Ben Fairhall

This might just be good time to step back from the manipulation and violence of the Middle East and return to the consideration of a very English mystery. One to be found amidst the sarsen stones of Avebury, the Wiltshire henge of great antiquity and sanctity; whose quarters are still open to all, and whose holy places have not yet been spliced or apportioned by officialdom. (Discounting the presence of UNESCO.) That this miraculous state of affairs is maintained is largely due to the presence of a village plumb in the centre of the complex; and the efforts of a small army of visitors and volunteers who ensure the spirit of life which inhabits the site stays protected. Should this situation ever change, we will all be in trouble; far more so than at present, for the importance of this place is immeasurable.

Amidst the powerful reminders of her prehistoric past, two churches nestle in close vicinity. The United Reform Church stands roughly at the centre of the outer circle itself and is made from stone material salvaged from the partial destruction of the monument in the eighteenth century. The Parish Church of St. James stands just beyond the henge, on the High Street; and is of course, much older. The first recorded church to be built on the spot dates from Saxon times (around 900-1000 AD.)

The church’s own guidebooks lists the surviving features from this first church as two window ranges found in the nave. According to the writer Esther Smith, however, there is a third : the font. That makes it around a thousand years old; and still on display, positioned (propitiously?) beneath the tower in the western end, freely available for anyone and all to come and marvel at. It is a thing of simple, even childlike, beauty: ruddy, stout, honest. But though many may look, few, it would seem, will comprehend. A brief analysis of the studies made of its enigmatic markings- added some two hundred years later- appears to confirm this.

The guidebook records the opinion of Professor George Zarnecki of the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London; which is well worth repeating:

‘The figure holding the book and crosier was obviously carved by a very rustic sculptor who, I imagine, took as his model something he saw in a painting or ivory carving, but he somewhat misunderstood his model. The trampling on two dragons was a popular one in the middle ages and it always represents Christ. There is such a representation, for instance, on the famous Ruthwell Cross in Scotland. Of course Christ in this representation should not hold a crosier; it is only in the resurrection scene that Christ is represented with a staff or banner. Nevertheless, I think that although not properly correct, your font represents Christ trampling on dragons symbolizing evil and sin and it is most appropriate to place such an image on a font.’

The lack of imagination inherent in this assessment is only too evident. It is indeed possible that the sculptor, a simple ‘rustic’ as he (probably) was, misunderstood his model; but equally likely is that he did not. The fact that the figure is holding a crosier, therefore, must surely lend itself to the consideration that the figure is not, in fact, Christ at all. Likewise, although the head is clearly shaped after the fashion of the classic bishop’s ‘crook’ (symbolic of the cerebral spinal complex and the male spermatozoon, according to Michael Tsarion) being at its foot clearly sharpened to a point, this suggests the ‘crook’ may in fact be a spear. If this is the case, might not the figure be Michael, the archangel so beloved of the people of the West Country, and whose energy courses through the Avebury compex in the form of the famous Michael Line? Is he even trampling on the beasts? The most plausible explanation, as any child could tell you, is that he is lancing one of them, a la St Michael and St George.

The depiction of a similar scene on the Ruthwell Cross, which the professor mentions, is significantly different: not least because the figure is clearly in possession of feet. That this is not so in the case of the Avebury font is (I think) of enormous significance, as I will endeavour to demonstrate. A point I might have thought self-evident is that a man without feet is quite unlikely to be trampling any bugger, dragons or no.

Still at least Professor Zarnecki appears to have actually looked at the thing, which is more than I can say for Paul Broadhurst. Now far be it for me to slag off fellow representatives of the ‘mysteries genre’ (if I may put myself in that illustrious pigeon-hole) but Broadurst is way off-beam on this one. Unfortunately the clanger is dropped on the first page of his latest publication, The Green Man and the Dragon, which otherwise retains the same high standards as readers have come to expect. For him, the font depicts ‘two early bishops in an archaic Celtic style holding a book in one hand and a crosier in the other with which they spear dragons writhing underfoot.’ Underfoot is rather misleading (as this man has no feet) but at least it’s an improvement. Quite where the second ‘bishop’ materialised from, however, I am at a loss to say. I can only surmise that the Red Lion up the road did good business that day as Mr Broadhurst was quite clearly seeing double.

In Philip Gardiner and Gary Osborn’s recent article, they reproduce the words of a former vicar of the parish. He is quoting as saying:

‘On the ancient Norman font in Abury Church there is a mutilated figure, dressed apparently in the Druidical priestly garb, holding a crozier in one hand, and clasping an open book to his breast with the other… Two winged dragons or serpents are attacking and biting the feet of this figure on either side. May not this be designed to represent the triumph of Christianity over Druidism, in which there was MUCH VENERATION entertained for this serpent and serpent worship?”

The erstwhile journeymen then make their own observations, adding:

‘After spending many hours sat in the cool fusty air of the little church at Avebury, staring at the image, it is our view that the serpents “biting” the druids feet are actually subdued by the priest rather than attacking him.’

This may be an important distinction; as it is clear that in at least some depictions of the solar hero and the dragon, the spear is used not to kill but rather to tame. In The Dance of the Dragon, Paul Broadhurst gives as an example the carving below the tympanum at Chartres, which he believes (quite rightly) to contain ‘secret wisdom… encoded in a way that could be understood by the initiate.’ In that example, he says, Christ is not trampling the dragon: he is being supported by it. Clearly, this hints at a much more abstruse and satisfying understanding of the symbol than merely the triumph of good over evil.

However, this all pales into irrelevance when we recognize that the figure depicted is neither Christ, nor a Celtic bishop. Whatever is being conveyed by the image, it is done so in a language which is not- to my mind- derived from Christianity; or at the very least, a form which has anything in common with the bastardized ‘lifestyle’ which passes for Christianity today.

It is interesting that Broadhurst was not able to solve the puzzle, because his book The Green Man and the Dragon is entirely dedicated to exploring the symbiotic relationship between the two archetypes. In it, he makes reference to the ‘Green Bishop’ of Tintagel, a wood carving found ‘on the back of a Jacobean chair’ in the church of St. Mariana. He describes the figure ‘wearing a Celtic-style bishop’s hat, his body transforming into fronds of foliage.’ No mention of trampling here. Similarly, the merest act of looking will show that the Avebury ‘bishop’ also ‘transforms’ in precisely the same way. The figure, whoever he is (and I will answer this question below) is clearly not ‘trampling’ the serpents because he is those serpents. At the risk of sounding like a famous Monty Python sketch re: dead parrots, ‘this bishop has no legs.’ He is, if you will pardon the expression, a legless bishop. The serpents are very evidently extensions of his body; and the winding fronds of foliage are, in turn, extensions of the serpents.

The entire image is far from being a ‘rustic’ misinterpretation. It is, in fact, a very cogent depiction of humanity’s interconnection with the natural world and the realms of the unseen, which might fairly be described as Gnostic. An interesting image to be put on display in a ‘Christian’ church, one might think. But then ‘Christianity’ has always worshipped very different gods to the empty chimeras held up for public consumption.

