Monday, September 19, 2005
Telesis
Telesis is the purposeful use of natural and social forces. It is planned progress. Magickal activism.
Power does not reside in church or state, but in the manipulation of words, images, and symbols. The power of reality engineering. In the past, church and state held a monopoly on this power. Today, this power is in the media. The popular media was first to show people ways of life from outside of the clenched provincialism and parochialism of their family and community. Cultural currents were able to cross-fertilize each other and media was able to confer a cosmopolitanism on even rural-living individuals. Media is the foundation of the emerging Global Village and the key to the alchemical Great Work of manifesting the Aeon. The common usage of the word "media", a plural noun, as a singular noun indicates unconscious movement toward that manifestation: an all-inclusive medium growing and progressing in all directions and dimensions simultaneously.
The animating purpose of Dada and Surrealism was to smash all accepted values and expectations; to jolt perception awake from robotic sleep and into seeing the world in a new, fresh way that is nonlinear and multidimensional. Picasso's "Man with a Violin" depicts an ordinary scene, but from all sides and angles at once. In Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending A Staircase, No.2", we see what the title describes, but from a perspective of nonlinear time. The Surrealists investigated dreams and the unconscious, automatic art and writing, the art of "primitive" peoples and the art of children and schizophrenics. They were on a quest for magickal perception, a shaman's view of the world.
When Duchamp submitted a urinal for display as an art object, he broke the trance of expectation and at the same time returned aesthetic quality to an object previously regarded as not only mundane but repulsive. With this urinal, Duchamp performed an act of alchemy, turning lead into gold. With his "ready-mades", constructed from "found" objects, the mundane blazes in an aura of previously unnoticed color, texture and form. Later, sections of neighborhoods would be roped off to be examined as works of art. This is saying that we live in art. Our lives are art. This is why the Zen monk, after his illumination, was so deeply moved by his amazing ability to chop wood and carry water. In this alchemy of Surrealism, the Stone of Philosophers is a state of consciousness that perceives Spirit and Matter, Sacred and Profane, as one. Andre Breton said that convulsive beauty shall be erotic-veiled, explosive-fixed, magickal-circumstantial, or not be.
We have in our minds a description of reality. This description defines the reality that we live in and gives us detailed instructions on how we must perceive our reality. For most people, reality is pre-programmed because their description was taught to them as children and reinforced by their role in society. Most people live in a reality that is inherited as a legacy of cultural and personal history. They (we) live in a rented house, a house that is not a home.
The mistake is believing that this is the only reality possible. The problem is that all of our perception, energy and will is focused on this reality. It captures our total attention and in turn is reinforced by our attention. Most people are unaware that they are the creators of reality. They are yoked to a pre-programmed, pre-packaged description of reality with detailed values and belief-structures, which they unconsciously sustain with their power.
In ritual, the contents of the mind are exteriorized into the environment. Objects that are symbolic of desires and abstract principles are manipulated physically, mimicking mental process. All of the props, tools, elements, and actions of ritual are means to activate, engage, and focus our attention and intent, our reality-engineering power.
Media is also an exteriorization of the contents of the mind into the environment. Mass media is an environmental exteriorization of the contents of the collective mind. Any process that would unfold through ritual or meditative manipulation of word, image and symbol can be carried out on the mass scale, through media, in the collective consciousness of humanity.
Magick should be applied to and include within itself the most powerful and efficient tools available in order to accomplish its aims. Mass media has been a vehicle for the values, belief-structures and programs of the consensus reality-complex. However, we can rise up and seize the means of perception and use media to deprogram and short-circuit cultural conditioning as well as to refocus and remake the mind to access any desired state of awareness or consciousness.
We seek to create and propagate a New Description. Or, rather, we seek to program a reality that is fluid and multidimensional; offering the individual infinite choice of description, navigating a self-determined course among the potentials of being, exploring new selves and alternative realities. Even to discard descriptions altogether and enter into the Garden of Infinity as a clear and unconditioned awareness.
