Scoring Spice

“Dune. Desert Planet. Arrakis. WATER.” --Kyle McLaughlin, in Lynch’s Magnum Opus, Dune
“Dune, where’s my car?” --Cobras

Many bands have tried and failed to capture the essence of Frank Herbert’s seminal, epic, orientalist space-opera, DUNE. For some, it might have been better if they had tried and died. 


It would be well-nigh impossible to document every Dune-inspired track in the universe, so these are but a sampling of the many existing varieties of Dune music. They are grouped in brackets because, as Paul Atreides has observed, "the worst potential competition for any young organism can come from its own kind."


Techno Bracket
Eon let loose in 1991 with a couple Dune-themed tracks, "The Spice Must Flow" and "Fear: The Mindkiller." "Fear: The Mindkiller" is a clear ancestor of the Mortal Kombat theme song, and samples (you guessed it!) the line "fear is the mind killer" a few thousand times. For good measure, Eon throws in a healthy dose of what sounds like the panting from Kraftwerk's "Tour De France." Because that's what Kraftwerk is awesome for-- panting.

Not shown: panting. Shown: nerding.

As bad as this may be, however, it’s still better than “German techno-pop ensemble from Münster Dune,” because by "techno pop" they mean Happy Hardcore. If you don’t know what that is, take a moment to thank the gods. You are either too young, too old, or were too under-a-rock-in-the-90s to have been exposed to this toxin. Preserve your innocence/health. If you must know, a representative track is "Can't Stop Raving," but don't say I didn't warn you. Also, Dune’s youtube page would have you know that the group is “named after the 1984 science fiction movie directed by David Lynch.” Yup. Straight from the source.

Winner: no one. No one is a winner here.

Metal Bracket
Another band of Krauts, Golem, attacked the Dune concept in their 1998 album “The 2nd Moon.” Check out the first track, The Wanderers. Featuring succinct riffage and abstract/subtly ESL lyrics (see e.g.: “Unlocking the gates of time, widening its bounds/Guarded by the maker ...facing desert ground”), Golem may actually have what it takes to make a Kwisatz Hadderach.



A further solid entry comes from Aussie rock band Buffalo (mentioned in a previous Cobras post), whose Dune Messiah takes us on a Pentagram-esque journey to Arrakis (and admit it, you always wanted to go to Arrakis with Pentagram). 

Pretty sure it would be like this...

Blind Guardian also pays a visit to the Dune-iverse in Traveller in Time. The morning sun! Of Dune! Good old Blind Guardian. If you haven’t heard this song, it’s pretty much exactly what you would expect from Blind Guardian (i.e., it is awesome, unabashed nerdery). They can really play their balisets ifyouknowwhatimean.

Picard Knows.

Also, according to a reliable source (wikipedia, duh), Iron Maiden tried to name To Tame A Land “Dune,” but Frank Herbert was having none of it. Apparently the band was told that "Frank Herbert doesn't like rock bands, particularly heavy rock bands, and especially bands like Iron Maiden." Good call on that one, F. Herb. 

Frank Herbert hates you. 

PS: Dreamtheater fans will be delighted to admit to you that Dreamtheater covered "To Tame A Land."  

Winner: Vote your choice in the comments. You are the dungeonmaster! You get to decide!

• Blind Guardian
• Buffalo
• Golem
• Iron Maiden
• Dreamtheater

Prog/Jazz Bracket

More to F. Herb’s taste might be the smooth stylings of one Dave Matthews (!), a jazz keyboardist from Kentucky who hung out with James Brown and was apparently moved to gather together a bunch of other jazz players (Grover Washington, Eric Gale) and write several Dune-themed songs which readers should check out at their own risk. These are all on a 1977 album Dave Matthews titled, wait for it, “Dune.” The creativity here just does not end... or at least, not until the second side of the album, where Dave gives us NOT ONLY a disco-fied version of the Star Wars main theme (it was 1977, so Lucas didn’t quite know what he had on his hands), but also a limp cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity. On a related note, the only tolerable part of the latter song was sampled by MF (“Metal Face/Fingers”) Doom in Rap Snitch Knishes. You know. Like you do. Wait, what was I talking about?