We find confirmation of this idea in the Gnostic figure of Abraxas (also known as the Anguipede.) In this form, he is depicted with the body of a man, the head of a rooster and ‘legs fashioned like snakes.’ It is noteworthy that many descriptions of the Avebury font describe it as ‘heavily defaced’- and yet for something which is the best part of a thousand years old, it seems remarkably intact to me. I can only hope to look so good when I reach that age. No, the only part of the font which has suffered significant mutiliation is the ‘bishop’ himself: and then, only his head. This gives the figure a strange, dehumanized quality; and (intentionally or not) the semblance of a semi-humanoid Ankh. Was the reason the head was targeted in this way because, in its original form, it was quite clearly not that of a man? Was the non-Christian nature of the original figure so obvious to its ecclesiastical custodians it was necessary to amend it? Might it have depicted the head of a rooster?

Whether there is any basis in this speculation or not, Abraxas was also shown with the head of a king, so it is perfectly plausible that an identity with this figure was intended. Amongst the early Gnostics, Basilides used the name as a title for God: Basilides whose name is so reminiscent of basilisk, which genus of ‘mythological’ (or astral) beasts Abraxas is said to closely resemble. He claimed that the numerological value of the name Abraxas came to 365: a perfect image, we might think, for a church which sits just outside of Europe’s greatest Neolithic ritual centre; and calendar in stone? Abraxas is usually depicted brandishing a whip and shield. Look again at the ‘book’ our ‘bishop’ appears to be carrying. It is a stretch, yes, but might not the ‘book’ just as likely be a shield? (Albeit, I concede, a very small one.) It seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that there is unquestionably more to this ‘Christian’ artefact than meets the eye.

The origins of Abraxas are often claimed as Egypt, which will be of great interest to readers of my previous post, which attempted to explore the connections between the Judaism of the Essenes, Christianity and the cult of Aten. This ended by asking the question of who exactly is worshipped (under the name of God) in the Christian church? Might we have a possible candidate in the serpent-man (Superman) of Abraxas? There is much more to discover here; and I offer these thoughts in embryonic form merely. Yet the character of Abraxas was of sufficient importance to capture the spiritual imagination of Carl G Jung, described by Michael Tsarion as ‘one of the greatest intellects ever to grace this planet.’ In his Seven Sermons to the Dead (a channeled text that Jung attributed to Basilides) he writes:

‘Abraxas speaketh that hallowed and accursed word which is life and death at the same time. Abraxas begetteth truth and lying, good and evil, light and darkness in the same word and in the same act.’

In other words, a conception of diety which encompasses both good and evil, God and Demiurge. This association with the dual nature of reality is clearly borne out in the design of the font. Firstly, only one of the two serpents (the ‘legs’ of the snake-man) is being subdued. The point of Abraxas’s spear (or whip) hovers perilously above its eye, or is perhaps piercing its head. Its mouth appears to be wide open in pain. The serpent is completely enclosed within a bower or arch, from which further tendril-like fronts emerge. The second serpent (or ‘leg’) appears much more playful, more of a classical Oriental-looking ‘dragon.’ He even wears the faint traces of a smile. In marked contrast to serpent #1, this chap is free. His body is much longer, going through three complete ‘loops’ as he spirals through space: unenclosed, unrestricted. He is the venusian counterpart to his saturnian neighbour: Urizen, the god of restriction and control.

With the hem of the figure’s robe in his mouth- the serpent swallowing its own tail- Abraxas reminds us that both good and evil are necessary elements of experience within the infinite cycle of time. The Avebury font probably represents a Christianised form of these gnostic strands, drawn from an imagination with one serpent limb in the indigenous, mystical gnosis of old; and another in the contemporary church. Or was the early Norman church in these parts of Britain itself saturated in Gnosticism? Was that tendency ever really extinguished?

Might we even speculate that the image is a figure of rebellion? That the sculptor, like a Norman Leonardo, was only appearing to pay homage to Constantinian Christianity, whilst secretly betraying his Gnostic sympathies for those with eyes to see? If so, then the font is a worthy relic in this time of universal deceit.

A prayer to be spoken over the font:

‘The circle will be unbroken.
The leviathian will be defeated.
The cries of our brothers like voices from the dust will be avenged.
Victory to the English Intifada!
Death to the New World Order.
Amen, Amen, and again, Amen!
Truth will once again be established on the hill
And all the peoples of the earth will enter her.
Let it be so.
And so shall it be.’

Peace to all.

One of the enigmas surrounding the life of Jesus, which has exercised both scholars and researchers alike, is the ‘missing years’ about which the gospel record is strangely silent. From his miraculous and astronomically propitious birth in Bethlehem, to his re-appearance in the Temple twelve years later- and from age twelve to the start of his ministry at thirty- the lack of biographical detail provokes questions. Has the record been significantly doctored, even censored, by those who would prefer the true origins of Christianity to remain forever in confusion? Does the paucity of information lend itself to the view that Jesus is a composite figure, a religious archetype, a symbol of the dying-and-rising god and the alchemical process of rebirth?

In between the above two episodes is another tale. This is the legend of the flight, the occasion when St.Joseph, under inspiration from God through a dream, was directed to leave Palestine with his wife and son for Egypt. (Matthew 2: 13-15.) Such a course was necessary because Herod (the Great) had heard about Jesus and ‘was exceedingly wroth’.

To retrace the full journey, as approved by the current Coptic Orthodox Pope Shenouda III, takes many hundreds of miles, from Tell el-Farama in the Sinai desert to Dair al-Muharraq in Upper Egypt. This got me thinking, as I sat in the famous Lehnert & Landrock bookshop in downtown Cairo and flicked through some photographs of the route. I was surprised to see, amongst the usual proliferation of monasteries, churches and convents, a fair selection of holy trees, caves and wells; and recurring stories of apparitions and angelic visitations (including at Zeitoun in 1968.) Was it just my imagination or was this pilgrim’s trail exhibiting all the known characteristics of a ley?

There is a long history of recording the particular properties of sacred sites through folklore, legend and song. Barry Brailsford, co-author of In Search of the Southern Serpent, cites the example of the Rapuwai tribe of ancient New Zealand: environmental scientists whose mission ‘was to test all the waters of the land and create for each spring, stream, river and lake a song that told the story of those waters.’ (Brailsford, p.131, ibid.) Might the tales of the Holy Family in Egypt be another example of a similar process? Are important natural features, and places of particularly powerful energy, conjoined and their secrets communicated through the medium of religious folklore?

If so, the stories demonstrate a primitive form of surveying.

An interesting feature of the Rapuwai system was that ‘whenever a particular river of lake was found to have dangerous qualities, a taniwha, a mythical creature of power was placed into the song…’ (Brailsford, p.131, ibid.) This illustrates what almost certainly lies behind the many tales of dragons in the folklore of Great Britain. The dragon represents those parts of the land where the energy, for whatever reason- perhaps connected to water- has stagnated. The archetypal dragon-slayers- St Michael, St George et al- should be considered not as warrior knights but as shamen and earth magicians, harnessing the serpent power of the earth and thus permitting it to once again flow freely.