In this campaign, there are basically three types of action that can be implemented with regard to the values and belief-structures of the consensus reality-complex: Destruction, Deconstruction, and Transcendence.
DESTRUCTION: sacrilege, blasphemy, iconoclasm and protest. The control virus is in the word-image-symbol programming that makes up our environment. Our first task is to use media to disrupt, disorientate and destroy these lines of control. Break up those words and images, remix them randomly and absurdly and throw them back in control's face. William Burroughs has given us the method: smash the control images, smash the control machine.
For example, in medieval Europe, the spirit of the people was held in bondage by the Roman Church. The ritual that generated the occult power of the Church was the Mass (the name itself is a clue to its nature). The so-called Black Mass was a highly sophisticated weapon of liberation. It paralleled the Mass of the Church, but every aspect was distorted in some way. The Crucifix was inverted. The Lord's Prayer was recited backwards. Women, held in contempt by the Church, offered their naked bodies for use as altars. The performance of this ritual generated a sort of computer virus within the reality-complex of the Church, making it unstable, breaking it up and releasing some of that hoarded spiritual fuel; contributing to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the philosophical and political revolutions of that period.
New and improved Black Masses should be devised for use today. What words, images, values and traditions hold us captive today? These should be identified and isolated and we should endeavor to sin against them in thought, word and deed. Disrupt, disorientate, destabilize and destroy. Apply the discipline of Dada to the icons and dogmas of today, both obvious and subliminal. How are these control icons and dogmas implemented? We should find out and use those same methods to disarm them.
The destruction-mode is the confrontational front-line assault in the culture war. It is also the most problematic of the three because it makes you a target and a possible scapegoat. Also, there is a trap in which you allow yourself to be defined by opponent groups (if they are THAT, then I must be THIS). Be strong, be vigilant, be bold and be prepared.
DECONSTRUCTION: If Destruction is the way of the wrecking ball, Deconstruction is the way of the termite: careful observation of institutional structures and methods, in-depth analysis of the history and motivation behind and implications of cultural memes and then systematic breakdown. The investigations and explorations of the deconstruction-mode produce a wealth of information useful to both the destruction and transcendence modes.
TRANSCENDENCE: This mode is beyond inherited cultural values, belief-structures and reality-complexes altogether. They are denied any reality whatsoever. They do not exist (and they never did). Action in the Transcendence mode is based on expressing a fierce, powerful and sincere intention, integrity and love with regard to your reality and its evolution. This is the mode of CREATION.
In the course of our research and experimentation, certain target areas have emerged as important. It seems that focussing our attention and energy on these target areas and disseminating their "emanations" through various media will effect a profound cultural transformation.
CHAOS: as described in the first essay of this Manifesto. The basis of reality and ground-of-being is a fluid and dynamic "substance" that is pure potential and infinite creativity. This description can not be a dogma as it embraces all possibilities. It is a "root" which branches off into infinite choice of realities. As such, it forms a bond of unity among diversity.
GAIA: the living Earth. The emerging scientific view of the Earth as a super-organism merges with the archetype of the Mother. Earth magick is renewed: sacred sites, ley lines, feng shui, seasonal rites and festivals. An aware, active relationship with Gaia and the power of Earth magick inspire and fuel the passion behind ecological activism such as lobbying, protests, boycotts, recycling and ecotage.
However, we also understand that while nature is our HOME, it is not our MASTER. We are not against technology or progress. We are against waste and short-sightedness. We seek the implementation of appropriate technology such as wind, water and solar power, clean fuels such as hydrogen, biogas and biodiesel, and reforestation and organic farming.
