Was listening to my favorite podcasts on the flight to NYC last week and this new Skeptiko interview with Knowles came on. As soon as I got to the City, the friend I was first meeting told me she had tickets to the Met to see the exhibit at issue: Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination -- so I got to see it all up close and personal both at the Met and the Cloisters on the same day I heard the podcast. Random coincidence or meaningful sync? :) (and no, I didn't see any 12 foot demon on the roof).
A few thoughts after listening to the podcast/seeing the exhibit:
1. Knowles has some interesting ideas and makes some interesting connections, but his blog Secret Sun literally gives me a headache trying to follow his line of thought. It is clearly written for a small audience with whom he is engaged in an ongoing conversation and who are apparently able to follow his stream of consciousness work. I wish he would try to write more coherent posts for a larger audience and not assume we've all been following him since the first post on the Cocteau Twins. Also, as far as I can tell, he has no way to search topics, so when Alex mentioned Johnny Depp and another post of Knowles, I could not find it. Alex, perhaps you can provide a direct link to that particular post, along with an explanation of why it was meaningful to you?
2. There's no doubt that the entertainment/sports industries are currently rife with satanic/luciferian symbology/imagery, but the idea that this stuff is new or "blasphemous" to the Catholic Church is puzzling to me. Catholic iconography has long exposed its penchant for using hermetic/esoteric symbolism in its art, architecture, and fashion -- at least since the days of the "rediscovery" of the Corpus Hermeticum. Medieval art is drenched in astrological and alchemical themes and symbols -- along with serpents, demons, and gruesome depictions of slaughter, rape, and animal and human sacrifice. It's been in plain sight all along -- it's just that the masses are not given an education about it. As someone raised Catholic (always "felt" a darkness to it), I can assure you that the astrological, alchemical, and deeper estoteric teachings of the biblical texts were never incorporated into any mass that I had to attend. Clearly, the esoteric/mystical experience is meant only for those invited/initiated -- or for those outsiders willing to do the research and force their way towards understanding.
3. Alex and Chris speak of "bracketed realities" -- but what does this really mean? My current thought would be that this is a similar concept to the Robert Anton Wilson/Timothy Leary "reality tunnels" concept? So that various people see the same event through their own personal lens/education/experience. So with the Met gala/exhibit, most people (the "GMA crowd") experienced this Met Gala as just another fun/decadent display of obscene wealth and frivolity by those who have $30,000 to pay for a ticket and dress like the pope or a fallen angel, while others (more intellectual atheistic materialists) saw the event and the exhibit as an interesting extension of the connection between religion/art/culture, while still others claim or intuit that there's a deeper/intentional message being conveyed through these ritualistic events so saturated with esoteric/hermetic/luciferian symbolism. Knowles suggests that the message of the Gala was to reassert the elite's dominance over the rest of us -- a clear assertion that we, the masses, are watching an elite ritual, a "convocation of the gods" -- and that we are not part of the club. This does seem to be the case -- but the question for me is: do these elite really have any better understanding of the Causarum Cognito (knowledge of the ultimate causes of reality)? Or is this all bluster and the modern way of maintaining the illusion of greater inside knowledge and thus the Divine Right to Rule?
I appreciated these comments as an effort to understand what Chris is about, rather than follow the eminently tempting path to just dump on him. Think Alex sees something, and he is probably puzzled why we don't see the same thing. I don't go back on my earlier comment about Chris being an artist, rather than a thinker.
Chris responds to 'pop culture' - something I have come to find repellently facile and relentlessly targeted at the vapidly impressionable young as a cynical source of revenue. Maybe this is a function of mature age. My tender years were from the mid 60s to the mid 70s essentially, and back then occult allusions were a genuine revelation. So for me the full scale plundering of occult ideas and symbols now is very different - exploitative and derivative. And this is a narrow slice of our culture too. I guess if you dwell within the aura of that aspect of contemporary culture it can seem like all there is.
I found Chris's assertion that he was 'psychoanalysing' contemporary culture to be frankly risible. He exhibits understanding of neither sociology not psychology, so while that claim may carry weight among his fans who understand neither it is simply ridiculous beyond. Hence while Chris may be a denizen of popular culture he is not an inhabitant of the wider cultural and social environment. The deluge of occult themes within pop culture stops at the boundaries. What is beyond is a very different world.
So is there an occult elite driving some nefarious agenda within our culture? I do not think there is. Is there a marginally occult-literate 'elite' influencing pop culture in this manner? Probably - but for the kind of influence and exploitation that has been part of pop culture for decades.
Is that 'evil'? Evil is a hard theme to speak to without exciting distracting objections about what the word means. Commercial influences have been exploiting and debasing youth culture for decades - and it seems to be that the evolution of media platforms has just led it to be more graphic, debased and moronic - and, yes, it will suck in the teeny boppers like a dyson. It is nastier but is it bigger?
What Chris does not do is place his observations in the wider context. He alluded to academic publications backing his stance - but neglected to be specific. That's maybe because any such perceived support is at best a generous assessment. There is a wider context for Chris' observations covered by academia. The recent Spiritual But Not Religious conference hosted by the Harvard Divinity School is an instance. Prominent at the conference was Jeff Kripal - a 'regular' on Skeptiko. You can view part of the conference via
.
I am trying very hard not to sound like an elitist, but I have to say frankly that there is something to be said for doing an academic research degree. You learn to do proper research, craft arguments and back them up. I did my research degree after I had turned 50, so I have an appreciation of the enthusiastic 'amateur' in contrast to the enthusiastic professional. Chris is very much in the amateur class here. There may be wisdom in his art, but he hasn't developed the discipline and skills needed to turn that art into argument.
Chris is also a neo-Gnostic, and as such he is operating to a set of assumptions that are not examined and tested, and yet which are central to the logic of his analysis. In the most generous manner this is a metaphysical theory that supposes certain moral presumptions about the nature of human reality are true. Listening to Chris is essentially no different to listening to a 'born again Christian' who assumes that the foundation of his argument is unassailable, and hence beyond argument. But in reality, if you don't know the code you can't get the message. This was the problem Alex implicitly understood. Chris had to decode his message. But the reality seems to be that he lacks the intellectual discipline and the knowledge to do so.
I have a fundamental problem with some conspiracy theorists who assume they are blessed with a singular insight that allows them to discern truths that 'secular' or 'establishment' subject matter experts miss because they are sucked into the fog manifested by the bullshit machine of the elites. So on the one hand they want to exhibit their prowess and influence in public and on the other they obstruct the most erudite and educated - revealing their dastardly plots to a cohort of weirdly gifted outsiders.
Now I am not saying that it is not often outsiders who 'blow the whistle' on BS the rest of us have fallen for. But that romantic role really has to be left to Hollywood. It is a nice fantasy to imagine that you are a truth hero. Einstein was a patent clerk - that kind of thing. It happens, but not so often. Chris isn't an outsider in this sense. He wrote a well-received book whose subject matter sat squarely in his native domain. That's a good thing to have done. Its more than I have done (so far). He comments on pop culture within a community that plainly respects his contribution. He should stay in that community, I think, because he lacks what it takes to thrive beyond it. He is a believer and, a such, should stay close to his community of believers. To the extent that he has an insight of use beyond that community he lacks the goods to go that far.
I think Alex used the show as an experiment to see if he could entice Chris beyond his boundaries - beyond his art into argument. He couldn't. None of us are any good beyond our natural proclivities. Here's a lesson for us all.