Such interpretations will always be rejected by religionists (including the New Age ones) who will say that to ‘reduce’ the scriptural record to a form of landscape map is to deny the solidity of their heroes. Likewise, there are numerous voices even within the ‘mysteries genre’ itself whose reputations rest on persuading the rest of us that Merlin, Abraham, Enoch, etc, really existed. It is, in any case, highly likely that Jesus ‘existed’; what everyone can agree upon is the need for orthodoxy to revise its conception of the form this existence took. That way we might prevent a recurrence of the present situation, where the stories designed in the first place to contain, protect and perhaps to conceal the truth, are taken for the truth.

On page 72 of In Search of the Southern Serpent Brailsford tells the intriguing story of Ra Kai Hau Tu , an early Polynesian navigator. In order to complete the land claim of one of his ancestors, who had sought to unite the islands of Aotearoa, Ra Kai Hau Tu was required to carry the ‘Mana’ (or essence) of the South Island all the way from the northernmost tip to its opposite extremity in the south. (Brailsford, p.72, ibid.)

‘That difficult journey down the mountain backbone of the island was vital for the future of the Nation. As he penetrated the uncharted wilderness he would join the mountain peaks and the sources of the rivers to the stars.’

In similar fashion, perhaps the journey into Egypt was a symbolic rite which demarcated the westerly boundaries of the New Kingdom that Jesus was selected, by birth, to establish. Before such a reorganisation could occur, would the future King be expected to first unify his lands in a spiritual sense- after the manner of the ancient navigator- by means of a pilgrimage? That any future reunification would have necessitated the expulsion of Rome (from Judea) may indicate what sort of movement Jesus intended leading. If this was his aim, then his life- in his terms- must be deemed a failure. The desire for a ‘Greater Israel’, however, has never disappeared; and there are those who regard events unfolding almost daily in the Middle East as part of that centuries-old agenda. These voices claim that the Eretz Israel envisaged by right-wing Zionists does, indeed, incorporate part of Egypt- ‘from the Nile to the Euphrates.’ (Genesis 15:18)

‘From the Nile to the Euphrates’ - as depicted in the flag of Israel?

But whether the pilgrimage was enacted to legitimize Jesus’s right of kingship or for some other reason, the fact of a journey into Upper Egypt becomes a strong probability when we factor in Jesus’s status as an Essene, custodians of the settlement at Qumran.

Their most famous achievement- though this is much disputed- is the collection of documents known collectively as the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered by a Bedouin goat-herder in 1947. One of these documents, the Copper Scroll includes a list of 64 locations of buried treasure whose estimated value runs into billions of dollars.

Mainstream scholarship has long assumed this treasure to have been the property of the Temple in Jersualem, and to be buried in various locations in Judea and Samaria. Using this hypothesis, however, none of the artefacts have been recovered. The Temple certainly was the benefactor of donations and tithes from the Jewish community and in those circumstances it may have been convenient to secrete some of its assets in much the same way as bank vaults are used today. But according to a theory proposed by metallurgist and scrolls scholar Robert Feather, ‘whilst part of the treasures may well have come from the First or Second Temples at Jerusalem… when the secrets of the Copper Scroll are unravelled it becomes patently clear that another Temple is involved…’

The ‘other Temple’ that Feather claims to have identified is that built by the ‘heretic Pharoah’ Akhenaton at Amarna. Although he does not endorse the theory of Ralph Ellis, that Akhenaton is the same person as the biblical Aaron, the overall themes of both researchers are broadly similar. In particular, that ‘many of the basic tenets basic tenets of Judaism, and by extension Christianity and Islam, came out of Egypt.’ His work has revealed that the ‘main settlement building at Qumran’ was built ‘in exact alignment to the main walls of Akhenaten’s Temple.’

At any rate, if Qumran was an Essene stronghold- and the sectarian beliefs of the Essenes drew from sources in Egypt- then it would make perfect sense for Jesus of Nazareth, an Essene of royal blood, to pay homage to his ‘mother church’ in Amarna; perhaps as part of a much larger pilgrimage undertaken by the community at Qumran as a whole. Robert Feather has uncovered evidence at the Amarna site which he believes substantiates this: in the form of a wall painting commemorating the event. Whether this journey was undertaken as a rite of ‘unification’ to underline the authority of Jesus to establish a greater theocratic empire, or simply to orient the child in the traditions of his ancestors, Amarna remains an important stopping point on the official pilgrim trail to this day. Was it in Qumran, or perhaps in Amarna itself, where Jesus spent those all-important ‘missing years’, receiving the religious education with which he attempted to reform Judaism? Or did he break from his conditioning, perhaps angrily, and go public with his own, personal interpretation of the faith? If any case, we need to ask ourselves the question: if Jesus was, indeed, an Essene; and the Essenes considered themselves ‘the keepers of the original Covenant of Moses’, what then is Christianity, and who are exactly are its gods?

My regular readers, who must now number at least three, will have been wondering where I have been the last two weeks. To those dear souls let me send my assurances that I have not yet been silenced by agents of the Illuminati. The truth is rather more bizarre.

A short while ago I posted a speculative review of Superman Returns- as I hadn’t actually seen the film then- in which I promised myself should I ever wish to watch this atrocious piece of fluff that I would do so in a locale other than my old stomping ground of Beckenham.

This rather paltry ambition I have, to my eternal chagrin, fulfilled. This was not because I had nothing better to do during my recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land; but rather because the heat in the south being so overwhelming, and my already frayed nerves being sorely tested by the violent energies swirling around that embattled region, I seized the opportunity of spending two hours in a darkened antechamber with air conditioning with the same sort of gratitude as I imagine the Hebrews received their manna from Heaven.

The object of this quest, which- let’s be quite frank- could not have been more poorly timed for someone as fearful as myself- was, of course, the city of Jerusalem. I would like to claim some longstanding romantic pedigree here, being a Theology graduate, but in truth my yearning for this sacred place is considerably more recent. During my long exile in the academic realms, when I still flirted with the Great Beast that is religion, the prospect of paying homage to the dry lands of the Bible resolutely failed to seduce. There is surely some sort of lesson in this. It was only when the cloak of orthodoxy finally fell from my shoulders that my imagination began to be charged with the first stirrings of adventure.

‘It is well known that there is a special providence that looks after drunkards, little children, and fools.’ So says Dion Fortune in her guide to Glastonbury, Avalon of the Heart. Had I known this before setting off I would have fretted less and perhaps enjoyed more. Nonetheless, no traveller can return from such a pilgrimage unaffected by the experience. For the undoctrinated, the first fruits of this transformation may assume the form of a profound repugnance for religion; whose depredations are nowhere as evident as they are in Jerusalem. Al-Quds, the place of peace, was never the most appropriate of monikers for a City whose walls have been ransacked by countless waves of invaders over the course of its turbulent 3’000 year history.