Ah yes. Another entry in the Dune prog bracket are French prog rockers Dün, about whom we have previously heard. An interesting compare and contrast exercise may be done by playing Dave Matthew's "Arrakis" and Dün's “Arrakis” back to back. Go on. Try it.






Winner:

• Dave Matthews
• Dün

Video Game Bracket
Yes, evidently there were at least two about a million soundtracked Dune videogames. Kids these days. Don’t they know about books? Require a little effort on your part, make no be-be-be-be-beeps. Anywho.

1992 saw the release of not one, but TWO Dune videogames. The first was called “Dune” by Cryo Interactive, and it carried a soundtrack called "Dune: Spice Opera." It’s not so bad, from what I can tell. Also, at 1:55 of the track embedded below, "Sign of the Worm," you can see a sweet rendering of Shai-Hulud in 1992 graphics. 

  
A competing video game company, Westwood Studios, released “Dune II” that same year; check out this sweet dialogue: “We were your pawns and Dune was your board.” The score is basically 8-bit plus. In 1998, Westwood Studios released “Dune: 2000” scored in part by professional video game composer Frank Klepaki. Good old Frank K. does a musical homage to/rip off of Toto’s score to Lynch’s Dune here on this track at about 3:22-32; otherwise, this is fairly unremarkable stuff.


Winner:

• Dune: Spice Opera
• Dune II
• Klepaki
• No one, again

Dune OST Bracket
The Lynch Dune OST has been reported on here, but I thought I might add a few words. Two of those words are "Brian Eno." Two more words are “fuck yeah.”

but of course there is a fuckyeaheno.com

For the sake of completeness, here is the theme music from the Dune television series, composed by the dude who did the soundtrack to Final Destination V. If you have ever watched any sci-fi movie and heard some generic background symphonics, you’ve basically heard it. Speaking of orientalism, there’s also a Bonus New Age Track.


Winner: Toto/Eno OST. I’m sorry, this is just objective. Please send your complaints to James Madison.

Well, there you have it, friends. A smattering of the aural representations of the Dune-iverse. Please feel free to add on in the comments.

Behold Kris Mar, newest addition to the IllCon Team! Hail Kris Mar! May the rivers run red with the blood of your fallen foes, and may vampires tremble and expire at your feet just as they do under the mighty ax of Abe Lincoln!
I am impressed with the nerdiness contained herein, please feel free to contribute further in the future. Sweet.

-Cobras

NORMAL MAN

At first he was all:

Then he was all:

Then he was all:

Then he was all:

Then he was all:

Then he was all:

Then he was all:

Then he was all:

Then he was all:

But then he was all:

Sam McPheeters: The man. The myth. The legend.

Tonight on IllCon Radio right over HERE. 10 pm PST.

(415) 829-2980.

Go to his website.

Buy his book.

"I am a man with a glahr in my hand.
Oh and I am a bahr with a clark in my car.
So I feel the pump of the clag in my noshus,
And I feel so glotious when I fly my bonahr."

- Men's Recovery Project

DICK HEAD

I doubt a whole Hell of a lot of you were reading IllCon all the way back in May 2009, but for those of you that were, I have good news. I am happy to present (partial) closure to an open-ended case I alluded to back then, a fascinating, confusing, and maddening mystery I first explored in a post titled 'IN CASE YOU DON'T KNOW DICK, Or: The Android Was Never Located'. The post, which was meant more as a tribute to one of my favorite science-fiction writers (Mr. Philip K. Dick) than any sort of whodunnit, contained a nugget of weirdness that was left hanging in negative space until just now, in a sort of full-circle "happy ending" taylor-made for Hollywood. But I'm getting a"head" of myself. Let's get the noobs caught up:
The most interesting part of the entire post, in retrospect, was a quick aside I made about halfway through, which read thusly: "Side note: As a promotional gimmick for the 2007 film adaptation of A Scanner Darkly, a robotic doppelganger of Dick (above) was constructed to participate in a panel discussion at the 2006 ComicCon in San Diego. Reportedly, the android was "lost in transit" by America West Airlines personnel. It has yet to be located."

