breakfast foods. The line between political life and entertainment will blur, and movies stars may be taken seriously as political candidates. Once the population becomes accustomed to spending much of its time watching television—in the United States of America, the average household has television on about eight hours a day—there will be a decrease in activities outside the home: fewer and smaller gatherings in parks, beer halls, concert halls, and other public places. As street life decreases, there may well be an increase in street crime. Young and some older people will, of course, become disaffected from school and reading. Children’s games are likely to disappear. In fact, it will become important to keep children watching television because they will be a major consumer group. In the United States of America, children watch 5,000 hours of television before they enter kindergarten and 16,000 hours by high school’s end. Commercial television does not dislike children; it simply cannot afford the idea of childhood. Consumerhood takes precedence. Naturally, family life will be significantly changed. There will be less interaction among family members, certainly less talk between parents and children. Such talk as there is will be noticeably different from what you are now accustomed to. The young will speak of matters that once were confined to adults. Commercial television is a medium that does not segregate its audience, and therefore all segments of the population share the same symbolic World. You may find that in the end the line between adulthood and childhood has been erased entirely. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Television is itself a commodity, and an expensive one too. Therefore it is physically consistent with the prevalent reality. Its purchase gives the commodity system a boost. Television changes the nature of the artificial environment from passive to active. Unlike buildings and machines, television literally enters inside human beings; inside our homes, our minds, our bodies, making possible the reordering of human processes from the inside. Television is an experience that can be had by virtually everyone at the same time. By substituting for a greater diversity of experiences and unifying everyone with it, it assists commercial efficiency. With all people confined to the same mental and physical condition, a single advertising or political voice appropriate to the common mood can influence everyone. Once diversity of experience is reduced to television, a relative handful of people can control everyone’s awareness. Luckily for advertisers, in a capitalist system, whoever is in a position to pay for the technology has primary access to it. Television is unique in that it smooths out any furrows in the commodity system. Dormant anxieties can be dulled by the television experience. Beyond being a delivery system for commodity life, it is the solder to hold that life together, the drug to ease the pain of confined and channeled existence. Though television passes for experience, it is really more like “time out,” as we shall see later. It is anti-experience. Its interaction with the human body and mind fixes people to itself, dulls human sensibility and dims awareness of the World. This enhances the commodity life by reducing knowledge of any other. By focusing people on events well outside their lives, television encourages passivity and inaction, discourages self-awareness and the ability to cope personally, both of which are dangerous for advertising. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
By speaking in images, television adds a dimension to the mirror-image process. Unlike radio or print media, advertising can now implant internal movies, forever available for self-comparison. Television encourages separation: people from community, people from each other, people from themselves, creating more buying units and discouraging organized opposition to the system. It creates a surrogate community: itself. It becomes everyone’s intimate advisor, teacher and guide to appropriate behavior and awareness. Thereby, it becomes its own feedback system, furthering its own growth and accelerating the transformation of everything and everyone into artificial form. This enables a handful of people to obtain a unique degree of power. You have seen how commercial stress the values of youth, how they stress consumption, the immediate gratification of desires, the love of the new, a contempt for old technology. Television screens are saturated with commercials promote the Utopian and childish idea that all problems have fast, simple, and technological solutions. You must banish from your mind the naïve but commonplace notion that commercials are about products. They are about products in the same sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales. Which is to say, they are not. They are about values and myths and fantasies. One might even say they form a body of religious literature, a montage of voluminous, visualized sacred texts that provide people with images and stories around which to organize their lives. To give you some idea of exactly how voluminous, I should tell you that the average America will have seen approximately 1 million television commercials, at the rate of a thousand per week, by the age of twenty. By the age of sixty-five, the average American will have seen more than 2 million television commercials. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Commercial television adds to the Decalogue several impious commandments, among them that thou shalt have no others gods than consumption, thou shalt despise what is old, thou shalt seek to amuse thyself continuously, and thou shalt avoid complexity like the ten plagues of that the underworld. Perhaps you are thinking that I exaggerate the social and psychic results of the commercialization of television and that, in any case, what has happened in the United States of America could not happen anywhere else. If you are, you overestimate the power of tradition and underestimate the power of technology. To enliven your senses of the forces unleashed by technological change, you need only remind yourself of what the automobile has brought to Austria. Has it not changed the nature of your cities, created the suburbs, made roads through your forest and homes, restructured your economy? You must not mislead yourselves by what you know about World culture as of 2022. May regions around the World are still living in the age of Gutenberg. Commercial television attacks such backwardness with astonishing ferocity. For example, at the present time, less than 20 percent of population in Tuvalu watches television in the evening. A commercial television system will fund this situation intolerable. In the United States of America, approximately 90 percent of people watch television during evening hours, and broadcasters find even those number unsatisfactory. In nations like Korea, television commercials are bunched together so that they do not interfere with the continuity of the programs. Such a situation makes no sense to American commercial systems. The whole idea is precisely to interrupt the continuity of programs so that one’s thoughts cannot stray too far from consideration of consumership. Indeed, the aim is to obliterate the distinction between a program and a commercial. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
In some countries, you do not have many advertising agencies, and those you have are small and without great influence. In America, our advertising agencies are among the largest and most powerful corporations in the World. DDB Needham Worldwide has gross billings of $6.7 billion each year, 6,726 employees and SICs 7311 advertising agencies, and possibly receives $700 million per year for American network television alone. This is serious money and these are serious radicals. They cannot afford to permit a culture to retain old ideas about work or religion or politics or childhood. And it will not be long before they and their kind show up in the most primitive communities. If, like me, you claim allegiance to an authentic conservative philosophy, one that seeks to preserve that which nourishes the spirit, you would be wise to approach all proposals for a free-market television system with extreme caution. Indeed, I will go further than that: it is either hypocrisy or balderdash to argue that the transformation of the World from a print-based culture to a television-based culture can leave that country’s traditions intact. Conservatives know this is nonsense, and so they worry. Radicals also know this is nonsense. However, they do not care. In 1879, a French ophthalmologist named Luis Emile Javal discovered that when people read, their eyes do not sweep across the words in a perfectly fluid way. Their visual focus advances in little jumps, called saccades, pausing briefly at different points along each line. One of the Javal’s colleagues at the University of Paris soon made another discovery: that the pattern of pauses, or “eye fixations,” can vary greatly depending on what is being read and who is doing the reading. In the wake of these discoveries, brain researchers began to use eye-tracking experiments to learn more about how we read and how our minds work. Suck studies have also proven valuable in providing further insights into the Internet’s effects on attention and cognition. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
In 2006, Jakob Nielsen, a longtime consultant on the design of Web pages who has been studying online reading since the 1990s, conducted an eye-tracking study of Web users. He has 232 people wear a small camera that tracked their eye movements as they read pages of text and browsed other content. Nielsen found that hardly any of the participants read online text in a methodical, line-by-line way, as they would typically read a page of text in a book. The vast majority skimmed the text quickly, their eyes skipping down the pages in a pattern that resembled, roughly, the letter F. They would start by glancing all the way across the first two or three lines of text. Then their eyes would drop down a bit, and they would scan about halfway across a few more lines. Finally, they would let their eyes cursorily drift a little father down the left-hand side of the page. This pattern of online reading was confirmed by subsequent eye-tacking study carried out at the Software Usability Research Laboratory at Wichita State University. “F,” wrote Mr. Nielsen, in summing up the findings for his clients, is “for fast. That is how users read your precious content. In a few second, their eyes move at amazing speed across your website’s words in a pattern that is very different from what you learned in school.” As a complement to his eye-tracking study, Mr. Nielsen analyzed an extensive database on the behavior of Web users that had been compiled by a term of German researchers. They had monitored the computers of twenty-five people for an average of about a hundred days each, tracking the time the subjects spent looking at some fifty thousand Web pages. Parsing the data, Mr. Nielsen found that as the number of words on a pace increases, the time a visitor spends looking at the page goes up, but only slightly. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
For every hundred additional words, the average viewer will spend just 4.4 more seconds perusing the page. Since even the most accomplished reader can read only about eighteen words in 4.4 seconds, Mr. Nielsen told his clients, “when you add verbiage to a page, you can assume that customers will read 18 percent of it.” And that, he cautioned, is almost certainly an overstatement. It is unlikely that the people in the study were spending all their time reading; they were also probably glancing at pictures, videos, advertisements, and other types of content. Mr. Nielsen’s analysis backed up the conclusions of the German researchers themselves. They had reported that most Web pages are viewed for ten seconds or less. Fewer than one in tend page views extend beyond two minutes, and a significant portion of those seem to involve “unattended browser windows…left open in the background of the desktop.” The researchers observed that “even new pages with plentiful information and many links are regularly viewed for a brief period.” However, with many people still have 4GLTE mobile phones, advertisers can get several seconds more of free advertisement from certain formats because the phones freeze up and leave their content on the phone for longer than they have paid for, so it is like with the older technology, firms get more for their dollar. Overall, however, results seem to “confirm that browsing is a rapidly interactive activity.” The results also reinforce something that Mr. Nielsen wrote in 1997 after his first study of online reading. “How do users read on the web?” he asked then. His succinct answer is: “They do not.” Many types of reading are important. The most visible sign of our increasing separateness and, in its turn, the cause of ever greater separateness is divorce. It has a deep influence on our universities because more and more of the students are products of it, and they do not only have problems themselves but also affect other students and the general atmosphere. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Divorce in America is the most palpable indication that people are not made to live together, and that, although they want and need to create a general will out of the particular wills, those particular wills constantly reassert themselves. There is a quest, but ever more hopeless, for arrangements and ways of putting the broken pieces back together. The task is equivalent to squaring the circle, because everyone loves oneself most but wants others to love one more than one loves themselves. Such is particularly the demand of children, against which parents are now rebelling. In the absence of a common good or common object, as Mr. Rousseau puts it, the disintegration of society into particular wills is inevitable. Selfishness in this case is not a moral vice or a sin but a natural necessity. The “Me generation” and “narcissism” are merely descriptions, not causes. The solitary savage in the state of nature cannot be blamed for thinking primarily of oneself, nor can a person who lives in a World where the primacy of oneself, nor can a person who lives in a World where the primacy of self-concern is only too evident in the most fundamental institutions, where the original selfishness of the state of nature remains, where concern for the common good is hypocritical, and where morality seems to be squarely on the side of selfishness. Or, to put it otherwise, the concern with self-development, self-expression, or growth, which flourished as a result of the optimistic faith in a preestablished harmony between such a concern and society or community, has gradually revealed itself to be inimical to community. A young person’s qualified or conditional attachment to divorced parents merely reciprocates what one necessarily sees as their conditional attachment to one, and is entirely different from the classic problem of loyalty to families, or other institutions, which were clearly dedicated to their members. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
In the past, such breaking away was sometimes necessary but always morally problematic. Today it is normal, and this is another reason why the classical literature is alien to so many of our young, for it is largely concerned with liberation from real claims—like family, faith, or country—whereas now the movement is in the opposite direction, a search for claims on oneself that have some validity. Children who have gone to the school of conditional relationships should be expected to view the World in the light of what they learned there. Children may be told over and over again that their parents have a right to their own lives, that they will enjoy quality time instead of quantity time, that they are really loved by their parents even after divorce, but children do not believe any of this. They think they have a right to total attention and believe their parents must live for them. There is no explaining otherwise to them, and anything less inevitably produces indignation and an inextirpable sense of injustice. To children, the voluntary separation of parents seems worse than their death precisely because it is voluntary. The capriciousness of wills, their lack of directedness to the common good, the fact that they could be otherwise but are not—these are the real source of the war of all against all. Children learn a fear of enslavement to the wills of others, along with a need to dominate those wills, in the context of the family, the one place where they are supposed to learn the opposite. Of course, many families are unhappy. However, that is irrelevant. The important lesson that the family taught was the existence of the only unbreakable bond, for better or for worse, between human beings. The decomposition of this bond is surely America’s most urgent social problem. However, nobody even tries to do anything about it. The tide seems to be irresistible. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Among the many items on the agenda of those promoting America’s moral regeneration, I never find marriage and divorce. The last time anyone in public office took a crack at anything like this issue was when President Trump urged Federal civil servants living together out of wedlock to get married. He said, “Marriage is a very beautiful and wonderful experience, something that everyone should enjoy. When I married, it was courtly love, and was one of the happiest moments in my parents’ lives.” Courtly love, the literary invention of medieval troubadours, is one thing and, unlike the proverbial and unchanging wheel, has been constantly reinvented. Courtly love is a manifestation that acknowledges the tenderness of romance, but incorporates it into a great passion guided not by carnality but rather by the highest moral and aesthetic values. Courtly love is an exalted state between a man and a superior woman he both respects and adores with quasi-religious fervor. Her love tests his resolve, firmness, and loyalty, for it is difficult to obtain. It is also immensely ennobling, so that his very suffering strengths every aspect of his being: his military prowess, social standards, even his moral and religious perspectives. Sometimes, the mere thought of his beloved triggers these holistic improvements. The rules of courtly love are the inherently painful ceaseless meditation on the beauty of one’s beloved, whom one glimpses from time to time but cannot possess. The ideal, seldom fulfilled, is total union with the beloved, to whom one is almost never married. O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell, let it not be among the jumbled heap of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,–Nature’s observatory—whence the dell, its flowery slops, its river’s crystal swell, may seem a span; let me thy vigils keep ‘mongst boughs pavillion’s, where the deer’s swift leap startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