The sensitive visitor, however, may discern something of the justification for all this tribalism, as she basks in the glory of the Dome of the Rock. Surely the most controversial structure in the world, and a microcosm of the Middle East and all its attendant miseries, it nonetheless stands atop a piece of land so suffused in iridescence it can only be described as holy. It was there, before this manifestation of mathematics made flesh, that I knew what the Templars had come for; and as I drank deeply of the water pumped from the sacred ground itself, I knew that the journey was truly endless.

But what of Temple Mount itself? The site is more correctly known as Mount Moriah, for (of course) no temple presently stands there; though this oversight may yet be corrected soon, as since 1948 the Dome has clearly been on borrowed time. Moriah is the central peak in a topography which calls to mind that other sacred place (at least according to Henry Lincoln) Rennes-le-Chateau; or possibly Lewes, in Sussex?

Jerusalem was previously a Caananite stronghold, the place of Jebus. But might this great Mount Moriah- impossible though it sounds- be a man-made structure? Certainly its shape has been moulded by human hands, in keeping with a tradition which stretches at least as far back- if the records are to be believed- to Atlantis. These legends are summarized by Dion Fortune, ibid:

‘There was a great civilization, built up with the help of the gods who then dwelt among men. There was built the wonderful City of the Golden Gates, concerning which the folklore of all races has a tradition. This city, so we are told, was built upon the flanks of an extinct volcano on the sea-coast of this ancient land. Behind it was a plain stretching back to the inland mountain ranges. It was an isolated pyramidal hill, shaped like a truncated cone, with one side, the inland side, sheered off into a precipice.’

Mount Moriah, as the historian of religion Lambert Dolphin points out, is not a single peak, but ‘an elongated ridge’ with a maximum elevation of 777 metres. (Numerologists please take note.) The elevation of the truncated plain which forms the ‘outcropping on the Temple Mount’ is only 741 metres. I will never be an structural engineer, but are these dimensions forming a picture that approximately corresponds to Dion Fortune’s description of a ‘truncated cone, with one side… sheered off into a precipice’?

The bearers of this tradition, history tells us, were the Egyptian priests, ‘themseves the heirs of a tradition of extreme antiquity.’ (Fortune, ibid.) During my Jerusalem pilgrimage I was able to follow in the footsteps of the Holy Family and cross the border into this most dusty land; and there be reminded of the intimate associations between the Pharaonic traditions and the religion of the Hebrews. The books of Ralph Ellis, in particular, have mined this area of research in compelling detail, drawing parallels between the Old Testament patriarchs and the Hyksos of Egypt. If this is indeed the case- as I feel it was- then the exodus out of Egypt was actually a mass evacuation by a people who originally descended from Sumer. (David Icke, Tales From The Time Loop, p.236.) Did they, during their period of relocation in Canaan, attempt to relocate the ancient city of their forebears, in the place of Jebus? If so, far from London being the New Jerusalem, a Masonic effort which the writers Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval have exposed, even Jerusalem itself is merely a type of a much older sacred blueprint, whose occult roots lie far back in the realms of prehistory.

Indeed, if this be so, then there are sites in our own Albion whose claims to antique holiness far exceed those of Jerusalem. For, as Dion Fortune relates:

‘It is well known that the ancients delighted to build their colonial cities upon the same plan as the mother city in the land of their race. Is it possible that our strange pyramidal hill (Glastonbury Tor) with its truncated top and its inland side as steep as earth will stand, may have been wrought to that likeness by human hands in memory of the sacred mountain of the mother continent?’

I say it is. But let’s keep the fact quiet. The last thing we need is another Jerusalem in our beautiful Isle of Avalon.

‘The gods are living in me, for I live and grow in the corn that sustains the Honoured Ones.’ - Egyptian Coffin Text

It’s been quite a weekend in crop circle land. That this land has spread beyond its usual boundaries is one of the hallmarks of this year’s burgeoning season. A beautiful glyph appeared on the lower slopes of Windmill Hill (famous for its Stone Age settlement, the ramparts of which can still be seen. ) The glyph, however, was allotted a much briefer life-span. Within three days of its arrival it was mown by the farmer, in a clear statement to the croppie community and quite possibly to the circlemakers themselves. We await confirmation of whether such militancy will achieve the desired effect: to cause the phenomenom to shift; but early indications are that the circles are, for whatever reason, already on the move. I suggested that this might be one of the season’s themes in an earlier posting. At that stage Kent had been graced with (at least) two patterns. An obvious theme connecting the two was the Pilgrim’s Way, the ancient track which connects Winchester and Canterbury.

Since then, another Kentish circle has arrived: yet again on the Pilgrim’s Way. That this is a well-known feature of Kentish formations I have since learned from Graham Tucker of Medway Crop Circle. Writing on the excellent Crop Circle Connector website, he says:

‘This formation continues an alignment that’s formed entirely by the positions of past formations. Beginning with the Boxley event of 2005, the line heads approximately for five miles NW until it slices through the Nashenden Farm formation of 2004. It then crosses over the old “North Downs Way” pilgrim track to link up with the “Borstal Bubble Ring” of 2001, before finally jumping over into the next field along that’s hosting the new circle. We must also mention that this is the first time we have known a formation to have appeared in this field which coincidently or otherwise, lies right next to the “Pilgrims Way”.

As with 90% of all other Kent formations we find that once again one of our ancient pilgrim tracks has been acknowledged. This new formation is also carrying on with the other old Kent tradition of throwing the numbers three and six at our feet.’

Croppies often describe the formations as ‘events’, just one of the little bits of circle culture I have assimilated over the past few days. For this is my first season as a formation follower. I shot down to Avebury Trusloe to find the Windmill Hill glyph, but arrived shortly after its destruction. I have since then been glued to Crop Circle Connector in much the same way as I am normally glued to the David Icke headlines. Following the Avebury disappointment I was determined to witness an ‘event’ firsthand. The opportunity was not slow in presenting itself. For a few days previously I had been feeling a persistent pull to visit the Rollright Stones; a site which has intrigued me since I learned of the tradition (since proved to me in practice) that the number of stones is impossible to count three times in succession and still arrive at the same total. I was pleasantly surprised then, upon checking in with the Connector, to learn that a formation had appeared in a field right next door.

Oxfordshire is, and has been, a hub for these sort of activities for quite some time; but, in keeping with the geographical surprises being thrown up it seems to be growing in importance. A possible explanation for this might lie in the presence of the world-famous St.Michael Line which flows through the shire. This is the series of alignments linking sacred sites running from Cornwall right on up to Norfolk. It follows (very roughly) the passage of the Ridgeway, until the latter morphs into the Icknield; so much so that I often think of the Michael ley as analgous with the Icknield itself. My feeling with this is that, with the sacred sites of Cornwall, Somerset and Wiltshire being so well-known, the intelligences guiding the formations are now in the process of diverting the world’s attention to Michael’s ‘illegitimate sons’: the oft-forgotten counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire and the rest. With this in mind, it comes as no great shock to me that Norfolk has already witnessed at least three crop circles, and Hertfordshire (another of the overlooked Michael counties) two.