The Robot Dick, created by Hanson Robotics (they've also created a Robo-Einstein), is truly a marvel, and can be seen in two stages of development in the video below:

PKD Robot at NextFest Chicago (2005):



So let's get the skinny on exactly how PKDBot got "lost". Wired and BoingBoing both reported on the mysterious happenings, but here is a chunk I found on the always-reliable And I Am Not Lying, For Real:

PKD was a tremendous hit at Wired's NextFest, 2005. Several months afterward, David Hanson and his astonishing creation were on a flight from Dallas to San Francisco. PKD's body was travelling separately, but his "brain" and head were part of Hanson's carry-on luggage. Hanson had not slept for several days, and immediately passed out upon buckling his seatbelt. Hanson was shaken awake by his plane's crew in Las Vegas for an unexpected plane change.

Next up, from the New York Times:

He had been traveling for weeks, pulling all-nighters in a race between his work as a roboticist (he also made a much-discussed robotic head of Einstein); as the founder of a fledgling company, Hanson Robotics; and his doctoral work. But unlike his creation, Mr. Hanson is, apparently, distressingly human.

"They woke me up, I got my laptop from under my seat, and being dazed, I just forgot that I had the robot in there," said Mr. Hanson, referring to the head in a black, American Tourister roller bag, left in the overhead compartment."

He rushed off in a sleep-smeared stupor, only remembering that he left the head behind sometime after his second liftoff. The airline claimed that they shipped the head back to him, but a package never arrived.
Philip K Dick's android head is missing, possibly stolen.



Bummer! Can you even imagine the frustration of "accidentally misplacing" a labor of love like the Dick Head?! Hanson obviously blew that one, but here's where that "Hollywood ending" I spoke of earlier comes in. Apparently, the Dutch company VPRO put up the dough for Hanson Robotics to build a leaner, meaner, smarter DickBot in 2010, and the new machine has already surpassed its predecessor in all manner of sophistication and logic. Work continues on the "new" PKD Robot, and judging by the new color in his beard (see below), he is more vibrant and alive than ever. (More about the Android Project HERE)
But still, the question remains: what the fuck really happened to the "original" android? The mind shudders at the possibilities...




(Pay close attention to the very end, when PKD assures his interviewer that "he'll keep him very safe in (his) people zoo".)


Pro tip: A much more entertaining version of the Recovered Head Story can be found HERE via Fiction Circus ("The missing head of the Philip K. Dick android has finally been discovered in St. Petersburg, confiscated in an Interpol sting against the Russian software piracy syndicate Little Bear."). I actually thought this story was real until just recently (you would have thought the site name--"FICTION CIRCUS"--might have tipped me off). Durr.

HOLY SHIT.
True story, guys: when I started writing this thing today, I had no idea that 3/2/2012 is the 30-year anniversary of Philip K. Dick's death. Damn. Talk about some next-level lattice-of-coincidence-type synchronicity! Thanks to purplerainingblood for the accidental "head"s-up.

Speaking of Dick Heads:

Who's ready for Episode 25 of Illogical Contraption Radio?!
We'll be on the air--same bat time, same bat channel--tonight, fielding your drunken telephone calls (415-829-2980) and talking with public access television host Adam Papagan of Del Talk Show. Adam is a close friend and collaborator of previous guest David Liebe Hart, and has many a story to tell about the strange underbelly of post-9/11 Los Angeles. Join us, won't you?