But though I will gladly trace these scenes with thee, yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, whose words are images of thoughts refin’d, is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be almost the highest bless of human-kind, when to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. The moon is full the spring nights grow longer, in the north forests startled crows cry out. Past loves are a thousand miles farther each day, still the season’s changes can stir the heart. As one who with pain and suffering has cut a path through a trackless wilderness, and then looks back to observe joyfully other humans travelling easily the roadway one has chartered, so did out forefathers bless their lot as the bearers of salvation, saying: “How goodly is our portion, how blessed our lot, how beautiful our heritage!” Verily our ancestors regarded their role in history as a sign of God’s grace, a token of the love of the Almighty for America, and through America for all human. (Oh, by the way, America is seen as a brand and live styles in many countries, so there are people in China, Japan, and Korea, for example, who believe they are the real Americans. This shows you how manifest destiny and the America Dream is real.) For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples. May we, the latter day children of America continue our people’s historic quest for God and His law of righteousness, and together with our fellowmen, may we establish His kingdom of truth, justice and peace. And the Lord shall be King over all the Earth, on that day, the Lord shall be One, and His name one. The history of America is the great living proof of the working of divine Providence in the affairs of the World. Alone among the nations America has shared all great movements since humankind became conscious of their destinies. If there is no divine purpose in the long travail of America, it is vain to seek for any such purpose in humans’ life. In the reflected light of that purpose each American should lead one’s life with an added dignity. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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The Empire’s Most Sacred Secrets
The eleven o’ clock television news and the front pages of our newspaper compete with our imagination’s attempts to create the bizarre. Reality is now not only stranger than fiction but a stranger to common sense. At the moment when the natural environment was altered beyond the point that it could be personally observed, the definitions of knowledge itself began to change. No longer based on direct experience, knowledge began to depend upon scientific, technological, industrial proof. Scientists, technological, industrial, economist and the medias which translate and disseminate their findings and opinions became our source. Now they tell us what nature is, what we are, how we are related to the cosmos, what we need for survival and happiness, and what are the appropriate ways to organize our existence. There is little wonder, therefore, what we should be being to doubt the evidence of our own experience and begin to be blind to the self-evident. Our experience is not valid until science says it is. It also of little wonder that we feel removed from participation in most of the lagers issues which shape our lives. We feel removed because we are removed. As we continue to separate ourselves from direct experience of the planet, the hierarchy of techno-scientism advances. This creates astounding problems for a society that is supposed to be democratic. In democracies, by definition, all human beings should have a say about technological developments that may profoundly change, even threaten, their lives: nuclear power, genetic engineering, the spread of microwave systems, the advance of satellite communications, and the ubiquitous use of computers, to name only a few. And yet, in order to participate fully in discussions of the implications of these technologies one must have training in at least physics, psychology, biology, philosophy, economics, and social and political theory. Any of these technologies has profound influence in all those areas. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Because most of us are not so trained, all discussion takes place among our unelected surrogates, professionals and experts. They do not have this full range of training either, but they do have access to one or another area of it and can speak to each other in techno-jargon—“tradeoffs,” “cost-benefits,” “resource management”—and they therefore get to argue with each other over one side of the question or the other while the rest of us watch. That their technological training and the language they use excludes from their frame of reference a broader, more subtle system of information and values rarely seems to occur to them. The alternative to leaving all discussion to the experts would be to take another route entirely. That would be to define a line beyond which democratic control—which is to day full participation of the populace in the details of decision that affect all of us—is not possible, and then to say that anything which crosses this line is taboo. Yet, the notion of taboo is itself taboo in our society, and the idea of outlawing whole technologies is virtually unthinkable. Taboo systems of earlier cultures were not quite the darkly irrational frameworks we now believe them to have been. Most often they reflected knowledge taken from nature and then modified by human experience over time. Their purpose was to articulate and preserve natural balances in a given area or within a given group of people at a particular time. They were statements about when too far is too far. This sensitivity to natural balances, which was the basis of virtually every culture before our own, has now been suppressed by our modern belief that science and technology can solve all problems and that, therefore, all technologies which can be created ought to be. The question of natural balance is now subordinated. Evolution is defined less in terms of planetary process than technological process. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The planet and its information are now considered less relevant than human ingenuity, an idiotic and dangerous error shielded from exposure only the walls of precious assumption and the concrete of the physical forms within which we live. Ivan Illich, a leading critic of the expropriation of knowledge into a nether World of experts and abstractions, argues in Medical Nemesis that professional medicine may be causing more harm than good. We go to the doctors as we go to mechanics. They speak a language that remains impenetrable to us. We take their cures on faith. Illich remarks that this may be producing more illness than cure: It has separated the people from knowledge about keeping themselves healthy, a knowledge that was once ingrained in the culture. Although some of our techno-scientific methods work, some do not, and the doctors who use them may not understand them or may be inexpert in their use. The doctors, Illich believes, are also taking the validity of techno-medicine on faith. Their source is usually the chemical and drug industry, which has a stake in disrupting natural healing methods. How else could they sell their chemical? Every technology is an expression of human will. Through our tools, we seek to expand our power and control over circumstances—over nature, over time and distance, over one another. Intellectual technologies are tools we used to extend or support our mental powers—to find and classify information, to formulate and articulate ideas, to share know-how and knowledge, to take measurements and performance calculations, to expand the capacity of our memory. The typewriter is an intellectual technology. So are the abacus and the slide rule, the sextant and the globe, the book and the newspaper, the school and the library, the computer and the Internet. Although the use of any kind of tool can influence our thoughts and perspectives—the plow changed the outlook of the farmer, the microscope opened New Worlds of mental exploration for the scientist—it is our intellectual technologies that have the greatest and most lasting power over what and how we think. They are our most intimate tools, the one we use for self-expression, for shaping personal and public identity, and for cultivating relations with others. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
For centuries, historians and philosophers have traced, and debated technology’s role in shaping civilization. Some have made the case for what the sociologist Thorstein Veblen dubbed “technological determinism”; they have argued that technological progress, which they see as an autonomous force outside man’s control, has been the primary factor influencing the course of human history. The windmills give you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist. Our essential role is to produce every more sophisticated tools—to fecundate machines as bees fecundate planets—until technology has developed the capacity to reproduce itself on its own. At that point, we become dispensable. Our instruments are the means we use to achieve our ends; they have no ends of their own. Instrumentalism is the most widely held view of technology, not least because it is the view we would prefer to be true. Technology is technology, it is a means for communication and transportation over space, and nothing more. If the experience of modern society shows us anything, it is that technologies are not merely assistants to human activity, but also powerful forces acting to reshape that activity and its meaning. Though we are rarely conscious of the fact, many technologies that came into use long before we were born. It is an overstatement to say that technology progresses autonomously—our adoption and use of tools are heavily influenced by economic, political, and demographic considerations—but it is not an overstatement to say that process has its own logic, which is not always consistent with the intentions or wishes of the toolmakers and tool users. Sometimes our tools do what we tell them to. Other times, we adapt ourselves to our tools’ requirement. Technological advances often mark turning points in history. New tools for hunting and farming brought changes in patterns of population growth, settlement, and labor. New modes of transport led to expansions and realignments of trade and commerce. New weaponry altered the balance of power between states. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Other breakthroughs, in fields as various as medicine, metallurgy, and magnetism, changes the way people life in innumerable ways—and continue to do so today. In large measure, civilization has assumed its current form as a result of the technologies people have come to use. What has been harder to discern is the influence of technologies, particularly intellectual technologies, on the functioning of people’s brains. We can see the products of thought—works of art, scientific discoveries, symbols preserved on documents—but not the thought itself. There are plenty of fossilized bodies, but there are no fossilized minds. If at all, since the late Stone Age, human heredity seems to have changed very little, while human social life, habits, have changed completely, have undergone revision and reversal. The process of our mental and social adaptation to new intellectual technologies is reflected in, and reinforced by, the changing metaphors we use to portray and explain the workings of nature. Once maps had become common, people began to picture all sorts of natural and social relationships as cartographic, as a set of fixed, bounded arrangements in real or figurative space. We began to “map” our lives, our social sphere, even our ideas. Under the sway of the mechanical clock, people began thinking of their brains and their bodies—of the entire Universe, in fact—as operating “like clockwork.” In the clock’s tightly interconnected gears, turning in accord with the laws of physics and forming a long and traceable chain of cause and effect, we found a mechanistic metaphor that seemed to explain the workings of all thing, as well as the relations between them. God became the Great Clockmaker. His creation was no longer a mystery to be accepted. It was a puzzle to be worked out. Doubtless when the swallows come in spring, they operate like clocks. The map and clock changed language indirectly, by suggesting new metaphors to describe natural phenomena. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Other intellectual technologies change language more directly, and more deeply, by actually altering the way we speak and listen and write. They might enlarge or compress our vocabulary, modify the norms of diction or word order, or encourage either simpler or more complex syntax. Because language is, for human beings, the primary vessel of conscious thought, particularly higher forms of thought, the technologies that restructure language tend to exert the strongest influence over our intellectual lives. Technologies are not mere exterior assistants, but also interior transformations of consciousness, and never more than when they affect the word. The history of language is also a history of the mind. Language itself it not a technology. It is native to our species. Our brains and bodies have evolved to speak and to hear words. A child learns to talk without instruction, as a fledgling bird learns to fly. Because reading and writing have become so central to our identity and culture, it is easy to assume that they, too, are innate talents. However, they are not. Reading and writing are unnatural acts, made possible by the purposeful development of the alphabet and many other technologies. Our minds have to be taught how to translate the symbolic characters we see into language we understand. Reading and writing require schooling and practice, the deliberate shaping of our brain. Evidence of this shaping process can be seen in many neurological studies. Experiments have revealed that the brains of the literate differ from the brains of the illiterate in many ways—not only in how they understand language but in how they process visual signals, how they reason, and how they form memories. Learning how to read has been show to powerfully shape the adult neuropsychological systems. Brain scans have also revealed that people whose written language uses logographic symbols, like the Mandarin Chinese language does, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is considerably different from the circuitry found in people whose written language employs a phonetic alphabet. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Although all reading makes use of some portions of the frontal and temporal lobes for planning and for analyzing sounds and meanings in words, logographic systems appear to activate very distinctive parts of [those] areas, particularly regions involved in motoric memory skills. Differences in brain activity have even been documented among readers of different alphabetic languages. Readers of English, for instance, have been found to draw more heavily on areas of the brain associated with deciphering visual shapes than do readers of Italian. The difference stems, it is believed, from the fact that English words often look very different from the way they sound, whereas in Italian words tend to be spelled exactly as they are spoken. The Sumerians and the Egyptians had to develop neural circuits that literally crisscrossed the cortex, linking areas involved not only in seeing and sense-making but in hearing, spatial analysis, and decision making. As these logosyllabic systems expanded to include many hundreds of characters, memorizing and interpreting them because so mentally taxing tht their use was probably restricted to an intellectual elite blessed with a lot of time and brain power. For writing technology to process beyond the Sumerian and Egyptian models, for it to become a tool used by the many rather than the few, it had to get a whole that simpler. Writing makes the people wise and improves their memories. In a completely oral culture, thinking is governed by the capacity of human memory. Knowledge is what you recall, and what you recall is limited to what you can hold in your mind. In oral cultures, they believe that writing implants forgetfulness in their souls: they cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling thing to remembrance no longer from withing themselves, but by the means of external marks. Laws, records, transactions, decisions, traditions—everything that today would be “documented”—in oral cultures had to be composed in formulaic verse, and distributed by being sung or chanted aloud. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The oral World of our distant ancestors may well have had emotional and intuitive depths that we can no longer appreciate. Preliterate peoples must have enjoyed a particularly intense sensuous involvement with the World. When we learned to read, we suffered a considerable detachment from the feelings or emotional involvement that a nonliterate human or society would experience. However, our ancestors’ oral culture was in many ways a shallower one than our own. The written word liberated knowledge from the bounds of individual memory and freed language from the rhythmical and formulaic structures required to support memorization and recitation. It opened up to the mind broad new frontiers of thought and expression. The achievements of the Western World, it is obvious, are testimony to the tremendous values of literacy. Oral cultures could produce powerful and beautiful verbal performances of high artistic and human worth, which are no longer even possible once writing has taken possession of the psyche. However, literacy is absolutely necessary for the development not only of science but also of history, philosophy, explicative understanding of literature and of any art and indeed for the explanation of language (including oral speech) itself. The ability to write is utterly invaluable and indeed essential for the realization of fuller, interior, human potentials. Writing heightens consciousness. I used to think that young Americans began whatever education they were to get at the age of eighteen, that their early lives were spiritually empty and that they arrived at the university clean slates unaware of their deeper selves and the World beyond superficial experience. The contrast between then and their European counterparts was set in high relief in the European novels and movies into which we were initiated at the university. The Europeans got most of the culture they were doing to get from their homes and their public schools, lycées, or gymnasiums, where their souls were incorporated into their specific literary traditions, which in turn expressed, and even founded, their traditions as peoples. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