The message in this- or one of them- is the rediscovery of our spiritual heritage: not merely in the sceptred shires of Avalon and Avebury, but the length of breadth of the country.

Driving back from the Rollright ‘event’ I mentioned to my traveling companion that our next destination should be the Uffington White Horse. I can claim no great prescience or insight in this, because its charms are rightly famed; but upon consulting again the mightly Connector, we found no less than two large (and intricate) designs within very close proximity of the same spot. Although I felt no great urgency to explore these designs, perhaps because the Rollright event had temporarily sated me, I was corralled into doing so; whereupon a full day immersed in a hitherto occult subculture unfolded.

Whatever did the croppie set do before the advent of the internet and mobile technology, I wonder? Because these buggers can be difficult enough to locate even now. After considerable amounts of fannying about with hand-drawn maps and traipsing for more than a couple of miles up and down the Ridgeway, I realized that circle chasing is not a dissimilar persuit to the M25 ‘raving’ scene which also arose from apparently nowhere in the latter part of the eighties. In both cases, the quest is often more significant than the destination; and it is the people with whom you share the journey who really make the occasion. In this we are following in the true tradition of pilgrimage, though this may be a fact lost on the messianic ranks of ‘researchers’; whose principal aim, it would seem, is to descend upon the crops with more gear than Prince Philip on an elephant hunt, and to strut around with professional pomp. Such lunacy was characterized for me as ‘mainly men in their heads’- an apposite phrase. The egomaniacs aside, however, I was fortunate to share the encounter with lovely people from as far afield as Holland, Norway and Australia: proving that the crop circle phenomenon is truly international.

My initial reaction to the Wayland’s Smithy formation was- like many- to read it as a fairly explicit reference to 9/11. Whilst I wouldn’t dare utter such a heresy upon the Crop Circle Connector forum, the connection is quite appropriate. Because the people who endlessly bicker over the status of a formation- or who attempt to extrapolate layer upon layer of impossibly arcane mathematics upon every pattern in sight- remind me all too clearly of the 9/11 Truth crowd; whose idea of a good time is the hurling of calumny upon anyone whose Flight 77 theory differs in substantial form from their own.

Even a brief analysis of the cerealogical literature conveys a subculture immersed in opposing dialectics; and the stench of bad blood emanating from the rival encampments is almost enough to put one off. The only solution, I would humbly submit, is to let them get on with it. Fortunately there is little such negativity present in the formations themselves: or at least not the three I have visited. Ensconced in these temporary temples- in the shadow of Uffington castle- one has a glimpse of human potential.

They say a week is a long time in politics. It’s also a long time in football. The day after the Ecuador match, when the general public were still luxuriating in the memory of Beckham being sick, news filtered down of a very sinister kind indeed. A perfect day to bury bad news, you might imagine- just like 9/11 was for the apparatchiks in the neo-Labour bunkers. Just as sinister is the fact that it received almost no attention whatsoever.

The plan is to create a database of every child in the country, containing such information as their eating habits and educational ‘attainment’. Any child be unfortunate enough to be noticed by the system, will trigger intelligence gathering on the parents, to determine whether or not they are suitably positive role-models to be left with the task of bringing up their children without the predatory intervention of the State. You can read the complete article here. Hand in tiny hand with this is the news that hundreds of schools are already pushing thumbprint isometric ID for innocuous transactions such as withdrawing books from of the library.

Not long before that we had the news from the States, of yet another foiled terror plot. This time the SEARS Tower in Chicago was the alleged target. Nothing noteworthy in this of course: you can’t move for terror alerts and foiled plots. Practically every time I switch on Five Live there’s a senior member of the Met Police informing me that London is an unprecedented state of guerilla warfare; and that frankly the situation is very, very dangerous and volatile indeed. (You really wouldn’t believe that if you were to take a walk on Hampstead High Street, but our protectors wouldn’t lie. I heard this most regularly in the days following the Forest Gate shooting; but I’m sure that was just a coincidence and nothing whatsoever to do with covering their sorry arse.)

This time round, however, the sad unfortunates named in the plot were distinguished by the fact they were Americans ‘with no formal links to Al-Qaida.’ This is hardly surprising, of course, considering Al-Qaida is no less fictional than Hogwart’s, but let’s ignore semantics for the moment. The pertinent thing is that the cross-hairs have shifted. Fortunately for decent people everywhere (the kind with nothing to hide so nothing to fear) the ‘homegrown terrorists’ in question were all black. So roll back over America, and let nothing rouse you from your stupour. There’s still the jobless and the conspiracy theorists to plough through before they finally come for you.

A few days later and that nice, shiny young man David Cameron joins ‘our Tone’ in his campaign to get the Human Rights Act put away. He presented it very nicely of course- the man is an Etonian after all. Unfortunately Cameron is less of a bulldog and more a particularly bitchy chihuaha: capable of biting just when the public leasts expects it. He is, however, a personal wet dream compared to the slime which is Gordon Brown. Following fresh on the heels of his sensible announcement on Trident, this impossibly self-important man has recently hinted he wants to extend the time that ‘terror suspects’ can be held in detention without charge. Readers may recall that this is the debate which the government- led on by its sluttish cheerleaders in the Murdoch press- recently lost in the quaint museum once known as the Houses of Parliament. Facts of this nature are, sadly, mere trifles to a zealot like Brown, a Cromwellian figure who deserves remorseless satire.

Then we had the announcement on Monday that our very own MI5 (God bless ‘em!) is conducting a secret investigation into up to ‘8’000 suspected al-Qa’ida sympathizers.’ This is taking the policy of the pre-emptive strike to its logical conclusion, as the intention of the exercise is to identify ‘future terrorists.’ Will those information gatherers in our nation’s State-adminstered schools be tied into this grand design, I can’t help but wonder? Please observe that it is no longer necessary to engage in physical behaviour to earn an investigation by the despicable Goons In Black. Sympathisers- supporters, people who can empathise: in this era of thought crime you are every bit as guilty as the insider who plants the bombs.

There is still reason to be cheerful, however. In a week of big developments in the totalitarian sprint, the CIA announced today that it has closed the unit charged with catching Osama bin Laden and his senior deputies. Great news. That must mean the ‘War on Terror’ is nearly over, doesn’t it?

Unless, of course, they never had the intention of catching him in the first place.

Back in 1989, being the disastrous youth I was, a large part of my time was spent anticipating ‘movies.’ I suppose I had yet to fully comprehend that the urgent- nay, apocalyptic- marketing which pre-empted these seasonal sensations was no indication of the quality of the product. I was very naïve. Nor was I alone in my suburban preoccupation, which large swathes of the internet have yet to fully grow out of. There still exist, though it pains me to say it, fully-grown adults for whom ‘movies’ are important. Not merely in an abstract, Lars von Trier sense; but fully-fledged geekhood: people who proudly inhabit the virtual and arrested world of Hollywood. We have a few in the office- but you expect that from the underclass. Their lives have been so utterly stripped of connection, they seek it instead in the punter-whore relationship between viewer and celebrity.