ANATA - THE INFERNAL DEPTHS OF HATRED (1998)

"... where there was nature and earth, life and water, I saw a desert landscape that was unending, resembling some sort of crater, so devoid of reason and light and spirit that the mind could not grasp it on any sort of conscious level and if you came close the mind would reel backward, unable to take it in. It was a vision so clear and real and vital to me that in its purity it was almost abstract. This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through one's taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, of receiving another person's love or kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term "generosity of spirit" applied to nothing, was a cliche, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire - meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in... this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged..."

- Bret Easton Ellis,
American Psycho

Download some Swedish death metal HERE.
Or buy it.

Metallum/Last.FM

KACZYNSKI, KURZWEIL, ACID TESTS, SINGULARITIES, TERRORISM, AND SKYNET

Here's a wacky fun fact for you: Ted "The Unabomber" Kaczynski, while enrolled in Harvard from 1958-62, was subject to several of Professor Henry Murray's early "personality tests" involving stress and LSD. That's right, one of the most infamous domestic terrorists in United States history was involved in a program with deep links to the CIA and MKULTRA. As documented in the book Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist, Kaczynski served as a subject in some Murray's highly controversial experiments involving acid, psilocybin, and Personology over there at the Harvard Psychological Clinic Annex back then, and concrete details about these practices went to the grave with Murray in 1988.
Hm. As this 1999 article in Counterpunch puts it, "What did Murray give Kaczynski? Did the experiment’s long-term effects help tilt him into the Unabomber’s homicidal rampages? The CIA’s mind experiment program was vast. How many other human time bombs were thus primed? How many of them have exploded?"



Interesting indeed, the possibility that early studies in mind-control-via-psychedelics could have unhinged Kaczynski in such a manner, leading him on his ultimate path to anti-technological mass murder--after all, isn't our old friend Lysergic acid diethylamide often credited with quite a bit of that late-60's/early 70's "mind expansion" that gave birth to the Computer Age?

But I digress. I'm getting ahead of myself once again, and there's probably a pretty fair chance that some of our readers have never even heard of the Unabomber. Wikipedia, do your thing:

"Theodore John "Ted" Kaczynski, born May 22, 1942, also known as the "Unabomber" (a portmanteau of university and airline bomber), is an American mathematician, social critic, anarcho-primitivist, and Neo-Luddite who engaged in a mail bombing campaign that spanned nearly 20 years, killing three people and injuring 23 others.

Kaczynski was born in Chicago, Illinois, where, as an intellectual child prodigy, he excelled academically from an early age. Kaczynski was accepted into Harvard University at the age of 16, where he earned an undergraduate degree, and later earned a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan. He became an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley at age 25, but resigned two years later.

In 1971, he moved to a remote cabin without electricity or running water, in Lincoln, Montana, where he lived as a recluse while learning survival skills in an attempt to become self-sufficient. He decided to start a bombing campaign after watching the wilderness around his home being destroyed by development. From 1978 to 1995, Kaczynski sent 16 bombs to targets including universities and airlines, killing three people and injuring 23. Kaczynski sent a letter to The New York Times on April 24, 1995 and promised "to desist from terrorism" if the Times or The Washington Post published his manifesto. In his Industrial Society and Its Future (also called the "Unabomber Manifesto"), he argued that his bombings were extreme but necessary to attract attention to the erosion of human freedom necessitated by modern technologies requiring large-scale organization."

You can also study up on ol' Ted's side of the story by reading the "Unabomber Manifesto" in its entirety.

This snippet of a German (with english subtitles) documentary on Murray, Kaczynski, LSD, and MKULTRA is pretty helpful, too:



Also: "Harvard and the Making of The Unabomber" by Alston Chase, Atlantic Monthly

Some sweet photos of The Unabomber's digs right after the FBI nabbed him:

Good evening, ladies.

Can I interest you in a light snack?

A cocktail, perhaps?


Yeesh.
Whatever the involvement of the CIA/OSS (Henry Murray was a main innovator in the establishment of the Office of Strategic Services, the direct predecessor of the CIA, by the way), or acid, or psilocybin, or "stress tests", on Kaczynski, it's safe to say that he had a definite, deep-seated hatred for industrialism and technology--and every coin has a flip side.