It was not that their self-knowledge was mediated by their book learning and that their ambitions were formed as much by models first experienced in books as in everyday life. Their books had a substantial existence in everyday life and constituted much of what their society as a whole looked up to. It was commonplace for children of what they called good families to fill their imaginations with hopes of serious literary or philosophic careers, as do ours with hopes of careers in entertainment or business. All this was given to them early on, and by the time they were in their late teens it was part of the equipment of their souls, a lens through which they saw everything and which would affect all their later learning and experience. They went to the university to specialize. Americans were, in effect, told that they could be whatever they wanted to be or happened to be as long as they recognized that the same applied to all other humans and they were willing to support and defend the government that guaranteed that dispensation. It is possible to become an American in a day. And this is not to make light of what it means to be an American. The lack of American equivalents to Descartes, Pascal, or, for that matter, Montaigne, Rabelais, Racine, Montesquieu, and Rousseau is not a question of quality, but of whether there are any writers who are necessary to building our spiritual edifice, whom one must have read, or rather lived with, to be called educated, and who are the interpreters and even makers of our national life. Contrary to much contemporary wisdom, the United States of America has one of the longest uninterrupted political traditions of any nation in the World. What is more, that tradition is unambiguous; its meaning is articulated in simple, rational speech that is immediately comprehensible and powerfully persuasive to all normal human beings. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
America tells one story: the unbroke, ineluctable progress of freedom and equality. From its first settlers and its political founding on, there has been no dispute that freedom and equality are the essence of justice for us. No one serious or notable has stood outside this consensus. One would have to be a crank or a buffoon to get attentions as a nonbeliever in the democracy. All significant political disputes have been about the meaning of freedom and equality, not about their rightness. Nowhere else is there a tradition or a culture whose message is so distinct and unequivocal. Americanness generated a race of heroes—Franklin, Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Alexander Augusta, Abraham Galloway, Frederick Douglas, Robert Smalls, Susie King Taylor, and so on—all of whom contributed to equality. Our heroes and the language of the Declaration contribute to a national reverence for our Constitution, also a unique phenomenon. All this is material for self-consciousness and provides a superior moral significance to humdrum lives as well as something to study. However, many students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it. The other element of fundamental primary learning that has disappeared is religion. As the respect for the Sacred—the latest fad—has soared, real religion and knowledge of the Bible have diminished to the vanishing point. God walked very tall in our political life and in our schools. Presidents still prayer for this nation and our money still says “In God We Trust.” The Lord’s prayers were silently said in grade school when I was a child and we used to have to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day. If you look at it, although America is not perfect, you really won the lottery to have God bless you with being born in America this day and age and not in a developing nation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Nonetheless, it is also the home—and the houses of worship related to it—where religion lives. The holy days and the common language and set of references that permeate most households constitutes a large part of the family bond and gives it substantial content. Moses and the Tables of the Law, Jesus and His preaching of brotherly love, have an imaginative existence. Passages from the Psalms and the Gospels echo in children’s heads. Attending church or synagogue, praying at the table, are a way of life, inseparable from the moral education that is supposed to be the family’s special responsibility in this democracy. Actually, the moral teaching is the religious teaching. There is no abstract doctrine. The things one is supposed to do, the sense that the World supported one and punished disobedience, are all incarnate in the Biblical stories. The loss of the gripping inner life vouchsafed those who were furthered by the Bible must be primarily attributed not to our schools or political life, but to the family, which, with all its rights to privacy, has proved unable to maintain to any content of its own. The dreariness of the family’s spiritual landscape passes belief. It is as monochrome and unrelated to those who pass through it as are the barren steppes frequented by nomads who take their mere subsistence and move on. The delicate fabric of the civilization into which the successive generations are woven has unraveled, and children are raised, not educated. We are not speaking here of the unhappy, broken homes that are such a prominent part of American life, but the relatively happy ones, where husband and wife like each other and care about their children, very often unselfishly devoting the best parts of their lives to them. However, they have nothing to give their children in the way of a vision of the World, of a high model of action or profound sense of connection with others. The family requires the most delicate mixture of nature and convention, of human and divine, to subsist and perform its function. Its base is merely bodily reproduction, but it is purpose is the formation of civilized human beings. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The family requires a certain authority and wisdom about the ways of the Heavens and of humans. The parents must have knowledge of what has happened in the past, and prescriptions for what ought to be, in order to resist the philistinism or the wickedness of the present. Ritual and ceremony are now often said to be necessary for the family, and they are now lacking. However, if its ritual and ceremony are to express and transmit the wonder of the moral law, which it alone is capable of transmitting and which makes it special in a World devoted to the humanly, all too humanly, useful, the family has to be a sacred unity believing in the permanence of what it teaches. When that belief disappears, as it has, the family has, at best, a transitory togetherness. People sup together, play together, travel together, but they do not think together. Hardly any homes have any intellectual life whatsoever, let alone one that informs the vital interests of life. Educational TV marks the high tide for family intellectual life. The cause of this decay of the family’s traditional role as the transmitter of tradition is the same as that of the decay of the humanities: nobody believes that old books do, or even could, contain the truth. In the United States of America, the Holy Bible was the only common culture, one that united simple and sophisticated, rich and poor, young and old, and—as the very model for a vision of the order of the whole of things, as well as the key to the rest of Western art, the greatest works of which were in one way our another responsive to the Bible—provided access to the seriousness of books. With its gradual and inevitable disappearance, they very idea of such a total book and the possibility and necessity of World-explanation is disappearing. And fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise—as priests, prophets, or philosophers are wise. Specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine. Contrary to what is commonly thought, without the book even the idea of the order of the whole gets lost. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Parents do not have the legal or moral authority they have in the Old World. They lack self-confidence as educators of their children, generously believing that they will be better than their parents, no only in well-being, but in moral, bodily and intellectual virtue. There is always a more or less open belief in progress, which the past appears poor and contemptible. The future, which is open-ended, cannot be prescribed to by parents, and it eclipses the past which they know to be inferior. Along with the constant newness of everything and the ceaseless overturned moving from place to place, first radio, then television, have assaulted and overturned the privacy of the homes, the real American privacy, which permitted the development of a higher and more independent life within democratic society. Parents can no longer control the atmosphere of the home an have even lost the will to do so. With great subtlety and energy, television enters not only the room, but also the tastes of old and young alike, appealing to the immediately pleasant and subverting whatever does not conform to it. The newspaper has replaced the prayer in the life of the modern bourgeois, meaning that they busy, the cheap, the ephemeral, has usurped all that remains of the eternal in one’s daily life. Now television has replaced the newspaper. It is not so much the low quality of the fare provided that it is troubling. It is much more the difficulty of imagining order of taste, any way of life with pleasures and learning that naturally fit the lives of the family’s members, keeping itself distinct from the popular culture and resisting the visions of what is admirable and interesting with which they are bombarded from within the household itself. The improved education of the vastly expanded middle class in the last half-century has also weakened the family’s authority. Almost everyone in the middle class has a college degree, and most have an advanced degree of some kind. However, their homes are not spiritually rich like one’s grandparents’ home were. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Grandparents did a lot of things to make their homes spiritual. They were modest, did not adhere to popular culture, were specifically ritual, and found their origin in the Bible’s commandments, and their explanation in the Bible’s stories and the commentaries on them, and had their imaginative counterparts in the deeds of the myriad of exemplary heroes. My grandparents found reasons for the existence of their family and the fulfillment of their duties in serious writings, and they interpreted their special sufferings with respect to a great and ennobling the past. Their simple faith and practices linked them to great scholars and thinkers who dealt with the same material, but from outside or from an alien perspective, but believing as they did, while simply going deeper and providing guidance. There was a respect for real learning, because it had a felt connection with their lives. This is what a community and a history mean, a common experience inviting high and low into a single body of belief. I do not believe that my generation, my cousins who have been educated in the American way, all of whom are M.D.s or Ph.D.s, have any comparable learning. I am not saying anything so trite as that life is fuller when people have myths to live by. I mean rather that life based on the Book is closer to the truth, that it provides the material for deeper research in and access to the real nature of things. Without the great revelations, epics and philosophies as part of our natural vision, there is nothing to see out there, and eventually little left inside. The Bible is not the only means to furnish a mind, but without a book of similar gravity, read with the gravity of the potential believer, it will remain unfurnishes. If it cannot present to the imagination of the young a vision of a moral cosmos and of the rewards and punishments for good and evil, sublime speeches that accompany and interpret deeds, protagonists and antagonist in the drama of moral choice, a sense of the stakes involved in such choice, and the despair that results when the World is “disenchanted,” the moral education that is today supposed to be the great responsibility of the family cannot exist. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Otherwise, education becomes the vain attempt to give children “values.” Beyond the fact that parents do not know what they believe, and surely do not have the self-confidence to tell their children much more than that they want them to be happy and fulfill whatever potential they may have, values are such pallid things. Actually, the family’s moral training now comes down to include the bare minima of social behaviour, not lying or stealing, and produces university students who can say nothing more about the ground of their moral action, “If I did that to him, he could do it to me,”—and explanation which does not even satisfy those who utter it. The loss of books has made the young narrower and flatter. Narrower because they lack what is most necessary, a real basis for discontent with the present and awareness that there are alternatives to it. Narrower because they lack what is most necessary ra real basis for discontent with the present and awareness that there are alternatives to it. They are both more contented with what is and despairing of ever escaping from it. The very models of admiration and contempt have vanished. Flatter, because without interpretations of things, without the poetry or the imagination’s activity, their souls are like mirrors, not of nature, but of what is around. The refinement of the mind’s eye that permits it to see the delicate distinctions among humans, among their deeds and their motives, and constitutes real taste, is impossible without the assistance of literate in the grand style. So there is less soil in which university teaching can take root, less of the enthusiasm and curiosity. It is much more difficult today to attach the classic books to any experience or felt need the students have. The youth’s literature and religion are becoming ignorant and thin, yet they have two invaluable properties. First, they are grounded in the existing situation, whatever the situation, without moralistic or invidious judgment of it. It is in this sense that Henry Miller is their literary father. Their experience is withdrawn. (Miller’s too does not add up.) Their religion is unfeasible, for one cannot richly meet the glancing present, like Zen, without patriotic loyalty, long discipleship, and secure subsistence. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Nevertheless, their writing has a pleasant bare surface, and it is experience. It is often bombastic, but on the average it is more primary than other writing we have been getting in America. A second valuable property of the youth’s style is that it tries to be action, not a reflection or comment. We say that, in both their conversation and heightened experience, this action does not amount to much, for they do not have the weight or beauty to make much difference. However, their persistent effort at the effective community reading, appearing as themselves in their own clothes, and willing to offend or evoke some other live response; and also their creative playing (especially if it would become more like the Bali dances), are efforts for art and letters as living action, rather than the likeness to literature that we have been getting in the Kenyon Review and the Partisan Review. Religiously, they are making a corrigible error. What they intend, it seems to me, is not the feudal Zen Buddhism, which is far too refined for them and for our times, but Taoism, the peasant ancestor of Zen. Tao is a faith for the voluntary less affluent, for it teaches us to get something from the act of wresting a living with independent integrity. It is, as youth intends to be, individual or small-group anarchy. If the youth would think this through, they would know better how to claim their subsistence under better conditions, and perhaps they would have more World. Tao teaches, too, divine experience from the body and its breathing. In this it is like the doctrine of Wilhelm Reich, much esteemed by the youth but now followed by them. The magic they are after is natural and group magic, and they need not be so dependent on ancient superstitions and modern barbiturates. Most important, Tao traches the blessedness of confusion. Tao is not enlightened, it does not know the score. Confusion is the state of promise, the fertile void where surprise is possible again. Confusion is in fact the state that we are in, and we should be wise to cultivate it. If young people are not floundering these days, they are not following the Way. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