These are the same genus of souls who think Ross Kemp really is a cockney barman (when he’s not soldiering on the other side) and mistake paediatricians for the other thing. In other words, convincing arguments for population control.

Still, live moves on. In 1989 we third-formers were getting in a tizz about Batman, the first one. To demonstrate the truly circumscribed existence I must surely lead, fifteen years later in 2005, I was sat in the very same cinema I watched Batman in, watching Batman Begins. The big movie for summer this year, meanwhile, is another comic ‘tie-in’ (and another tacky ‘prequel’): Superman Returns. If I get manipulated into watching this one- against my better judgement- I must remember to do myself a favour and do it somewhere other than Beckenham. (If anyone would care to accompany me, by the way, the e-mail address follows the conclusion of this feature.)

The second advent of Superman- and the phrase is most appropriate- has caught my attention for a whole host of reasons. I don’t own a television, but if I did I might consider watching a new series beginning tonight on MoreFour (wherever the hell that is.) Entitled The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, it offers the intriguing thesis of film as unconscious desire- movie reviews through the (retractable) lens of Freudian psychoanalysis. I have long wondered what exactly was going on in the eighties, when we had not just one, but two extravagantly muscled stars: Arnie and Sly. It was the era of Red Terror; and clearly America had yet to confront its homosexuality. It was perfectly alright to view the well-worked bodies of (strangely inarticulate) men; so long as they were holding a live machine gun and doing their bit to reinforce desire with death.

All we, from our upholstered armchairs on the other side of the pond, can conclude from this is that the average American male must live in a permanent state of anxiety. We are no strangers to imperial guilt ourselves of course; though some feel it more strongly than others. Nonetheless, the sorry plight of the American WASP must be even sadder. Like their Australian cousins, their wealth is built on the still-warm bones of the slaughtered aborigines: whose voices ‘speak unto you as the voice of one crying from the dust’ and whose reports must surely interrupt even the most complacent American sleep. The day of reckoning for these crimes will one day have to come. Until then, however, we have the artificial, fake and entirely contrived bogeyman of International Terrorism to keep the wheels of warfare rolling; and the peasants from revolting.

Moreoever, we have a new (or rather, resurrected) breed of hero to protect us. This being the twenty-first century, he is somewhat younger, more ambigious- and starkly lacking expensive weaponry. He is Superman; and his return to our screens for the first time since 1987 tells us something about the state of both our nations. It seems the Americans in particular just can’t stop being frightened of bumps in the night. They still need a saviour: especially now.

It is interesting that the last Superman film- The Quest For Peace- was a terrible commercial failure. I am told that it was also a singularly bad film- which never helps things- but there have been any number of excruciating films which manage to at least break even. (Look at United93.) What really did for The Quest For Peace was its thematic territory. With a sub-title like that, it was doomed from the start. Superman, you see- like the other caped crusaders- doesn’t do peace. Peace is not Superman’s thing. Peace, and the quest for it, has never broken any records in Hollywood. It is no accident that the first film to be screened in the White House was The Birth of A Nation.

No, Superman only comes into his own during times of full-scale- preferably global- war. That’s when the old super juices get flowing. In his early years he was busy defeating Hitler and defending the American way. Now he’s back to purge the world of terrorism: or at least that’s what the marketeers are hoping to hook you with. The presence of post-911 semiotics in the advertising campaign did not remotely surprise me. (Look at the burning plane.) 911, and the fear it engendered, has seeped into more than one marketing device since ‘the day that changed the world’ (yawn) and the tide shows no signs of abating. The only surprising thing is that Americans don’t object to their creation myths being plundered in this way. Still, that would credit Americans with integrity: never a good thing, judging by their unelected representatives anyway.

This particular campaign- a British triumph- still strikes one as a particularly egregious example. I kept waiting for the oppropium to begin on Jeff Rense or Infowars; but nothing. I seem to be alone in perceiving in this a blindingly obvious reference to 911, and the strap line- The World’s Not So Rigid Anymore- is surely as succinct a description of the Ordo Ab Chao philosophy as one will ever hear. Right? Revelation of the method, I believe it’s called. Not judging by the eminent correspondents on the Illusions forum and others, to whom this image has apparently failed to so much as even register.

Should we also wonder whether there isn’t coded significance in the very costume of Superman, which keeps us glamoured by this archetype? Michael Tsarion, in his fantastic lecture The Subversive Use of Sacred Symbolism in the Media, informs us that the colours red and blue pertain to the early degrees of Freemasonry. He identifies examples of corporations using the same colour combination, partly as an indication of their status within the secret society network, and partly to create an occult association with certain astrological energies. Red is frequently used to suggest the energies of Aries, for example. In the case of the Pepsi logo, the red and blue forms a yin-yang (or sun) symbol. When we look around us, we see hundreds of similar examples, like this one: as discovered in my local Co-Op. The yin-yang also relates to the sigil for Cancer: frequently evoked by companies selling household products because Cancer is the planet believed to rule over the home and property.

Neil Hague, in Journeys In The Dreamtime, takes it even deeper:

‘In the creation myths and migration records of the Toltecs of Central America, there is reference to the opposing colours of a mysterious red and blue spring. According to the Toltec these red and blue symbols…relate to their warrior god Huitzilopochtli. Many dual deities, especially in the Americas and Asia, were depicted with a blue or red skin colour and this also relates to the opposing forces of sky and Earth, good and evil… Blue was often symbolic of the male cosmic force and red related to the feminine blood of the Earth.’

He also notes that a red and blue diety (Thoth) can be found on the old British Telecom logo.

There is clearly an ancient pedigree for these blue and red-attired marauders, who return to defend their people. Indeed, there is a religious parallel to all this: which has not been overlooked in the States, which is after all the nation which made The Passion of the Christ one of the most successful films ever. THE HOLIDAY BEGINS WHEN HE RETURNS is the strap-line on American posters; failing to mention that the last battle between good and evil is set to occur at the same time too. Perhaps this is what we’re all being prepared for, or being set up to accept, by means of these movies which pander to the same mythical and dualistic themes.

Knowing this, we should have no doubts as to which God this Superman really belongs to: Saturn, the black god of the elite himself.

Superman- the Fallen Angel?

More advertising dirty-tricks. Hardly worth mentioning really, considering the frequency with which much larger disinfo-ops are pulled on us; but it tickled me (as these things are wont to do on a Monday morning) so I will do as the Coral would have it and ‘pass it on.’

Elsewhere on this site, you’ll find a review of the (truly terrible) film United93. This is the embarrassingly bungled, faux-realist, extremely poorly acted piece of schlock served up to a highly gullible public by profiteer and Illuminati shill, Paul Greengrass. This gentleman happens to have been born in Esher, about five miles from Mordor (where I remain in permanent exile.) He’s come a long way.