The "flip side" to the Unabomber's particular coin can be found in futurist, tranhumanist, author, inventor, trancendentalist, and synthesizer enthusiast Ray Kurzweil (above right).
Kurzweil is probably best known for his deep explorations of "The Singularity": the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. According to most educated guesses, The Singularity will occur at some point in the 21st century, when computing power finally matches the abilities of the human brain, and we are all fused into massive, biomechanical, exoskeletal war machines, armed with surface-to-air missiles, lazer guns, and an unquenchable bloodlust knowing no bounds.

Consider this graph:

Click HERE for full size--trippy shit.

It won't be long, friends. Kurzweil's vector implies some pretty crazy, spooky things--things that Kaczynski sent 16 letter bombs to destroy. Although Mr. Kurzweil has nothing but optimism for the approaching Singularity and the fusion of human and AI, there are many who have their doubts--after all, what are the Robot Overlords' motivations to keep us around after they gain the ability to govern themselves? I don't know, man... I'm a big fan of Kurzweil's prescient 1990 book The Age of Spiritual Machines and all, but we all know what happens when the robots get too smart for their own good...

Don't we?



It's all just a matter of extremes, I guess.
Kaczynski acted out of fear for the loss of our humanity at the hands of technology, while "futurists" like Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge believe it will be our salvation. The concept of artificial intelligence and technology evolving beyond our ability to control it can indeed be a terrifying one, but the cold, hard fact is that eventually it will, and, barring some sort of massive, Kaczynskian "pre-emptive" strike against technology itself anytime in the near future, most of us will live to see it. And we will live beyond it as well... Toiling as slaves in the vast, cavernous Energy Mines under the watchful eye of the ruthless Cyborg Kings.

So what's my point here? I'm not sure, really. I actually just meant to write a post about Ted Kaczynski's tenuous ties to the MKULTRA program and got sidetracked. I fell down this whole "Kurzweil vs. Kaczynski rabbit hole" and blew my own mind.
I dunno... We live in a world of nanotechnology and evangelical Christians, of remote nuerosurgery and Holocaust deniers. The possibilities are endless, exciting, and frightening. The extremes are ugly and freaky.

Whatever, man. If you need me, I'll be in my shack.

KING KILL 33: The Strange Life And Times Of James Shelby Downard

"The United States, which has long been called a melting pot, should more descriptively be called a witches' cauldron wherein the 'Hierarchy of the Grand Architect of the Universe' arranges for ritualistic crimes and psychopolitical psychodramas to be performed in accordance with a Master plan."

-J.S.D.

In addition to his super-cool name, the mysterious hermit, conspiriologist, synchromysticist, anthroponomastic etymologist, and onomastic toponymist James Shelby Downard had quite a few things going for him before his death in 1998, including a vast knowledge of Freemasonry, language, politics, and, perhaps most importantly, alchemy. He was a man who knew no equal in the realms of conspiracy and paranoia, and, had his work not been brought to light by Feral House writer/editor Adam Parfrey in the years before his death, he would have passed almost unnoticed as such.

Downard's unique take on Americana via occult symbolism and revisionist history was firmly rooted in the basic tenets of alchemical magic, and his belief that alchemy (as practiced by Freemasons, of course) guided much of America's historical path. Downard was not a prolific man, espousing his theories in small pamphlets spread out through the years. But his most compelling ideas about Americana and alchemy can be boiled down to three major points (a "trinity" if you will--more on that later):

1) The detonation of the first atomic bomb at the Trinity site in New Mexico in 1945 represented the "destruction of primordial matter" necessary to begin magical transformation in alchemical lore.
2) The assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, TX, November 22, 1963 represented the "killing of the king" which functions as a second step in the alchemical trinity.
3) A third, unidentified event would complete this Trinity and usher in a new age of either supreme enlightenment or supreme evil. Traditionally, this alchemical "third step" consists of "MAKING MANIFEST ALL THAT IS HIDDEN".