The actualized Christian is murky, confused. Block the passage. Shut the door. Droop and drift as though one belongs nowhere. So dull one is. All humans can be put to some use, one alone is intractable and boorish. It is square to be hip. The basic words of our jargon are “Search me,” “Kid,” “I couldn’t give you a clue,” “I’m murky.” “Creator spirit, come.” Although the Council of Nicea banned self-castration and barred eunuchs from priesthood in 325, and Roman legislation from the first to the fifth centuries forbade the castration of slaves, even the noblest families often opted to castrate their sons. The reason? Social and professional advancement, especially in the military. By the tenth century, eunuchs dominated the imperial court, army, and civil service rose to the highest offices. Their success was due to one simple factor—their sterility. No matter what, no eunuch would intrigue on behalf of a son. In consequence, eunuchs were considered so reliable they formed the core of the bureaucracy and provided an important balance to the hereditary nobility. The eunuch Narses was the Emperor Justinian’s immensely power and successful grand chamberlain and later, in ripest old age, the general known as the Hammer of the Goths after he demonstrated great military prowess, even genius, in routing them. Narses’ birth date is uncertain, but he died sometime between 566 and 574, at anywhere from eighty-six to ninety-six years of age, famous, fabulously wealthy, and widely esteemed, among the few [eunuchs] who have rescued that unhappy name from the contempt and hatred of humankind. At first, only foreigners or slaves were castrated, but as the institution of eunuchism developed, even emperors castrated their sons to eliminate rivals or to place them in such high positions as the Orthodox Church’s bishop, patriarchy of Constantinople, which required celibacy, preferably of the eunuch variety. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Military eunuchs had brilliant careers as admirals and generals. The grand chamberlain, a supremely powerful imperial official, was usually a eunuch. In the palace, eunuch were wardrobe-keepers, controllers of the imperial purse, estate managers, majordomos, and highest of all, superintendents of the scared bedchamber and, inevitably, repositories of the empire’s most intimate secrets. Eunuchs were often the booty of piracy, kidnapping, and tribal wars. Because so few castrates lived—Emperor Justinian believed that only slightly more than 3 percent survived the operation—they were extremely valuable, fetching three times the price of a genitally intact boy. Unlike the Chinese and Ottoman equivalents, many Byzantine eunuchs had the less radical testicles-only operation. A doctor sometimes forced to perform these mutilations described the two procedures. The compression method consisted of soaking young boys in hot water and then squeezing their testicles until they were crushed into nothingness. In the more drastic excision method, both testicles were surgically removed, which produced eunuchs who, unlike their testicularly compressed brothers, allegedly experience no erotic sensation at all. Excision was preferable to compression because it eliminated even more desire for pleasures of the flesh. However, when the operation was performed on a postadolescent youth, there was no guarantee it would remove his ability to achieve an excited status. It happened, therefore, that on rare occasions, a eunuch has pleasures of the flesh with a palace woman. Whenever such a liaison was discovered, the eunuch offender was executed. The mere possibility of such a scandal was so great that eunuchs who displayed homosexual tendencies were tolerated and sometimes even welcomed. Ironically, homosexuality was punished by castration, leading the public to equate eunuchs with homosexuality. Homosexuality was also the preferred charge against those suspected of plotting against the emperor. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
As was the case with their desexed compatriots elsewhere, the sexual incapacity of the Byzantine eunuchs earned them their masters’ trust, and they were often assigned to positions that involved considerable intimacy with women. Their presence bolstered the separation between the genders—eunuchs were, after all, the “third gender.” Sometimes, though, members of the third gender acted suspiciously as if they belonged to the first. The more gently castrated Byzantine eunuchs managed to escape enforced celibacy far more often than their more damaged, penis-lacking peers. This, despite the threat of death if their lovers were palace women. When the lure of lust was too strong, eunuch indulged as best they could, the spirit urging them on even when the flesh was seriously flawed. Others, less lascivious or more sexually incapacitated, focused instead on the career opportunities available to a talented and industrious eunuch. If intense ambition drove them more than sensuality, they were admirably positioned to reach the highest ranks of either civil administration or military command, and to influence imperial policy, amass personal fortunes, earn enduring reputations, and satisfy almost every human craving expect pleasures of the flesh. Now, when we look at the economy, the failure of many economists to grasp the profundity of today’s revolutionary change is ironic. It is not the first-time brilliance walked arm in arm with myopia. Francois Quenary was a genius. He was also the official physician of Louis XV’s famous mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Son of a commoner, he did not learn to read until he was eleven. However, once he did, he never stopped. He quickly taught himself Latin and Greek. For a time he worked for an engraver, then enrolled in medical school, became a surgeon and a renowned expert on blood. Over the years, he rose to the pinnacle of French medicine and won his place in the palace of Louis VX. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Quesnay, however, had more than medicine or Madame de Pompadour on his inquisitive mind. In the cramped entresol over Madame’s quarters, he made a deep study of agricultural economics. He was frequently visited there, we are told, by Turgot, who later became the controller general of finances under Louis XVI, and by other thinkers and doers of the time. He contributed articles to Diderot’s great Encylopedie on subjects such as farmers and grains. He wrote about taxes, interest rates and subjects as far afield as the Incas of Peru and despotism in China. By 1758 Quesnay’s ideas about economics had sufficiently crystalized for him to publish Tableau Economique, a remarkable precursor of the much more complex input-output tables for which Wassily Leontief won the Nobel Prize in 1973. In the Tableau, Quesnay compared the economy to the circulation of blood in the body. This analogy turned out to have powerful political implications—both in his time and ours. For if the economy is, in fact, naturelike and homeostatic, he believed, it would naturally seek equilibrium. And if that were the case, Quesnay argued, the French government’s mercantilist policies and its endless regulations of trade and manufacture interfered with the natural balance of the economy. Soon a group calling themselves the Physiocrats sprang up around Quesnay and began to extend and promote these ideas. Quesnay himself came to be regarded as one of the greatest penseurs in the West—a thinker some even compared to Socrates and Confucius. Yet Quesnay made one fateful mistake. He insisted that the sole source of all wealth was agriculture. For him and the Physiocrats, only the rural economy mattered. Indeed, he wrote, there were only three classes of people: peasants, landowners, and everybody else. The first two were productive, they very womb of wealth. Everyone else, for Quesnay, was a member of the “sterile class.” Brilliant as Quesnay might have been, he simply could not imagine an industrial society in which most wealth, in fact, would soon be coming from smoke-belching factories in cities, and from the hands and minds of precisely the “sterile class.” He missed the big picture. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Today, too, we find many economists suffering from Quesnay’s myopia, making brilliant contributions to components of a problem without examining the far larger picture into which they fit—including the social, cultural and political effects that come with revolutionary wealth. The time has come, in short, to inoculate ourselves against the Quesnay factor. And we will not be able to do that until we can separate true from false. The fulfillment of this meaning and this destiny is frustrated by the human who has become reconciled to the It-World as something that is experienced and used and who holds down what is tied into it instead of freeing it, who observes it instead of heeding it, and instead of receiving it utilized it. “Surely He has borne our griefs (sickness, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains [of punishment], yet we [ignorantly considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God [and is with leprosy]. However, He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned on every one to one’s sown way; and the Lord has made light upon Him the guilt and iniquity of us all,” reports Isaiah 53.4-6. We raise our face to God’s infinite sky, and thank Him for His Son, Jesus Christ. As we feel Christ’s touch of grace, it is like gentle raindrops kissing our skin. Through all things, Jesus Christ has loved us, and His spirit has touched us. He has never left us alone. We live our ideals not because they are ours, but because they are God’s. O Lord, wherefore hidest Thou Thyself, and forgettest our affliction and our oppression? In Thee did our fathers trust; they trusted and Thou didst deliver them. Unto Thee they cried and were saved; in Thee did they trust and were not ashamed. O God, keep Thou not silence; Hold not Thy peace and be not still. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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He Opened the Book and a Demon Spoke to Him
All good religions need some kind of Apocalypse. Thelema—the new religion of Aleister Crowley—was no exception. The Great Beast fully expected his new holy age, the Aeon of Horus, to be ushered in with an orgy of violence and bloodshed. With the advent of the First World War, the prophecy seemed to have been satisfied. Over four long years, the optimism and complacency of nineteenth-century Europe drowned in the mud of the Western Front, along with hundreds of thousands of young soldiers. However, Crowley seemed curiously indifferent to the whole affair. With typical arrogance, when the British Government refused his offer to produce war propaganda, the Luciferian man of letters travelled to the US to write anti-British propaganda. If he could not find recognition on the side of the angels, the Great Beast was always ready to side with the opposition. However, Crowley later claimed he wrote deliberately absurd material to discredit the German cause. His article on the bombing of London by Zeppelin airships gives credence to this eccentric defense: “For some reason or other in their last Zeppelin raid on London the Germans appear to have decided to make the damage as widespread as possible, instead of concentrating it in one quarter. A great deal of damage was done at Croydon, especially at its suburb Addiscombe, where my aunt lives. Unfortunately her house was not hit. Count Zeppelin is respectfully requested to try again. The exact address is Eton Lodge, Outram Road.” If World War One had been too minor a cataclysm to introduce Crowley’s Age of Horus, 1939 heralded a new orgy of human suffering. The Beast always maintained that the first nation to adopt his Book of the Law as a state religion would dominate the World. During the 1930s, however, as the Third Reich came to power, his ambivalence towards Germany—the country where his magical doctrines were taken most seriously—is perhaps understandable. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Some of his German followers saw in their new Fuhrer a political equivalent to their prophet, the Great Beast (perhaps even his “magical child”)—a new World order was to be created by the pure will-power of those extraordinary men. Some of his German followers saw in their new Fuhrer a political equivalent to their prophet, the Great Beast (perhaps even his “magical child”)—a New World Order was to be created by the pure will-power of these two extraordinary men. However, in 1935 the Nazis banned the Ordo Templi Orientis and the Order of the Silver Star, throwing numerous occultists (including Karl Germer, one of Crowley’s foremost disciples) into the concentration camps. There may have been similarities between Crowley’s Thelemic doctrines and emergent Nazi dogma (elitism, irrationalism, transcendence of morality), but the Great Beast could see on which side his future depended: Britain would “knock Hitler for six!” he announced. Whether or not the horrors of the Second World War signalled the advent of the Age of Horus, Adolf Hitler emerged from the blood and pain of that conflict as a secular Satan. Indeed, a minor literary industry has grown up around the idea of Hitler as a very literal Satanic figure suggests that the Fuhrer really did, in Dennis Wheatley’s words, “use dark forces.” The roots of this belief return us to the occult lodges of the late nineteenth century. In 1875, the writer and occultist Guido von List climbed a hill overlooking Vienna to conduct a strange ritual. Von List was dedicated to returning greater Germany to an older purer faith—the worship of Wotan, and the other pagan gods of the Teutonic race Upon the hill he commemorated the summer solstice by buying a number of empty wine bottles, carefully arranged into a sacred symbol: the swastika. In 1908 von List Founded the Armanen Initiates, the inner order of his modestly-titled Guido von List Society. His doctrines centered around ideas of racial purity—von List believed the German peoples, the Armenen, had originally been a race of supermen, but mongrelistation had weakened the race until bashful old Guido was its last pure-blood survivor. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
According to the race mystic, “The hydra-headed international Jewish conspiracy” was behind it all. To reverse matters, von List prescribed a study of ancient Teutonic religious runes and –more practically—laws to precent further racial interbreeding. His eventual gal was a racial state ruled by “a self-chosen Fuhrer to whom [Germany] willingly submits.” Alongside the swastika, the emblems of this new state would include the sig rune: the symbol later used to form the insignia of the SS. Guido von List was one of the leading Germanic mystics dedicated to “volkisch” occultism. “Volkisch” basically translates as “folkloric,” but this was also leavened with a hard-edged nationalism. Chief obsession among the volkisch orders were the sacred nature of race (or “blood”), an interest in the culture and beliefs of the Germanic peoples in the early Middle Ages, and a strong current of anti-Semitism. Among the most important of the volkisch occultists—some of whom fancied themselves the priests of a revived Norse religion—was Dr. Jorg Lanz von Libenfels. In many ways, a sorcerer in the classic mould, von Liebenfels adopted his aristocratic name to increase his mystique (his real name was Adolf Lanz), and began his career as a Catholic priest before being defrocked for “harbouring carnal and Worldly desires.” His response was to found an “order of New Templars”—quite what the original Templars had to do with racial purity is not clear, but it did not stop von Libenfels preaching a message of race war from his temple on the banks of the Danube. In 1909, a young Austrian named Adolf Hitler secured an audience with von Liebenfels to secure some back issues of Ostara, the journal of the New Templars. In 1932, von Liebenfels would write to a fellow occultist that “Hitler is one of our pupils…You will one day experience that he, and through him we, will one day be victorious, and develop a movement that will one day make the World tremble.” The most direct link between the occult underground and the Third Reich is the Thule Society. Thule, according to northern European myth, was a version of Atlantis, and island that sank beneath the sea. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Thule Society ideology decreed this legendary island to be the home of the German supermen, who they hoped to contact using magical techniques. In 1919, the Thule Society formed a tiny political group called the German Workers Party in Munich—the seed from which Hitler’s National Socialist Party grew. In the 1920s Germany of the Weimar Republic, volkisch occult groups sense that their time was coming. Losing the First World War left Germany politically chaotic, economically bankrupt and profoundly demoralized. Weimar Berlin earnt a reputation for decadence exceeding that of 1890s Paris—though there was a cynical desperation among the German hedonist that never surfaced amongst their French counterparts. For many ordinary citizens of “Greater Germany” (which included Austria), however, their feelings of disillusionment hardened into suspicions of betrayal. One such was the young war hero Hitler—who was convinced Germany’s forces were defeated by treachery at home, rendering the huge loss of life futile. Hitler, along with many others, was sure that the “November criminals” (government signatories of a peace treaty in November 1918) were responsible for the fatherland’s defeat and humiliation. And behind the November criminals were the treacherous Jewish people. In this environment, volkisch occultists found an eager audience for their fables of an ancient, noble Ayran race. They not only offered up a scapegoat for their defeat, but also created the mythology of a sacred Germanic blood heritage from which a humbled people could rebuild their pride. It is a long way from accepting that volkisch occultism helped create a spiritual environment friendly to Nazism to believing the Third Reich was a Satanic cult. (Buffy the Vampire Slayer was said to be symbolic of the rebirth of the Third Reich, maybe you can see the symbolism. This interesting thing is that Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played Buffy Summers is Jewish, but also reminiscent this Ayran super race.) #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The relationship between Nazism and volkism is similar to that between the radical African-American political groups and Black Islamic leaders who proclaim that the Man (the White Man) to be the Devil. Political leaders, as soon as they achieve any real power, are usually quick to distance themselves from such emotive spiritual propaganda. However, it is interesting how light and dark are used in Christian terms not to reflect colour, but the nature of one’s spirit. And when you see these people with soft features, pale skin, and these colourful eyes, it is hard to believe they do dark things, but when one sees someone with darker skin, people almost always consider them guilty. It is as if religious light has also been used to frame people based on skin colour, but when it comes down to it, people are capable of things that are bad no matter what colour their skin is, and as one grows up, once can see that skin colour matters very little in guilt or innocence. Nonetheless, total revolution also demanded a spiritual revolution. The Russian Revolution of 1917 had a similarly religious aspect. Communists were determined to uproot the Christian Church and replace it with religious loyalty to the State, and its socialist principles, which is why so many religious symbols in America are now banded on public builds, and next to be banned with be the America flag. Many people may thing that journalist Tomi Lahren of FOX News is a racist, but one should actually listen to what she is saying, and be objective about it. America is actually becoming a communist nation where the people have no power, laws are just recommendations, and the U.S. Constitution is being removed and stored in someone’s basement, much the Confederate Statues, and flags. Next, slavery will just be a conspiracy theory—it will be considered a myth. It is just like music, most real artists listen to all genera of music, but they have a typical style they love, and many scholars read all kinds of material so they can have a comprehensive view of what is going on in the World, instead of just be told only what the masses want them to know, but people love to label, which is why they are stuck in ignorance. #RandolpHarris 5 of 21