This boy has form, this Greengrass. Apart from the blatant piece of hagiography which is his film about Stephen Lawrence, Paul Greengrass is the co-author (or ghost writer) of Spycatcher. This is the book which promised to blow the lid on MI5 and the intelligence services in the late 1980s, and which inspired a stage-managed attempt by Mrs Thatcher to get it banned. His efforts were guided by one Lord Victor Rothschild, conspiracy researchers claim, in a bid to divert public attention from Rothschild himself for his role as the ‘fifth man’ in the Cambridge spy ring. In his stead, Wright (Greengrass-Rothschild) names Sir Roger Hollis, clearing Rothschild of suspicion.

Obviously a man the Power can rely upon in a tight spot. As with all such traitors, their fealty earns them money (lots of it) and all the trinkets and plaudits one’s Satanic heart could possibly desire. Any doubts of a controlled media were dispelled by the unanimous accolades poured out upon United93. The insufferably pompous Roger Ebert- the American equivalent of Alexander Walker minus the class- described it as ‘masterful and heartbreaking .’ His web site includes links to blogs which seek to re-educate the deluded souls who may have been infected with 911 scepticism. The best of these is 9/11 Conspiracy Smasher:

‘A blog designed to fight the tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy dorks who believe that 9/11 was caused by Jews/ the government/ neo-cons/ flying saucers/ Bilderbergers or Bigfoot.’

I rather like this writer’s style. His method, so far as I can tell, seems to be to hang out at the various lectures and conventions engaging the speakers and fellow delegates in conversation. Having milked them of journalistic dope, he rushes back to his laptop and puts the whole thing up on his blog. He certainly has an eye for weirdness, and there is plenty of that flying around in the truthseeking community. The only difference between the Smasher and myself is that, what the Smash purports to be repulsed by, I hold in the highest regard. True conservatives understand the value of the visionary- however contrary his ideas may be to their own. Conspiracy Smasher, on the other hand, fails to convince, either as a conservative or a closet conspiracist. His dominating humour, it would seem, is simple anger.

All this good press has given United93 a certain box office pull. This is presently being exploited in a particularly craven fashion by one J Sainsbury’s Ltd, in an attempt to flog a few surplus copies of the even more poorly made, made-for-TV special called Flight93. This is not the same film as United93, but Sainsbury’s are hoping you won’t catch on. OUT NOW ON DVD the advert in the London Evening Standard trumpets. The intention is that the popcorn guzzlers with half an eye on the latest Johnathan Ross review- the kind of people who know nothing about politics and even less about film-will assume that this is the Greengrass film and excitedly head down to Sainsbury’s to pick it up. They may never discover their mistake, as the arrested adolescents who take interest in a film’s credits are a sadly dying breed; and besides, anyone who sits through Flight93 will be asleep before the end.

THEY WILL BE REMEMBERED, the advert also audaciously adds. Clearly someone over-bought from the distributor, and this shady little ruse is an attempt to break even. We should, of course, expect no better from Sainsbury’s, part of the Satanic triumvirate who have done so much to reduce consumer choice and quality; and to genetically modify the public with their Frankenstein food. I went to pay a visit to the remains of Merton Priory earlier this week, a former (Templar?) chapter house and church, whose remains used to stand in Merton Park. Most of the foundations have been covered over, and in their place stands a particularly oppressive superstore of the SavaCentre variety. Not only are these Satanists willfully desecrating Albion’s spiritual heritage, they are doing the same thing to the English language. More remains lie unexcavated in a site also now threatened with ‘development’, another syllogism if ever there was one; and the whole scandal is being administered by that ‘dubious front’ (to quote Ellis) English Heritage. Someone really needs to look into just who is behind the Heritage brand, because something tells me conservation is the last thing on their grubby little minds. Apart from the hideous superstore, the site is home to an enormous pylon, further adding to the palpable atmosphere of desolation. I feel for the poor souls who live or work nearby.

I am always interested in other people’s stories of disastrously-administered restoration jobs. It’s time someone shopped these arrogant yobs before it’s too late.

It has been a slow start to the crop circle season, according to the statisticians over at Crop Circle Connector. Fear not, they will come. They have to. A lot of (mainly) Americans pay a lot of tourist dollars for their annual slice of spirituality, and to do things with pendulums to the great irritation of Wiltshire farmers. Either the ‘ET presence’ does its job or the circlemakers, the crop artists will do it to order. These ‘hoaxers’ get a rough press from those who take a particular interest in these things. Funny, really. I will let Ellis Taylor explain:

‘Crop circles are manifestations of consciousness. They arrive in a material form through the efforts of human beings, and many other energy (or life) forms. Due to the egotism and dissociation of today’s humans most believe that only human beings are capable of creating them. Even the wankers and plankers who slip into the night armed with their plots and plans believe they have conjured and cast the circles. They haven’t. Crop circle enthusiasts engage in useless arguments as to whether this one or that is a hoax or not. There are no hoaxes. All of them… are manifestations of consciousness and whatever or whoever presses into the crops are only agents of that consciousness.’

I have written before about my antipathy for the SETI-brigade. Perhaps because I lack the requisite brain-ware, even crop circle research occasionally gets a little tecchie for my tastes. That’s when the eyes start to glaze and I need even more than my customary intake of Red Bull (surely some sort of mind control project?) to stay with the plot. I have long held that the symbols themselves are more important than their source; and that it is to them we should be casting our attention.

Symbols of transformation. That’s a resonant phrase I hear bandied around quite a lot. Ian Crane, chairman of the UK 9-11 Truth Movement(but don’t hold that against him) sees these glyphs as the physical embodiment of the wisdom of the ages returning to consciousness. Michael Tsarion echoes Jung in urging us all to get ‘symbol literate.’ Are these glyphs like the ancient mandala: eloquent expressions of the interior castle, the journey of the soul; as well as the perfectly ordered universe? Can such symbols enrich and empower us through the simple act of gazing? There is certainly an unearthly pull that these formations wield; which no amount of debunking can explain. But is there another reason for our starstruck fascination?

Two glyphs have already appeared in Kent. This is of particular interest to me, having spent many years in the borough of Bromley before my present exile here in Mordor. I read recently that Bromley once boasted a famous spring, sanctified in the Christian era to St Blaise (though of much greater antiquity) which stood somewhere near the station in what is now Bromley South. Until the medieval period it was just one of hundreds of similar pilgrimage sites, part of the sacred landscape of Britain: a quality the area still possesses for those who know about these things. The well, however, has long gone: a victim of the Reformation, like so much else. Might these glyphs- something of a novelty in the circle world, for they are not normally prone to stray so far beyond the reach of the West Country- signify the beginning of a period of rediscovery of Kent’s spiritual heritage?