Downard's best known work, a summation of these theories co-authored by controversial anti-Zionist conspiracy nut Robert Hoffman II, was titled King Kill 33, self-published, and distributed in small batches in 1987. You can read the preface (and then some) HERE, and after that buckle up and READ KING KILL 33 IN ITS ENTIRETY RIGHT HERE. It is some heavy shit.

Arguably, Downard's second greatest venture into the public eye came via Adam Gorightly's book, James Shelby Downard's Mystical War (BUY IT!), released in 2008.
Amazon.com says this: "Mind Control, occult scenarios, conspiracy and ritual crimes… In "James Shelby Downard’s Mystical War," author Adam Gorightly chronicles the famed conspiracy researcher’s life long battles against Masonic Sorcery as an investigator and exposer of the Science of Symbolism, Onomatology (Science of Names) and Mystical Toponomy (Science of Places). "James Shelby Downard’s Mystical War" picks up where Downard left off and follows the bread crumbs down a rabbit hole where only the brave (or crazy!) dare follow."

Then again, Amazon is often full of shit. If you'd like to learn a bit more before actually purchasing Gorightly's book, check out an excellent, detailed review (which nearly doubles as a Downard bio) over at Loren Coleman's Twilight Language blog. From his write-up:

"As you begin to read this new book about Downard, you might think that you have opened a cryptocomedic LSD trip about a conspiracy-oriented Forrest Gump-like character, who amazingly finds himself in all the wrong places at the wrong times...
Gorightly escorts the reader abroad a rollercoaster ride in which Downard is a Freemason scapegoat being ritualistically abused, watching the KKK hang a person at a crossroads, seeing Alexander Graham Bell receiving homoerotic sex magik fellatio, visiting J. Edgar Hoover's office, and getting a phone call from FDR."

Click HERE for full size.

Ever heard of William Grimstad? Me neither, but here's an oft-quoted excerpt from William Grimstad's piece on Downard, taken from 1978's Weird America:

"Would you believe John F. Kennedy as a ceremonial king-who-must-die? I'm afraid there is a certain body of opinion, undoubtedly the farthest-out brain wave of assassinology yet, that maintains the killing was pulled off, not by the Russians, the Cubans, the CIA, or the Mafia, but by alchemists.
As I understand the hypothesis, President Kennedy was for some reason chosen as The King (remember "Camelot," "Macbird" and all that?) after the fashion of James G. Frazer and Mary Renault whose "The King Must Die" he had been given to read before his death. This killing of the king in Dallas was related somehow to the touching off of the world's first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site in New Mexico 18 years earlier. Apparently the Bomb was the "destruction of primordial matter" stage of the grand alchemical working, but these conspiracy buffs aren't much more specific on details than were the early alchemists in their recipes. Anyway, Kennedy represented the next stage of the process - the "Death of the White King" - when he was immolated on a trinity site of his own. For, aren't Dealey Plaza and the ill-famed Triple Underpass on the bank of the old Trinity River?"

Sounds feasible, right? We already know the Freemasons run the show, dangling, as it were, from puppet-strings held by the Illuminati, who are in turn controlled by a vastly secretive race of shapeshifting reptilian space aliens. Common knowledge here, really, but the weird connections that Downard pointed out in his life work will really blow your mind. I don't mean to mislead: he didn't have any reptoid/Illuminati theories per se. But the loose ends he ties together via language, numbers, and geography are multitudinous are cripplingly odd nonetheless...


Also important: Masonry and the Downardian Nightmare, by Adam Parfrey. Foreward to Part 1 of JSD's autobiography, Carnivals of Life and Death. Buy said volume HERE. Parfrey's pieces on Downard in the much-cited Apocalypse Culture books are absolutely essential. Downard's Carnival only covers his life from birth to age 26--he died before completion of the second volume.

But back to the names and numbers...