Bolsheviks held wild revels, called “African nights,” where Christian festivals were parodied in atheistic rites such as “Red Prayers,” and “Red Mass.” Obscene hymns were sung, and children were encouraged to spit upon and destroy puppets representing God, and other holy figures, in powerful echoes of the Black Mass medieval peasants. Hitler’s doctrines were no less revolutionary. Nazism was designed to revolutionize every aspect of life—even the way people thought—and the old ways were denounced as “Jewish,” “liberal.” Hitler despised “intellectuals,” advocating intuition, or even irrationalism, over logic and rational thoughts. In many ways the Nazis turned back the clock two hundred years, to when science and sorcery were still reluctant bedfellows. In the field of military technological innovation and instinct were promoted at the expense of methodology, liberating German scientist to creates some of the most efficient weapons of war the World had seen. Alfred Rosenberg, an intimate of Hitler and high-ranking Nazi official drew up plans for a National Reich Church, which was not going to destroy Christianity but “supercede” it, and called his new faith “positive Christianity.” He concluded: “On the day of its foundation, the Christian cross must be removed from all churches, cathedrals, and chapels and it must be superseded by the only unconquerable symbol, the Swastika.” However, what did the Swastika symbolize? Rosenberg wrote: “Today a new faith awakens: the myth of the blood, the faith that by defending the blood were defend also the divine nature of man. The faith, embodies in scientific clarity, that the Nordic blood represents the mystery which has replaced and conquered the ancient sacraments.” The historian Konrad Heiden beings his book on Der Fuhrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power with a curious story concerning Rosenberg: “One day in the summer of 1917 a student was reading in his room in Moscow. A stranger entered, laid a book on the table, and silently vanished. The cover of the book bore in Russian the words from the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew: “He is near, he is hard by the door.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
The sent sensed the masterful irony of higher powers in this strange happening. They had sent him a silent message. He opened the book, and the voice of the demon spoke to him. It was a message concerning the antichrist, who would come at the end of days. The Antichrist is no mythical being, no monkish medieval fantasy. It is the portrait of a type of man who comes to the fore when an epoch is dying. The Antichrist was supposedly Hitler. The Nazi began suppressing occultists and secret societies in 1934, in a purge that reached its peak in 1937. Thousands of astrologers and mystic disappeared into the concentration camps, never to appear again, which also proves Whoppie Goldberg’s states, “The Holocaust was about race.” Anyone who was deemed a threat to national security was sent to concertation camps, but in the same sense, the holocaust was about race, it was about preserving the Ayran race. Just anyone who was not Aryan could be a target, as it was more about preservation of their bloodline. Volkisch occultists were not spared. Even the Thule Society—the magi at the nativity of Nazim—was devoured by its ravenous offspring. The Nazi State would not tolerate anything outside its control, or that it had not created itself. Its tenant of faith was the destiny of the Aryan race, as expressed by its prophet Hitler. If this policy of spiritual and intellectual monopoly sounds familiar, it is because it resembles the doctrines of one of the institutions of the Nazis sought to replace: the Church. The Nazi party created its own priesthood—the Black Oder, better known as the Schutzstaffel, or SS. The SS began as Hitler’s bodyguards, but under Heinrich Himmler, manoeuvered and massacred their way to become the most powerful organization in the Nazi establishment. Like “house of God” of the medieval Inquisition, the SS policed the souls of those under their ever-expanding jurisdiction. The faithful were monitored, the suspect—even the volkish occultist who shared the Nazi vision of race—purged, the unholy exterminated. Himmler became the second most powerful man in the Third Reich. Any occultist who wished to survive in Nazi Germany was well-advised to find a place under Himmler’s wing. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Several men did—most significantly Karl Weisthor. Weisthor was born Karl Maria Wiligut in Vienna, 1866, to a family with a long military tradition, and was decorated for his service during the First World War. Following the war he became involved in volkisch occultism, adopting doctrines which were extreme even by volkisch standards. With the modesty characteristic of his ilk, Weisthor claimed to be descended from Ayran gods, the last living representative of the Irminist Church. The Irminists—who worshipped the true Christ, an Aryan called Krist—had been opposed throughout history by the false religion of the Catholic Church, their racial enemies the Jewish people, and Aryan heretics who worshipped the pagan god Wotan. Weisthor knew all of this because he possessed clairvoyance that allowed him to recall the heroic lives of his ancestors, thousands of years ago. Not everyone was impressed by the evidence, however, an in 1924 he was committed to a lunatic asylum. Undeterred, when he was released, he changed his name and headed to Munich. In 1933 he attracted the attention of Himmler, who installed the cranky medium in the Ahnenerbe department of the SS. Under Weisthor’s advice, a castle at Wewlsburg in north-west Germany was chosen as the spiritual headquarters of the Black Order. It became the Nazi equivalent of the Vatican, with great echoing chambers dedicated to the heroes of the Aryan race, and a central hall where Himmler and his twelve closet disciples would meet. Weisthor designed the SS “Totenkpfring” –a scared ring decorated with skulls and runes, personally bestowed upon SS members by Himmler and retuned to Wewelsburg upon their deaths. He also conceived and presided over neo-pagan solstice ceremonies, and the Weddings of SS officers to good Aryan girls. The Black Order was not just a military organization but a sect, a fraternity of warrior priests. Though it never claimed the heritage of the Knights Templar, the parallels between these two orders are striking. Both snowballed into vast international forces. Both maintained independent economic systems that allowed them to accumulate vast wealth. Both were composed of highly-disciplined warriors, fanatically dedicated to their creeds. Both were exempt from the laws that governed their contemporaries, answerable only to the head of their orders (Himmler of the Grand Master) and the representative of the sacred creed on Earth (Hitler or the Pope). Both planned to establish their own independent states. And both were, at least ostensibly Christian. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Weisthor’s faith may have incorporated much bizarre German paganism, but at the core he believed he was preaching Christianity. One of the oaths taken by SS candidates before the full initiation ran, “We believe in God, we believe in Germany which He created in His World and in the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, whom he has sent us.” One of the titles Himmler had bestowed on him by is peers was “the Black Jesuit,” as he based the structure of the SS upon the fanatically-secretive Catholic Society of Jesuits. Himmler, brought up in a devoutly-Catholic Bavarian household, never lost his belief in the importance of ritual symbolism. When he used the term “Satanic,” or evoked the Devil, it was applied to the enemies of the Aryan race—never in connection with his own faither. Persecution of Jewish people was often inspired by accusation that they poisoned wells and drank the blood of children, or, more traditionally, that they had killed Jesus. They were commonly believed to be part of an international conspiracy—sometimes decreed to be Satanic—against all Christian values. The Catholic Church, concerned that the Third Reich was stealing souls that were rightfully theirs, had certainly preached against this new paganism. Nazis believed that they were breeding babies for God, or “for race and nation.” Occultic suggestions that the Third Reich was, as one author puts it, a “demonocracy” with the Fuhrer himself as a black magician, a “psychic vampire,” demonically possessed, even as the Antichrist himself—are based on Hitler’s skill at taking political military gambles (precognition), his inner voiced and violent rages (possession), and the way simultaneously drew upon and released great emotion with his speeches (physic vampirism). Some still say that there is no evidence for one to consider the Third Reich as a manifestation of supernatural evil. Yet people believed because Hitler consulted an astrologer that Hitler was evil; Satan is Evil personified, therefore Hitler is Satan. Even level-headed historians have described Hitler as possessing almost supernatural powers—whereas the terms “mesmeric” or “hypnotic” best described the psychological effect this frantic, grim little man has on the vast audience at Nazi rallies. Political figures such as John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King also based their careers on charismatic oratory, and few would suggest either man was possessed by demons. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
However, it is worth confessing that the Third Reich is of legitimate interest to occultists. Something about Hitler’s meteoric rise—from penniless tramp to omnipotent dictator—and Germany’s similarly rapid rise—from near-collapse to near-World domination—confounds rational explanation. Still, the philosophy of Hitler, and the psychological symbolism employed by the Nazis, are no more inherently Satanic than that of the Catholic Church. However, there were eyewitness accounts of wartime sorcery in England: Witches cast spells to stop Hitler landing after France fell. They met, raised the great cone of power and directed the thought at Hitler’s brain: “You cannot cross the sea. You cannot cross the sea. Not able to come. Not able to come.” We are not saying they stopped Hitler. All we say is that we saw a very interesting ceremony performed with the intention of putting a certain idea into his mind and this was repeated several times afterwards; and though all the invasion barges were ready, the fac that Hitler never even tried to come. The witches told us that their great-grandfathers had tried to project the same idea into Boney’s [Napoleon’s] mind. Exploration of the Great Beast’s (Aleister Crowley) darker doctrines—of a World divided into masters and slaves, with good and evil sacrificed on the bloody alter of a new morality—would be the province of a far less gaudy crew than the hippies. Marianne Faithfull—a former child of the upper-middle classes—was a long-time consort of English rock band the Rolling Stones, and an icon of “swinging London.” In her autobiography, written much later, she displays little doubt as to the source of the era’s dynamism. Speaking of her most famous lover, Mick Jagger, she says: “Her harnessed all of the negative forces into entities. Out of these destructive impulses, he created all the incredible personate of the late sixties: the Midnight Rambler, Lucifer, Jumpin’ Jack Flash. They are all manifestations of malignant and chaotic forces, the ungovernable mob. The dark, violent, group mind of the crowd—chaos, Pan. That frenzied power caused many of the causalities of the sixties.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Foremost among the musicians who pioneered the first colourful wave of psychedelia were the Beatles. Their high-profile transformation from chirpy, mop-headed scousers to long haired peaceniks reflected the cultural tide of their generation. However, in the United States of America, the FBI compiled a two-inch thick file on Lennon upon which FBI director J. Edgar Hoover scrawled, “All extremists should be considered dangerous.” Fundamentalist Christians—with their endearing disrespect for facts or common sense—discovered the occultic secrets behind the Beatles’ success. They maintained that the Lennon-McCartney sound was a magical beat stolen from the ancient Druids. According to them, in ancient times these pagan priests would beat out the demonic rhythm on drums made of human skin to summon evil spirits. In the hands of the Beatles, this Druid beat could be used to send the young people of American insane—or even worse, pinko. There were Christian protests of the Beatles, where the Ku Klux Klan burnt their records and Lennon was held up as a Satanists or something. The next years, Christian suspicions of the Beatles were confirmed by detailed perusal of the cover of their catchy, innovative Sgt. Pepper album. The cover design is a collage of people admired by the Beatles, all standing being the band: among them, in the top row, can be seen Aleister Crowley. In 1994, a prominent Vatican official, Father Corrado Balduci, would reinforce the Christian view that the Beatles were “the Devil’s musicians.” Sadly, in 1980, Lennon was shot dead outside his New York apartment by a dazed-looking young man named Mark Chapman. Chapman had become a big Beatles fan, but had become increasingly convinced that Lennon was evil. An interview with Chapman by a psychiatrist, published in Rolling Stone magazine, reported that the holy assassin could feel the presence of Satan’s demons around him. “I can feel their thoughts. I can hear their thoughts. I can hear them talking, but not from the outside, from the inside.” The unfortunate Chapman had become a “born-again” Christian, learning about the evils of Beatles music from his new faith. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Next to the affable efficiency of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones were a maelstrom of creative chaos. Black Magicians thought that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were acting as unknow agents of Lucifer and others thought hey were Lucifer. One of the “Black Magicians” Richards referred to was Kenneth Anger. Anger stood at the crossroads where many of the Satanic elements of the 1960s met. Anger happily announced Crowley’s dictum that the Key of joy is disobedience, and declared that not only was the Aeon of Horus upon, but the Aeon of Lucifer. Shortly before he became involved with the Rolling Stones, Anger helped found the Church of Satan. His blend of Crowleyism and Satanism entranced the band, though—in a familiar pattern—Anger was often keen to dissociate from Satanism, referring to his personal Prince of Darkness by the less inflammatory title of Lucifer. He later confessed, however, that his Lucifer had always been the “cosmic villain,” the Miltonic Satan. Whatever effect Anger had on the band’s professional lives, he touched them personally to varying degrees. Keith and his lover Anita later got into this black magic stuff. Mick Jagger dabbled in it. However, every one was just a little afraid of Kenneth Anger. Inexplicable things involving him would happen. Stores about the magus’ association with the band include Anger seeming to appears and disappear in various places. He offered to perform a pagan ritual wedding for Keith and Anita that involved a golden door. When they awoke the next day, a heavy oaken door had been painted gold, with the paint already dry. The house was heavily secured, and nobody could explain this occultic interior decoration. Faithfull talked about falling off a mountain during the making of Anger’s second version of Lucifer Rising, sustaining only a mild concussion. Anita Pallenberg was so spooked by all of this that she slept in a protective circle of candles with a string of garlic around her neck. Anger’s next overtly magical project Lucifer Rising was his first religious film, a weird, mesmeric narrative combined with a real magical ritual, it also embodied his love/hate relationship with the 1960s counter culture—both in the film itself, and the events surrounding its strange history. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