The first formation is thought to have appeared on or around the midsummer solstice, at Lower Blue Bill Hill near Aylesford. This hill is home to the Medway megaliths, was formerly the site of a Roman temple and a stretch of a Roman (or possibly ancient) track (now the A229.) It is known that crop circles seem to prefer ley-centres. The hill is also haunted: another feature common to leys. The formation will attract many visitors: but is it the symbol we are being drawn to consider, or the location itself? Might it be both? Aylesford is famous for its Carmelite priory: the Order of St Theresa of Avila, whose guiding spirit is none other than the Virgin herself. In 1993 this priory took possession of a Black Madonna carved in the 1950s. Are we seeing the re-emergence of the Goddess in Kent; and are the icon and the glyph both part of this process?

‘Another etymology stresses the importance of the syllable ‘is’, a pre-Celtic word for a holy place where there is a subterranean current of water or telluric energy called a wouivre, which creates special conditions favourable for divinatory and initiatory purposes. This sacred syllable may account for the suffix –is or –es to be found in the name of many French towns.’

(Ean Begg, The Cult of the Black Virgin.)

The second formation appeared a couple of days later. Both sites skirt the Pilgrims Way, the ancient pathway stretching from Winchester to Canterbury. This is as significant a road as the Icknield or the Ridgeway: one of the oldest and most important of them all. There is surely a clue here as to the circle’s ultimate ‘purpose.’ Are we not being urged to revive the pilgrim’s quest? As we again walk the leys we will come to discover that the transformation is as much about the past, and our relation to it, as it is about the future. For it is as the aboriginal people of Australia have always known:

‘Those that lose the dream are lost.’ The Viennese artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000) expressed the same thought when he said:

‘If we do not honour our past we lose our future. If we destroy our roots we cannot grow.’ And New Zealander Barry Brailsford, an expert on the ancient lore of the Waitaha, puts it like this:

‘We are of the earth and the earth is of us. We are of the stars and the stars are of us. In the west we have forgotten this ancient inheritance. Yet, the elders say we have come to a time of ‘returning’ that is in many ways simply a time of ‘remembering.’ Now the wheel turns and we begin to see that if we lose our deeper story we lose the dream, and if we lose the dream the spirit dies… Everything is star born, everything that is of the physical dimension, the mind, the heart and the spirit is of the stars. So we stand beneath the stars as they turn within their circles and we know that we are of them and they turn within their circles and we know that we are of them and they are of us. We look to the wonder of their light and remember they are our home.’ (Barry Brailsford, In Search of the Southern Serpent, pp.64)

The big news from the (Illuminati) One World Cup is, of course, the blinding revelation that even millionaire footballers vomit. Because we needed reminding of this, ITV1 fulfilled its mandate to serve the public and its advertisers by offering the spectacle from a variety of angles, and in slow-mo. Perhaps digital viewers might even have been afforded a full-running commentary upon depressing the red button. It certainly made great fodder for the tabloids, and served to emphasise just how much of a debt of honour we all owe to that great frontman for the elite, Sir Bob Geldof.

Geldof, you see, was the scintillating intellect indirectly responsible for I’m a Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here, the show which did more than any other to present celebrity expectoration as mainstream entertainment. In this, we have certainly forayed into territory ordinarily reserved for hardcore pornography. From celebrity heaving and insect chewing, it was surely only a small leap to one Rebecca Loos doing something to a pig which would have shamed Nero. All great news for fans of ‘extreme’ of course, who now have something else to laugh at at work along with still-life shots from Abu Ghraib and faked (and mysteriously leaked) footage of Americans losing their heads.

Vile though he undeniably is, Geldof can not be regarded as the prime mover in this lurch to the low-ground. For that we must first pierce the dense mists of the San Fernando Valley, and the bizarre world of Californian porn.

Martin Amis wrote a novel, Yellow Dog, dedicated in part to this very subject. He was one of the first heavyweights (and they don’t come heavier) to recognize the cultural tsunami of ‘adult’; and to ask the questions few others had wished to confront. No doubt this artistic preoccupation was in no small measure due to a personal absorption in the subject matter: he certainly admits to having given it a go, as one would only expect. Now even the hacks are speaking out: no lesser an authority than Johann Hari,whose recent contribution to the debate is (for once) spot-on. He is in touch with the kids, this one- and he has been prescient enough to recognize a paradigm shift when he sees it.

‘I am a member of the last generation of Western teenagers who had to struggle and strive to get hold of porn…But 11-year-olds today have to actively avoid (it). Bodily fluids leak into every inbox from the moment an e-mail account is opened, and every sexual act imaginable (and a few that aren’t) are only a google away…’

It is the few which aren’t, I’m afraid, which (from a phenomological perspective) most interest me. Quite simply, without Max Hardcore, former royal correspondents consuming stick insects at teatime would still be an exclusively Japanese peccadillo. The quest for the source of stalwarts like Jackass, Dirty Sanchez and the like must lead to the same door. We need only to consider Big Brother (if we must): a multi-million pound industry whose most cherished desire is to beam ‘amateur sex’ into the front rooms of a nation not exactly starved of similar material. No-one (at least in meedjah) ever asks why the cause is such a vital one. It would be a little like asking Des Browne whether Saddam was a evil dictator who needed overthrowing. If you’re still asking questions like that, my son, you’re never going to cut it at Endemol.

Max Hardcore, for the few decent souls who have yet to be acquainted with this distant scion of the Dashwood clan (in spirit, at least)- is the American pornographer who popularized ‘extreme.’ What this entails, more specifically, dwells in the hinterland of the sexualis psychopathis: a region few of us will voluntarily inhabit for long. Regarded as loathsome even by the majority of his fellow producers, his violent schtick has, nonetheless, transformed his own particular field just as substantially as The Beatles transformed theirs. In turn, with the growing and already massive popularity of his product, he is slowly transforming society. Max is the reason why, as visitors to certain chatrooms can attest, for a generation of young people online seduction is perfectly expressed in language which would otherwise be reserved for a rape.

What this will all mean for the future, is something which sociologists are beginning to examine. The writer Andrea Levy has published a critique of ‘raunch culture’ from a feminist perspective. One of her concerns is the impact of ‘extreme’ on the lesbian community, whose readiness to adopt the ‘hump-‘em and dump’em mentality’ of the recidivist male she explicity connects with the new-found clout of Porno Chic. Even light-bearers such as The Pussycat Dolls fail to escape her ire, as is only right. She too has seen the seismic change which is underway; and is alert to some of its nastier ramifications. Let us never forget that pornography is a kind of sexual magic; and like all magic, it targets the subconscious. The subconscious speaks in images, not words; and once embedded there, these images inform the sort of reality that the mind manifests. This is why all vanguard art- of which pornography is unquestionably a type- is guaranteed to epater les bourgeois. As every conservative (not that there are many of those left) intuitively knows, the vanguard art of today is the landscape of tomorrow.

Still, at least Auntie Beeb had the decency to avert its gaze when Beckham retched. The world may be going loudly insane- but as least we’ve still got Our Gary.

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