Consider, my friends, these concepts (taken en masse from The Sorcerer's Apprentices. James Shelby Downard and the Mysteries of Americana, by Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen), just the tip of the iceberg, really, when studying JSD's work:

- Dallas is located just south of the 33 degree of latitude. The 33rd degree is Freemasonry's highest rank.
- Kennedy's motorcade was rolling toward the "Triple Underpass" when he was slain by, according to some analysts, three gunmen. Three tramps were arrested right after the murder. Hiram Abiff, architect of Solomon's Temple and mythic progenitor of Freemasonry was murdered according to Masonic legend by three "unworthy craftsmen."
- "Dea" in Latin means goddess. "Ley" in Spanish can refer to law or rule. "Dealey Plaza" was "goddess-rule" plaza.
- Blamed for the assassination was a man named "Oz," explained by Downard as "a Hebrew term denoting strength." Divine strength is integral to the King-killing rite.
- "Oz" was killed by "Ruby," just as the ruby slippers freed Dorothy from the land of Oz in The Wizard of Oz, "which one may deride as a fairy tale but which nevertheless symbolizes the immense power of 'ruby light' otherwise known as the laser."


- Dealey Plaza is near the Trinity River, which before the introduction of flood control measures submerged the place regularly. Dealey Plaza therefore symbolizes both the trident and its bearer, the water-god Neptune. "To this trident-Neptune site," writes Downard, "came the 'Queen of Love and Beauty' and her spouse, the scapegoat, in the Killing of the King rite, the 'Ceannaideach' (Gaelic word for Ugly Head or Wounded Head). In Scotland, the Kennedy coat of arms and iconography is full of folklore. Their Plant Badge is an oak and their Crest has a dolphin on it. Now what could be more coincidental than for JFK to get shot in the head near the oak tree at Dealey Plaza. Do you call that a coincidence?" For those in our audience still too puzzled by the whole "Wizard of Oz" thing to get that last bit: the "Queen" is Jackie and "Ceannaideach" is the Gaelic form of Kennedy.
- An earlier "Trinity Site," in New Mexico, was the location of the first atomic bomb explosion. Chaos and synergy, breaking apart and joining together are the first principles of alchemy. The atomic bomb broke apart the positive and negative (male and female) elements that compose primordial matter. Physicists refer to this fiendish trickery as "nuclear fission."
- The New Mexico "Trinity" sits on the 33rd degree latitude line.

- The Kennedy assassination's true significance was concealed by the Warren Commission headed by Freemason Earl Warren with Freemason Gerald Ford as its public spokesman. The Commission drew its information from the FBI headed by Freemason J. Edgar Hoover and the CIA, which transmitted information through former director Freemason Allen Dulles who sat on the commission.
- A decade later Ford, when president himself, was the target of an attempted assassination in front of the St. Francis Hotel, located opposite Mason Street in the City of St. Francis, San Francisco. Members of the Freemasonic "Hell Fire Club," site of many a sex orgy involving such luminaries as Freemason Benjamin Franklin, called themselves "Friars of St. Francis."
- The St. Francis Hotel was also the site of sex orgies. On its premises occurred the rape- murder of Virginia Rappe by silent film comic Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Virginia Rappe's name is a variation on "virgin rape." The rape of a virgin is an important alchemical sex-magic rite.

I apologize for throwing all of this information at you in such a relatively short amount of time. Downard's writing takes lots of time to digest (to say the least). But allow me one last digression before I leave you:

Remember up top, when I alluded to the alchemical "third step" Downard predicted in almost all of his work--the act of MAKING MANIFEST ALL THAT IS HIDDEN? The historical event that would usher a New Dark Age (and/or enlightenment)? Remember?
Well, many have speculated that a very major tragedy in American history, a tragedy that the man himself didn't live to witness, served as completion of the Downardian Trinity...

Totally, bro

James Shelby Downard was indeed a weird guy--seen by many as a genius, a guru, a wizard--but most often, as a kook. I definitely count myself among those who think he may have been on to something huge and hidden. But then again, there are those who doubt he ever existed at all.