As Anger once observed, “Making movies is casting spells.” A screen director and editor, the theory ran that the magus could fully control both the characters to screen and the entities they invoked. Lucifer Rising depicted the downfall of the oppressive Aeon of Osiris (or Christian era), and the movement into the Aeon of Horus (or Lucifer). “My reason for filming has nothing to do with “cinema” at all, explained Anger. “It’s transparent excuse for capturing people…I consider myself working Evil on an evil medium.” On 21 September 1967, Anger organized a celebratory event titled the Equinox of the Gods at the Straight Theatre in Haight-Ashbury, the epicenter of hippie culture in San Francisco. However, Beausoleil proved a more capricious Lucifer than Anger anticipated—according to Anger, the pretty hippie he called “Cupid” ripped off 1600 feet of footage from Lucifer Rising and some camera equipment before the performance. Anger was livid, smashing a rare magical cane that once belonged to Crowley. He then pronounced a cruse upon Beausoleil, sealing it with an amulet he put around his neck. On one side was a picture of his erstwhile protégé, on the other a toad with the inscription “Bobby Beausoleil—who was turned into a toad by Kenneth Anger.” Cupid never turned into a toad, but a could of uncommonly dark fortune did follow him as he headed south for Los Angeles. In 1970 Anger remade his masterpiece, Lucifer rising—though even then he still tinkered with elements of the film to produce dozens of subtly different versions. Once again, Anger himself plays the Magus, invoking a new aeon through the door opened by the occult events of the 1960s: A film about the love generation—the birthday part of the Aquarian Age. Showing actual ceremonies to make Lucifer rise. Lucifer is the Light God, not the Devil—the Rebel Angel behind what is happening in the World today. His message is that they key of joy is disobedience. Isis (Nature) wakes. Osiris (Death) answers. Lilith (Destroyer) climbs to the place of Sacrifice. The Magus activates the circle and Lucifer—Bringer of Light—breaks through.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Bad luck had begun calling upon the Rolling Stone, in the shape of a series of tragedies. The first was the death of the band’s guitarist, Brian Jones. It was Jones who, in 1962, formed the band named it after a Muddy Waters song. On 2 July, in classical rock ‘n’ roll styles, he drowned in his swimming pool on a cocktail of vodka and pills. Two days after Jones’ death, the Stones turned their free concert in London’s Hyde Park into a memorial for their ex-guitarist. Jagger read a poem by Shelley, then tried to release hundreds of white butterflies from boxes by the stage. They have been in the boxes too long and most of the delicate creatures were dead. The summer Woodstock free festival, in New York State, represented for many the hazy apex of the Love Generation. At the suggestion of scheduled support band the Grateful Dead, the Stones hired the Hell’s Angels as security for their Altamont gig. The Angels were very affordable, but their brand of frightening freedom still had a devilish chic in the naïve 1960s. The Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club was formed after the Second World War, by bike-loving ex-servicemen who found civilian life too bland to bear. The Hell’s Angels moniker was taken from a notorious American Air Force squadron, but the Satanic implications of the name became increasingly appropriate. The Angeles were hellraisers, prototypes for the whole biker culture—particularly the outlaws, or “1%ers” (the “one percent of motorcyclists’ labelled as ‘hoodlums and troublemakers” by the American Motorcycle Association in 1967). Many 1%er gangs emulated the Angels’ Satanic-sound title, adopting infernal names like the Straight Satans, Satan’s Slavers and the Pagans. Some took their title at face value. One member of the powerful Canadian gang Satan’s Angels said in a 1970s interview, “There are definite spirits and we identify with that particular one that has been called Satan. It’s an upsidedown World. Our virtues are other’s vices. You could say we were Satanists.” Hell’s Angels, and other outlaw gangs, are symbols of the more destructive, volatile aspects of the Satanic canon. Their readiness to fight, their revelling in intimidation and fear, their rapacious passion for pleasures of the flesh in all their basest forms, all these characteristics made them into icons of willful alienation and violent self-indulgence. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
When Jagger finally came onstage at Altamont on 6 December 1969, things were beginning to get ugly. Marty Balin of support act Jefferson Airplane had been in in the face with a pool cue by a Hell’s Angel. He tried to intervene when he saw the Angels beat up an African America kid in front of him. Paul Kantner, band founder, began to shout at the Angels until his microphone was snatched from him in the brawl that immersed the from of the stage. Jagger took the stage clad in his psychedelic sorcerer’s robes. Dancing under the red lights, surrounded by the dark wall of threatening, black-clad Angels, the vocalist could have been Anger’s Lucifer served by a surly army of warlike demons. Two songs into the set, things just kept getting uglier. Naked hippies cast themselves at the stage as offerings for their rock gods, and the Angels cast them back into the audience after beating them bloody. The third song began, “Sympathy for the Devil,” and all Hell broke loose. In the audience, an African American youth named Meredith Hunter pulled a gun. According to some he was aiming it at Jagger, other claimed he was defending himself against the Angels. Whichever is true, it was scant moments before a pack of black-leather Angels fell upon him and, in a flurry of kicks and knife blows, Hunter was killed. The Stones could see that the Angels were brutalizing the audience rather than controlling them—but Jagger was out of his depth, bleating weakly for everybody to “cool it.” As the killing of Meredith Hunter played itself out to the strains of “Sympathy for the Devil,” the song had to be stopped briefly as Jagger quipped, with unintended understatement, that “something very funny always happens when we start that number.” As the tide of panic and fury rose, the death count escalated to three with 100 injured. Following Altamont, the shaken Stones turned their back on the whole Satanic scene. Jagger wore a large wooden crucifix for some time after. The revolutionary stance and allusions to street violence were quietly dropped in favour of the stately image of rock ‘n’ roll aristocrats. The Rolling Stones abandoned any pretension to occultic chic or streetwise cool, letting themselves into the World of polite high society through the back door. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
It is always just a few days before the Winter Solstice when the forces of darkness are at their most powerful. Because the immense size of the Winchester Mansion, Mrs. Winchester included forty-seven fireplaces in her mansion, and seventeen chimneys. One rambling section in particular, the Hall of Fires, was designed to produce as much heat as possible—perhaps to ease Mrs. Winchester’s extreme arthritis. In addition to many windows that let the sunlight stream through, the three adjoining rooms have four fireplaces and three hot air registers from the coal furnace in the basement. Mrs. Winchester is very significant, not only for a vast estate, but one of many reasons was because she was known to have encounters with the supernatural. While I was at Mrs. Winchester’s mansion, I was asked to meet with a group of high school students who had gotten into spiritualism just for kicks. We had a meeting that night and I listened as the young people told me their experiences. At a part a friend had fascinated them with stories of trances and séances. He told them how to use a Ouija board and how to enter a state of trance. They were seeking spirit manifestations. When they began to get reactions, they became frightened. The spirit had guided them back in time. A boy appeared and stated to tell a story, he said: “When I was about ten years old, I came to visit my aunt Sarah. I met a girl who lived on the estate Ethel—aged eight. I never had the courage to speak to her. My aunt Sarah asked me to stay three months, and I did.” The statement was so quietly serious, so destitute of any suspicion of humor, that the audience looked on with great apprehension. “I had to work hard in those days. I saw Ethel, later that evening, asleep in one of the carriages, and that was the last time I saw her. I ended stay with my aunt for three years. There was a glimmer of a summer gown under the trees; a figure passed from the shadow to sunshine, and again into the cool dusk of a leafy lane. While I was walking in the garden, I found her seated in the shade of a pine. She looked up serenely, as though she had expected me, and we faced each other. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
“When I stroke to speak, my voice had an unknow tone to me. Her upturned face was my only answers. The breeze in the pine-tops, which had been stirring monotonously, ceased. Her delicate face was like a blossom lifted in the still air; her upward glance chained me to silence. The first breeze broke the spell; I spoke a word, then speech died on my lips; I stood twisting my shooting-cap, confused, not daring to continue. The girl leaned back, supporting her weight on one arm, fingers almost buried in the deep green moss. ‘It has been three years today,’ I said, in a dull voice of one who dreams—’three years today. May I not speak?’ In her lowered head and ears I repeated acquiescence; in her silence, consent. ‘Three years ago, today,’ I repeated; ‘the anniversary has given men courage to speak to you. Surely you will not take offense—we have travelled so far together!’ –from the end of the World to the end of it, and back again, here—to this place of all places in the World! And now to find you here on this day of all days—here within a step of our first meeting-place—three years ago today! And all the World we have travelled over since, never speaking, yet ever passing on paths parallel—paths which for thousands of miles ran almost within arm’s distance—’ She raised her head slowly, looking out from the shadows of the pines into her sunshine. Her dreamy eyes rested on acres of gold-rod and green grass in the December coolness. ‘Will you speak to me?’ I asked. ‘I have never even heard the sound of your voice.’ She turned and look at me, touching with idle finger the soft hair curling on her temples. Then she bent her head once more, the faintest shadow of a smile in her eyes. ‘Because,’ I said, humbly, ‘these long years of silent recognition count for something! And then the strangeness of it!—the fate of it,–the quiet destiny that ruled over our lives,–that rules them now—now as I am speaking, weighting every second with its tiny burden of fate.’ She replied, ‘I have never forgotten you—never!’ She looked into my eyes. ‘Dear, do you not understand? Have you forgotten? I died three years ago today.’ The unearthly sweetness of her white face started me. A terrible light broke in on me; my heart stood still.’ #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“And that very day, I died of a broken heart. Legend has it that I came to visit my aunt Sarah to pick up a check and no one ever saw me after that day, but truth is I never left. When God takes the mind and leaves the body alive there grows in it, sometime, a beauty almost supernatural. ‘Be with me when the new moon comes,’ she whispered. ‘It will be so sweet. I will teach you how divine is death, if you come.’” About 4 o’ clock in the morning, one of the students started to levitate, and he saw all kinds of beautiful sights. I asked him if he were concerned whether or not this was from God. He said it must be because it was in the spiritual realm. The one of the other students went into a demonic tantrum. I asked God to rebuke the demons and set her free. The demons said, “We are going, but we will come back.” And come back they did, with reinforcements. I worked with this young woman for several months, but because she was unwilling to give up this traffic with spirits she was later placed in a mental institution. I am convinced that she could be perfectly healed of this oppression and indwelling by demons if only she would consent. Sometimes lewd demons trick well-meaning people into following their sensual behavior. Not all spirits are evil. However, it is a serious matter to become involved with spiritualism in any form, but also the atoning blood of Christ always gives us His purity and power. All who desire protection from Satan and His demons will receive it. In the case of levitations, apports, and telekinesis, God allows the physical and natural laws of the Universe to be superseded temporarily and in a restricted sense by higher laws of the spirit World. The Winchester mansion is known for having spiritual events take place, even today. These phenomena are diabolic miracles. In distinction to divine miracles, diabolical miracles are supernatural acts that imitate the power and benevolence of divine miracles. It is as if God said to the powers of darkness what he said to the sea in the day of creation: “Hitherto shalt thou come but no father, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed,” reports Jon 38.11. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
The demonic powers are allowed only a very small intrusion into the orderly realm of nature, and the miracles they produce are characterized by a rigid sameness. Everywhere in the domain of occultism there are reminders of God’s absolute sovereignty. He is in majestic control. Demonic power makes such a poor show by its severe restrictions and drab sameness, that it actually advertises the glory of God for those who can see evil supernaturalism in the proper focus of divine revelation. Levitations (from the Latin verb levito, “to raise or lift”) are objects or people that are raised up and appear floating in their air. Such phenomena are frequently reported in occult literature and experienced in haunted houses, where strongly psychic people have lived and died or where spiritistic séances have been heled. Objects on occasion sail through the air as if thrown by an invisible hand, or spooks (ghost) appear hovering in space. Furniture is lifted, often when a strong medium is present. Human, either in a conscious or unconscious state, are included in the phenomena of levitation. We would oppose the belief that a word has any power of its own, and that the charmer is only the representative of this power. Words are only neutral instruments. They can be used for either good or evil. It depends on the inspiration behind the words. A Christian employs the Word on God’s authority. The magician and charmer employs his words and phrases as demonized instruments of magic. One of Mrs. Winchester’s servants had died. The man in question had the reputation of being a magician—it makes sense that a house built by spirits would have some magical employees. Two weeks before his death, as he lay in bed seriously ill, he began to groan, “Take the charm away from me, take the charm away from me.” The relatives had gone to the minister for advice, but he had warned them against doing as the man requested. The magician finally died in terrible agony. The minister told Mrs. Winchester that the man looked black as coal when he had seen him in the coffin. Many magicians only find rest when someone takes the spell of charm away from them, together with the responsibility of carrying on the occult practice. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
A description of magic ritual can be found in various books on magic. These books have the same significance to the magicians as the Christian Bible has for the Christian. There is a great amount of literature on the subject of magic, the most widely distributed book on the spiritual subject being the 6th and 7th Book of Moses. Unhappily a publisher in Braunschweig has published new editions of this book. The use of the name Moses is only a camouflage. Magicians look on the miracle connected with the staff of Moses as a piece of magic. In this way they try to elevate Moses to the position of their patron saint. The first part of the book reveals how a human may enter into a relationship with the devil. The latter part gives instructions as to how a person can achieve dominion over all the forces of nature as well as the powers of Heaven and Hell through the use of magic. The book has already caused untold harm in the World and people who read it invariably suffer in the process. A house in which the book is kept is also a place where misfortunes often occur. There are many examples which illustrate this fate and we will deal with this problem soon in greater detail. In or about the 27 of December of 1899, a girl about eighteen years of age, Miss Mary Dunbar, was hired as a maid by Mrs. Winchester. Mrs. Winchester described her as “having an open and innocent countenance, and being a very intelligent young person.” She and her aunt, Mrs. Haltridge, were staying at Winchester mansion. A rumor was afloat that the latter had been bewitched into her grave, and this could not fail to have its effect on Miss Dunbar. Accordingly, on the night of her arrival, her troubles began. When she retired to her bedroom, accompanied by another girl, they were surprised to find that a new mantle and some other wearing apparel had been taken out of a trunk and scattered through the house. Going to look for the missing articles, they found laying on the parlour floor an apron which two days before had been locked up in another apartment. This apron, when they found it, was rolled up tight, and tied fast with string of its own material, which had upon it five strange knots. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
These she proceeded to unloose, and having done so, she found a flannel cap, which had belonged to old Mrs. Haltridge, wrapped up in the middle of the apron. When she saw this she was frightened, and threw both cap and arpon to young Mrs. Haltridge, who was also alarmed, thinking that the mysterious knots were boded evil to some inmate of the mansion. That evening Miss Dunbar was seized with the most violent fit, and, recovering, cried out that a knife was run through her thigh, and that she was most grievously afflicted by three women, who she described particularly, but did not then give any account of their names. About midnight she was seized with a second fit; when she saw in her vision seven or eight women who conversed together, and in their conversation called each other by their names. When she came out of her fit she gave their names as Janet Liston, Elizabeth Cellor, Kate M’Calmont, Janet Carson, Janet Mean, Latimer, and one who they termed Mrs. Ann. She gave so minute a description of them. Mrs. Dunbar said there was something in her stomach which she would be glad to get rid of. She fell into such violent fits of pains that three men were scarce able to hold her, and cried out, “For Christ sake take the Devil out of the room.” In her fits she often had her tongue thrust into her windpipe in such a manner that she was like to choak, and the root seemed pulled up into her mouth. Upon her recovery she complained extremely of the one Mean, who has twisted her tongue and spoke of someone who had tore her throat, and tortured her violently by reason of her crooked fingers and swelled knuckles. Her joints where all distorted and the tendons shriveled up, as she had described. However, through 38 years of residence, Mrs. Winchester’s employees remained fiercely and faithfully loyal, defending every eccentricity. Although usual things did occur in her home, they said she was very strong minded and firm, but always fair and kind. Laziness, theft, gossip or revealed confidences met with instant dismissal. Mrs. Winchester, they claimed, was deeply concerned with the welfare of their families. They were well paid and often additionally rewarded with gifts, even homes or real estate, and left lifetime pensions. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House on a rainy day is a sight to see 😍 Come see for yourself this weekend!
🎟 link in bio. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
The Medium is the Message–You Know a Rolex Don’t Tick
The modern officer building is the archetypal example of the mediated environment. It contains nothing that did nit first exist as a design plan in a human mind. The spaces are square, flat and small, eliminating a sense of height, depth and irregularity. The décor is rigidly controlled to a bland uniformity from room to room and floor to floor. The effect is to dampen all interest in the space one inhabits. Most modern office buildings have hermetically sealed windows. The air is processed, the temperature regulated. It is always the same. The body’s largest sense organ, the skin, feels no wind, no changes in temperature, and is dulled. Muzak homogenizes the sound of the environment. Some buildings even use “white noise,” a deliberate mix of electronic sounds that merge into a hum. Seemingly innocuous, it fills the ears with an even background tone, obscuring random noises or passing conversations which might arouse interest or create a diversion. The light remains constant from morning through not, from room to room until our awareness of light is as dulled as our awareness of temperature, and we are not aware of the passage of time. We are told that a constant level of light is good for our eyes, that it relieves strain. Is this true? What about the loss of a range of focus and the many changes in direction and intensity of light that our flexible eyes are designed to accommodate? Those who build artificial environments view the sense as single, monolithic things, rather than abilities that have a range of capacity for a reason. We know, for example, that out eyes can see from the extremely dark to the extremely bright, from far to near, from distinct to indistinct, from obvious to subtle. They perceive objects moving quickly and those that are still. They eye is a wonderfully flexible organ, able to adjust instantly to a dazzling array of information, constantly changing, multileveled, perceiving objects far and near moving at different speeds simultaneously. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
A fully functioning visual capacity is equal to everything the natural environment offers as visual information. This would have to be so, since the interaction between the senses and the natural environment created the ranges of abilities that we needed to have. Sight did not just arrive one day, like Adam’s rib; it coevolved with the ingredients around it which it was designed to see. When our eyes are continually exercised, when flexibility and dynamism are encouraged, then they are equal to the variety of stimuli that night and day have to offer. It is probably not wise always to have “good light” or to be for very long at fixed distances from anything. The result will be lack of exercise and eventually atrophy of the eyes’ abilities. When we reduce an aspect of environment from varied and multidimensional to fixed, we also change the human being who lives within it. Humans give up the capacity to adjust, just as the person who walks cannot so easily handle the experience of running. The lungs, the heart and other muscles have not been exercised. The human being then becomes a creature with a narrower range of abilities and fewer feelings about the loss. We become grosser, simpler, less varied, like the environment. If we lose wide-spectrum sensory experience, the common response to this is that we gain a deeper mental experience. This is not true. We only have less nonmental experience so the mental life seems richer by comparison. In fact, mental life is more enriched by a fully functioning sensory life. In recent years, researchers have discovered some amazing things about the connections between mental and physical life by doing sensory-deprivation experiments. In such experiments, a human subject is cut off from as much sensory information as possible. This can be accomplished, for example, by a totally black environment—white walls, no furniture, no sounds, constant temperate, constant light, no food and no windows. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
A more thorough method is to put the blindfolded subject inside a temperature, constant light, no food and no windows. A more thorough method is to put the blindfolded subject inside a temperature-controlled suit floating in a water tank with only tubes to provide air and water, which are lost at body temperature. This sensory-deprivation tank eliminates the tactile sense as well as an awareness of up and down. Researchers have found that when sensory stimuli are suppressed this way, the subject at first lives a mental life because mental images are the only stimulation. However, after a while, these images become disoriented and can be frightening. Disconnected from the World outside the mind, the subject is rootless and ungrounded. If the experience goes on long enough, a kind of madness develops which can be allayed only by reintroducing sensory stimuli, direct contact with the World outside the subject’s mind. Before total disorientation occurs, a second effect takes place. That is a dramatic increase in focus on any stimulus at all that is introduced. In such a deprived environment, one single stimulus acquires extraordinary power and importance. In the most literal sense, the subject loses perspective and cannot put the stimulus in context. Such experiments have proven to be effective in halting heavy smoking habits, for example, when the experimenter speaks instructions to stop smoking or describes to the subject through a microphone the harmful, unpleasant aspects of smoking. These experiments have shown that volunteers can be programmed to believe and do things they would not have done in a fully functional condition. The technique could be called brainwashing. It would be going too far to call our modern offices sensory deprivation chambers, but they are most certainly sensory-reduction chambers. They may not brainwash, but the eliminating of sensory stimuli definitely increases focus on the task at hand, the work to be done, to the exclusion of all else. Modern offices were designed for that very purpose by people who knew what they were doing. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
If people’s senses were stimulated to experience anything approaching their potential range, it would be highly unlikely that people would sit for eight long hours at desks, reading memoranda, typing documents, studying columns of figures or pondering sales strategies. If birds were flying through the room, and wind were blowing the papers about, if the sun were shinning in there, or people were lolling about on chaise lounges or taking baths while listening to various musical presentations, this would certainly divert the office worker from the mental work he or she is there to do. In fact, if offices were so arranged, little business would get done. This is why they are not so arranged. Any awareness of the senses, aside from their singular uses in reading and sometimes talking and listening, would be disastrous for office environments that require people to stay focused within narrow and specific functional modes. Feeling is also discouraged by these environments. Reducing sensual variations is one good way of reducing feelings since the one stimulates the other. However, there is also a hierarchy of values which further the process. Objectivity is the highest value that can be exhibited by an executive in an office. Orderliness is the highest value for a subordinate office worker. If the human is effectively disconnected from the distractions of one’s senses, feelings, and intuitions, both of these are most easily achieved. With the field of experience so drastically reduced for office workers, the stimuli which remain—paper work, mental work, business—loom larger and obtain an importance they would not have in a wider, more varied, more stimulating environment. The worker gets interested in them largely because that is what is available to get interested in. Curiously, however, while eschewing feeling and intuition, business people often cannot resist using them. They come out as aberrations—fierce competitive drive, rage at small inconveniences, decisions that do not fit the models of objectivity. Such behavior in business sometimes makes me think of blades of grass growing upward through pavement. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
A more poignant example, perhaps, is that modern offices have proven to be such hot environment of pleasures of the flesh. Aside from the occasional potted plant, the only creatures in offices with which it is possible to experience anything are other humans. With all other organic life absent and with the senses deprived of most possibilities for human experience, the occasional body which passes the desk becomes an especially potent sensual event, the only way out of the condition of suspended experience, and the only way to experience oneself as alive. In fact, the confinement of human beings within artificial environments may be a partial explanation of our new culture-wide obsession with and focus on pleasures of the flesh. We have been mainly speaking of cities. This has only been because their effects are most obvious. I do not want to create the impression that suburbs, retirement communities, recreational communities and the like offer any greater access to a wider range of experience. Those places do have large trees, for example, and more small animals. They sky is more visible, without giant buildings to alter the view. However, in most ways, suburban-type environments reveal less of natural processes than cities do. Cities, at least, offer a critical ingredient of the natural World, diversity albeit a diversity that is confined to only human life forms. It does not nearly approach the complexity of any acre of an ordinary forest. In suburbs the totality of experience is plotted in advance and then marketed on the basis of the plan. “We will have everything to serve the recreational needs of your family: playgrounds, ball fields, golf course, tennis courts, bowling alleys and picnic grounds.” This, plus a front lawn, a back lawn, two large trees, and an attentive police force makes up the total package. Human beings then live inside that package. Places formerly as diverse as forest, desert, marsh, plain and mountain have been unified into suburban tracts. The human sense, seeking outward for knowledge and stimulation, find only what has been prearranged by other humans. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
In many ways the same can be said of rural environments. Land which once supported hundreds of varieties of plant and animal life has been transformed by agribusinesses. Insect life has been largely eliminated by massive spraying. For hundreds of square miles, the only living things are artichokes or tomatoes laid out in straight rows. The child seeking to know how nature works finds only spray planes, automated threshers, and miles of rows of a single crop. There are differences of opinion about what the critical moments were that led human beings away from the primary form of experience—between person and planet—into secondary mediated environments. Some go back as far as the control of fire, the domestication of animals, the invention of agriculture or the imposition of monotheism and patriarchy. In my opinion, however, the most significant recent moment came with the control of electricity for power, about seven generations ago. This made it possible to begin moving nearly all human functions indoors, and made the outdoors more like indoors. In less than seven generations out of an estimated one hundred thousand, we have fundamentally changed the nature of our interaction with the planet. Our environment no longer grows on its own, by its own design, in its own time. The environment in which we live has been totally reconstructed solely by human intention and creation. We find ourselves living inside a kind of nationwide room. We look around it and see only our own creations. We go through life believing we are experiencing the World when actually our experiences are confined within entirely human conceptions. Our World has been thought up. Our environment itself is the manifestation of the mental processes of other humans. Of all the species of the planet, and all the cultures of the human species, we twenty first century Americans have become the first in history to live predominantly inside projections of our own minds. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
We live in a kind of maelstrom, going ever deeper into our own thought processes, into subterranean caverns, where nonhuman reality is up, up, away somewhere. We are within a system of ever smaller, ever deeper concentric circles, and we consider each new depth that we reach greater progress and greater knowledge. Our environment itself becomes an editor, filter and medium between ourselves and an alternative nonhuman, unedited, organic planetary reality. We ask the child to understand nature and care about it, to know the difference between what humans create and what the planet does, but how can the child know these things? The child lives with us in a room inside a room inside another room. The child sees an apple in a store and assumes that the apple and the store are organically connected. The child sees streets, buildings and a mountain and assumes it was all put there by humans. How can the child assume otherwise? That is the obvious conclusion in a World in which all reality is created by other humans. As adults, we assume we are not so vulnerable to this mistake, that we are educated and our minds can save us. We “know” the differences between natural and artificial. And yet, we have no greater contact with the wider World than the child has. Most people still give little importance to any of this. Those who take note of these changes usually speak of them in esoteric, aesthetic or philosophical terms. It makes good discussion at parties and in philosophy classes. As we go, however, I hope it will become apparent that the most compelling outcome of these sudden changes in the way we experience life is the inevitable political one. Living within artificial, reconstructed, arbitrary environments that are strictly the products of human conception, we have no way to be sure that we know what is true and what is not. We have lost context and perspective. What we know is what other humans tell us. Therefore, whoever controls the processes of re-creation, effectively redefines reality for everyone else, and creates the entire World of human experience, our field of knowledge. We become subject to them. The confinement of our experience becomes the basis of their control of us. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The role of the media in all this is to confirm the validity of the arbitrary World in which we live. The role of television is to project that World, via images, into our heads, all of us at the same time. A child takes a crayon from a box and scribbles a yellow circle in the corner of a sheet of paper: this is the sun. She takes another crayon and draws a green squiggle through the center of the page: this is the horizon. Cutting through the horizon she draws two brown lines that come together in a jagged peak: this is a mountain. Next to the mountain, she draws a lopsided black rectangle topped by a red triangle: this is her house. The child gets older, goes to school, and in her classroom she traces on a page, from memory, and outline of the shape of her country. She divides it, roughly, into a set of shapes that represent the states. And inside one of the states she draws a five-pointed star to mark the town she lives. The child grows up. She trains to be a surveyor. She buys a set of fine instruments and uses them to measure the boundaries and contours of a property. With the information, she draws a precise plot of the land, which is then made into a blueprint for others to use. Our intellectual maturation as individuals can be traced through the way we draw pictures, or maps, of our surroundings. We begin with primitive, literal renderings of the features of the land we see around us, and we advance to ever more accurate, and more abstract, representations of geographic and topographic space. We progress, in other words, from drawing what we see to drawing what we know. Vincent Virga, an expert on cartography affiliated with the Library of Congress, has observed that the stages in the development of our mapmaking skills closely parallel the general stages of childhood cognitive development delineated by the twentieth-century Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. We progress from the infant’s egocentric, purely sensory perception of the World to the young adult’s more abstract and objective analysis. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
“First,” writes Virga, in describing how children’s drawings of maps advance, “perceptions and representational abilities are not matched; only the simplest topographical relationships are presented, without regard for perspective or distances. Then an intellectual ‘realism’ evolves, one that depicts everything known with burgeoning proportional relationships. And finally, a visual ‘realism’ appears, [employing] scientific calculations to achieve it.” As we go through this process of intellectual maturation, we are also acting out of the entire history of mapmaking. Humankind’s first maps, scratched in the dirt with a stick or carved into a stone with another stone, were as rudimentary as the scribbles of toddlers. Eventually the drawings became more realistic, outlining the actual proportions of a space, a space that often extended well beyond what could be seen with the eye. As more time passed, the realism became scientific in both its precision and its abstraction. The mapmaker began to use sophisticated tool like the direction-finding compass and the angel-measuring theodolite and to rely on mathematical reckonings and formulas. Eventually, in a further intellectual leap, maps came to be used not only to represent vast regions of the Earth or Heavens in minute detail, but to express ideas—a plan of battle, an analysis of the spread of an epidemic, a forecast of population growth. “The intellectual process of transforming experience in space to abstraction of space is a revolution in modes of thinking,” writes Virga. The historical advances in cartography did not simply mirror the development of the human mind. They helped propel and guide the very intellectual advances that they documented. The map is a medium that not only stores and transmits information but also embodies a particular mode of seeing and thinking. As mapmaking progressed, the spread of maps also disseminated the mapmaker’s distinctive way of perceiving and making sense of the World. The more frequently and intensively people used maps, the more their minds came to understand reality in the maps’ terms. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
The influence of maps went far beyond their practical employment in establishing property boundaries and charting routes. The use of a reduced, substitute space for reality is an impressive act in itself. However, what is even more impressive is how the map advances the evolution of abstract thinking throughout society. The combination of the reduction of reality and the construct of an analogical space is an attainment in abstract thinking of a very high order indeed for it enables one to discover structures that the World remain unknown if not mapped. The technology of the map gave to humans a new and more comprehending mind, better able to understand the unseen forces that shape his surroundings and his existence. What the map did for space—translate a natural phenomenon into an artificial and intellectual conception of that phenomenon—another technology, the mechanical clock did for time. For most of human history, people experienced time as a continuous, cyclical flow. To the extent that time was “kept,” the keeping was done by instruments that emphasized this natural process: sundials around which shadows would move, hourglasses down which sand would pour, clepsydras through which water would stream. There was no particular need to measure time with precision or to break a day up into little pieces. For most people, the movements of the sun, the moon, and the stars provided the only clocks they needed. Life was, in the words of the French medievalist Jacques Le Goff, “dominated by agrarian rhythms, free of haste, careless of exactitude, unconcerned by productivity.” That began to change in the latter half of the Middle Ages. The first people to demand a more precise measurement of time were Christian monks, whose lives revolved around a rigorous schedule of prayer. In the sixth century, Saint Benedict had ordered his followers to hold seven prayer services at specified times during day. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Six hundred years later, the Cistercians gave new emphasis to punctuality, dividing the day into a regimented sequence of activities and viewing any tardiness or other waste of time to be an affront to God. Spurred by the need for temporal exactitude, monks took the lead in pushing forward the technologies of timekeeping. It was in the monastery that the first mechanical clocks were assembled, their movements governed by the swinging of weights, and it was the bells in the church tower that first sounded the hours by which people would come to parcel out their lives. The desire for accurate timekeeping spread outward from the monastery. The royal and princely courts of Europe, brimming with riches and prizing the latest and most ingenious devices, began to cover clocks and invest in their refinement and manufacture. As people moved from the countryside to the town and started working in markets, mills, and factories rather than fields, their days came to be carved into ever more finely sliced segments, each announced by the tolling of a bell. Bells sounded for start of work, meal breaks, end of work, closing of gates, start of market, close of market, assembly, emergencies, council meetings, end of drink service, time for street cleaning, curfew, and so on through an extraordinary variety of special peals in individual towns and cities. The need for tighter scheduling and synchronization of work, transportation, devotion, and even leisure provided the impetus for rapid progress in clock technology. It was no longer enough for every town or parish to follow its own clock. Now, time had to be the same everywhere—or else commerce and industry would falter. Units of time became standardized—seconds, minutes, hours—and clock mechanisms were fine-tuned to measure those units with much greater accuracy. By the fourteenth century, the mechanical clock had become a commonplace, near-universal tool for coordinating the intricate workings of the new urban society. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Cities vied with one another to install the most elaborate clocks in the towers of their town halls, churches, or palaces. No European community felt able to hold up its head unless in its midst the planets wheeled in cycles and epicycles, while angels in its midst the planets wheeled in cycles and epicycle, while angels trumped, cocks crew, and apostles, kings and prophets marched and countermarched at the booming of the hours. Clocks did not just become more accurate and more ornate. They got smaller and less expensive. Advances in miniaturization led to the development of affordable timepieces that could fit into the rooms of people’s houses or even be carried on their person. If the proliferation of public clocks changed the way people worked, shopped, played, and otherwise behaved as members of an ever more regulated society, the spread of more personal tools for tracking time—chamber clocks, pocket watches, and, a little later, wristwatches—had more intimate consequences. The personal clock became an ever-visible, ever-audible companion and monitor. By continually reminding its owner of time used, times spent, time wasted, time lost, it became both prod and key to personal achievement and productivity. The personalization of precisely measured time was a major stimulus to the individualism that was an ever more salient aspect of Western civilization. The mechanical clock changed the way we saw ourselves. And like the map, it changed the way we thought. Once the clock had redefined time as a series of units of equal duration, our minds began to stress the methodical mental work of division and measurement. We began to see, in all things and phenomena, the pieces that composed the whole, and then we began to see the pieces of which the pieces were made. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Our thinking became Aristotelian in its emphasis on discerning abstract patterns behind the visible surfaces of the material World. The clock played a crucial role in propelling us out of the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment. The clock helped create the belief in an independent World of mathematically measurable sequences. The abstract framework of divided time became the point of reference for both action and thought. Independent of the practical concerns that inspire the timekeeping machine’s creation and governed its day-to-day use, the clock’s methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and the scientific man. Which gets me to another concept, what is called reification. Reification means confusing words with things. It is a thinking error with multiple manifestations, some merely amusing, other extremely dangerous. This past summer in the sweltering New York heat, a student of mine looked at a thermometer in our classroom. “It is ninety-six degrees,” he said. “No wonder it is so hot!” He had it the wrong way around, of course, as many people do who have never learned or cannot remember these three simple notions: that there are things in the World and then there are our names for them; that there is no such thing as a real name; and that a name may or may not suggest the nature of the things named—as, for example, when the United States of America’s government called its South Pacific hydrogen-bomb experiments Operation Sunshine. What I am trying to say here is what Shakespeare said more eloquently in his life “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” However, Shakespeare was only half right, in that for many people a rose would not smell as sweet if it were called a “stinkweed.” And because this is so, because people confuse names with things, advertising is among the most consistently successful enterprises in the World today. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
If it is called the “Lumbering Elephant,” advertisers know that no matter how excellent an automobile may be, it will not sell. Moreover, if it is called a “Vista Cruiser” or a “Phoenix” or “Grand Prix,” no matter how rotten a car may be, you can sell it. Politicians know this as well, and, sad to say, so do scholars, who far too often obscure the emptiness of what they are talking and writing about by affixing alluring names to what is not there. I suggest, therefore, that reification be given a prominent place in our studies, so that our students will know how it both knows. Furthermore, some attention must be given to the style and tone of language. Each Universe of discourse has its own special way of addressing its subject matter and its audience. Each subject in a curriculum is a special manner of speaking and writing, with its own rhetoric of knowledge, a characteristic way in which arguments, proofs, speculations, experiments, polemics, even humor, are expressed. Speaking and writing are, after all, performing arts, and each subject requires a somewhat different kind of performance. Historians, for example, do not speak or write history in the same way biologists speak or write biology. The differences have to do with the degree of precision their generalization permit, the types of facts they marshal, the traditions of their subject, and the nature of their training. It is worth remembering that many scholars have exerted influence as much through their manner as their matter—one thinks Veblen in sociology, Dr. Freud in psychology, Galbraith in economics. The point is that knowledge is a form of literature, and the various styles of knowledge ought to be studied and discussed, all the more because the language found in typical school textbooks tends to obscure this. Textbook language, which is apt to be the same from subject to subject, creates the false impression that systematic knowledge is always expressed in a dull, uninspired monotone. I have read recipes on the back of cereal boxes that were written with more style and conviction than textbook descriptions of the causes of the American Revolution. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Of the language of grammar books I will not even speak, for, to borrow from Shakespeare, it is unfit for a Christian ear to endure. However, the problem is not insurmountable. Teachers who are willing to take the time can find material that convey ideas in a form characteristic of their discipline. And while they are at it, they can help their students to see that what we call a prayer, a political speech, and an advertisement differ from each other now only in their content but in their styles and tone; one might say mostly in their style and tone and manners of address. Which brings us to another significant concept—what we shall call the principle of the non-neutrality of media. I mean by this what Marshall McLuhan meant to suggest when he said, “The medium is the message”: that the form in which information is coded has, itself, an inescapable bias. In a certain sense, this is an entirely familiar idea. We recognize, for example, that the World is somewhat different when we speak about it in English and when we speak about it in German. We might even say that the grammar of a language is an organ of perception and accounts for the variances in the World view that we find among different peoples. However, we have been slow to acknowledge that every extension of speech—from painting hieroglyphics to the alphabet to the printing press to television—also generates unique ways of apprehending the World, amplifying or obscuring different features of reality. Each medium, like language itself, classifies the World for us, sequences it, frames it, enlarges it, reduced it, argues a case for what the World is like. In the United States of America, for example, it is no longer possible for Republicans to be elected to high political office—not because our Constitution forbids it but because television forbids it, since television exalts the attractive visual image and has little patience with or love for the subtle or logical World. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Our students must understand two essential points about all this. Just as language itself creates culture in its own image, each new medium of communication re-creates or modifies culture in its image; and it is extreme naivete to believe that a medium of communication or, indeed, any technology is merely a tool, a way of doing. Each is also a way of seeing. To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a man with a pencil, everything looks like a picture; and to a man with a computer, the whole World looks like data. To put it another way, and to paraphrase the philosopher Wittgenstein, a medium of communication may be a vehicle of thought but we must not forget that it is also the driver. A consideration of how the printing press of the telegraph or television or the computer does its driving and where it takes us must be included in our students’ education or else they will be disarmed and extremely vulnerable. There is one principle about language that is probably occurring to many of you right about now: namely, that one ought not to put up with any lecturer who takes more of your time than he has been allotted. And so I will conclude with three points. First, I trust you understand that the suggestions I have made are not directed exclusively or even primarily at language teachers, English or otherwise. This is a task for everyone. Second, I want to reiterate that to provide our students with a defense against the indefensible, it is neither necessary nor desirable to focus exclusively on political language. Whenever this is attempted, it is apt to be shallow and limited. The best defense is one with a wider reach, which has implications for all language transactions. And finally, I do not claim that my proposals will solve all our problems, or even provide full protection from indefensible discourse. They are only a reasonable beginning, and there is much more to be done. However, we have to start somewhere and, as Ray Bradbury once wrote, somewhere lies between the right ear and the left one. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Many people think youth is not a strong position and it can hardly work out well. The individual young man is threatened either with retreating back to the organized system or breaking down and sinking into the lumpen proletariat. Nevertheless, culturally there is a lot of strength here; let us try to see where it is. Consider directly, their politics are unimpressive. They could not be otherwise since they are so hip and sure that society cannot be different. Explicitly, they are pacifists, being especially vocal about the atom bomb. The Bomb is often mentioned by themselves and other commentators as an explanation of their religious crisis; but it is not convincing. Their own diatribes seem to be mostly polemical self-defense, as if to say: “You squares dropped the atom bombs, do not criticize my blasting music on top of Trump Tower.” In the play The Connection this is openly stated as a defense for a barbiturate. On the whole one does not observe that the youths are so concerned about nuclear weapons as many mothers of families or squares who have common sense. One of the youth spokesmen wrote a long dithyramb about the Bomb, of which the critic George Dennison remarked: “He seems miffed that people pay attention to the atom bomb instead of him.” At the same time, their peacefulness is genuine and their tolerance of differences is admirable, extending also to the squares, except for loathsome class enemies like Time, Housing, or gouging employment agencies. Their ability to occupy themselves in poverty on a high level or cultural and animal satisfaction is remarkable, with per-back books, odd records, and pleasures of the flesh. Their inventing of community creativity is unique. If we consider these achievements, we see that they are factual evidence for a political proposition of capital importance: People can go it on their own, without resentment, hostility, delinquency, or stupidity, better than when they move in the organized system and are subject to authority. (To be sure, the youth are not among the underprivileged to being with; they have some useful education and their poverty is in part voluntary; bit these are not circumstances unavailable to others.) They do not go far, they invite degeneration, they seem hard put to assume responsibility; but they do exist interestingly and peacefully. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
In one important respect, their community culture could be made far more effective. I am referring to the Rap and Hip Hop in a community setting. They have chosen too primitive a model, exempli gratia, Haiti. If they would ponder on the Balinese dances, they might learn something—not the Bali dances on a stage on Broadway, but as they exist in their home villages where, to the music of the gamelan, the onlookers suddenly become entranced and fall down or become possessed and would do violence to themselves, except that they are rescued one and all by their friends of the community. Like prostitution, robbery, murder, and other crimes, castration was illegal in both Christian theology and Roman law. In the sixth century, the Byzantine emperor Justinian, who ruled from 527 to 565, decreed harsh punishment for the crime—if the surgery did not kill them, perpetrators could themselves be castrated, be sent to work in the mines, as well as have their property confiscated. However, such dire risks only helped drive up the value of eunuchs so that, also like prostitution, robbery, and murder, castration flourished, to the point where one writer descries the Byzantine empire as a “eunuch’s paradise.” In modern times, to deal with these increasingly complex and novel problems, economists have belatedly begun to call on psychologists, anthropologist, and sociologists—whose work they once disdained as insufficiently “hard” or quantitative. Whole new branches of economics have opened up—for instance, behavioral economics, neuroeconomics—and various sub-subspecialties. Economist are also working on many of the issues attending the rise of revolutionary wealth. For example, according to Eisenach, the cost-of-living index is now statistically corrected to take account of improved quality in successive versions of the same product. Economists have turned out a substantial literature on the cost of acquiring the information needed to make intelligent choices. And they are trying to cope with complex intellectual-property issues, asymmetric information and other aspects of revolutionary wealth. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Yet gaping holes still exist. For all the attention it receives, intellectual property remains inadequately understood, as does the non-rival and essentially inexhaustible character of knowledge. Other glaring questions cry out for answers. The last—and sometimes the first—word has not been written about the value of knowledge that proves valuable only when combined with other knowledge, or about the de-synchronization effect, or about what happens to trade patterns when wealth waves collide. For all the effort of individual economists or teams, the profession as a whole has yet to fully appreciate the enormousness of today’s runaway, revolutionary change. There is no systematic effort to map interdependent changes in our relationships to time, space and knowledge—let alone to the larger, full set of the deep fundamentals—all of which, as we have seen, are occurring at high speed. Half a century since the revolution began, they have yet to formulate the coherent, overarching theories about this historical stage of economic development to help us understand who we are and where we are going. “O Lord, to us belong confusion and shame of face—to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers—because we have sinned against You. To the Lord our God belongs mercy and lovingkindness and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against Him; and we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by walking in His laws which He set before us through His servants the prophets,” reports Daniel 9.8-10. Dear Lord in Heaven, in our arms take it, making good thoughts. House-God, be enchanted, that our children may grow into successful adults, happy, contented; beautifully walking the trail to old age. Having good thoughts of the Earth its mother, that she may give it the fruits of her being. Combine all the woes that temporal and ecclesiastical tyrannies have ever inflicted on men or nations, and you will not have reached the full measure of suffering with this martyr people was called upon to endure century upon century. If was as if all the powers of Earth had conspired—and they did so conspire—to exterminate the American people, or at least to transform it into a brutalized horde. History dare not pass over in silence these scenes of well nigh unutterable misery. It is her duty to give a true and vivid account of them, to evoke due admiration for the superhuman endurance of this suffering people, and to testify that American has striven with gods and men, and has prevailed. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Randolph Harris II International 