EROS: The purest and most chaosmic manifestation of Eros is the Quantum Inseparability Principle, the Quantum Interconnectedness which holds all thing-events in unity. The unity of friendship, love and sex are more personal manifestations of Eros. We seek freedom for sincere, uninhibited love. We seek freedom for expression and fulfillment of such love wherever, whenever and with whomever. Free Eros manifests as an ability to immerse oneself in communion with all aspects of life, to surrender to bliss. In sexuality, it is the ability to sense and feel, to reach out to another. Free Eros is a rampaging flood of polymorphous, polyamorous, polysexual passion, the flow and force of which breaks and bursts through the barriers of social propriety, neurotic clinging and flabby sentimentality.
LIQUID: promotion of the liquid state as an ideal and seeking fluidity. All the action is in stuff that flows. Liquefy all structures. Dissolve all barriers, borders and boundaries and everything will melt together. Removing all blocks, the flow is unimpeded and the free elements form new, creative, chaotic, dynamic relationships. Make more connections, increase the flow of information and promote the holistic, interdisciplinary integration of arts, sciences, philosophies and lifestyles.
LANGUAGE: Words define and grammatical structure shapes thought. Thus, language conditions the mind, programs reality and determines experience. The first priority is to promote clear communication. We need a language discipline that clarifies murky communications between people and penetrates the meaningless but manipulative newspeak used by institutions and institutional media. This includes familiarity with semantics, memetics and critical thinking.
Next, we can weed out those words and phrases that symbolize obsolete and/or undesirable postulates, values and beliefs. This will erase them from thought. At the same time, we can create new words and phrases which represent new and desirable postulates, values and beliefs. Archaic words can be unearthed and reinterpreted to recapture "lost" ideas. These new and recycled words evoke new experiences, ideas and realities.
From there, we can go on to create new forms of language for expressing and communicating new forms of awareness and consciousness. Consider: Speedtalk from Robert A. Heinlein's novelette GULF, pictographic and visual languages, musical languages such as those used by Australian Aborigines and the Master Musicians of Joujouka, or something that incorporates all of these and involves the other senses as well.
OCCULTURE: The integration of the magickal interpretation of the world and existence with everyday life. The Historical Museum of Magick is preserved for academic purposes, as a knowledge bank and a treasure-house of images. However, the important work is spreading the good news that the Individual is the SOURCE of their reality; and developing the most powerful and efficient magickal technology for using the imagination and the will to engineer reality. For example, we have read books and heard motivational tapes on building "wealth-consciousness" that are classics of sorcery with an emphasis on finance.
It is important to reposition the image of magick in the minds of the general public. The institutional media would have them believe that magickal practitioners have nothing better to do with their time than molest children while drinking dog's blood and urine. Or, at best, they are portrayed as merely "wacky". Anything evolutionary is depicted by the institutional media as dangerous and/or foolish. Certainly there are neurotic (and even psychotic) people who cling to magick as some kind of gimmick; but when the larger picture and the personal and cultural value of magick is clearly shown, it will attract the interest of healthier, more capable minds and personalities.
SCIENCE: Complementing the promotion of Occulture is the popularization of what is being called "New Science". Of particular importance are the Quantum and Holographic views of reality and their ontological and philosophical implications. At the same time, we should be careful not to distort or exaggerate those implications.
S.M.I².L.E.: Space Migration, Intelligence Increase and Life Extension. Timothy Leary's prescription for the human condition. More space and more time to enjoy space and time.
Space Migration, Intelligence Increase and Life Extension are common raw materials for science fiction. Because they are evolutionary, they are often depicted as dangerous and/or foolish endeavors. Space is the domain of marauding aliens, where puny man doesn't stand a chance. The Supersavant is an insane megalomaniac. The Immortal yearns for death as a release from boredom.
Immortality without Space Migration and/or Intelligence Increase might well become dull. It would certainly contribute to overpopulation and the burden on Earth's resources. However, the Earth is already overpopulated and seriously depleted of resources. Space Migration is a survival imperative. Anyway, why should we stay in one small place even if we could? Because of the vast distances involved in space travel, Life Extension is necessary. All three components of the formula work together; and intelligence increase is the key to the whole scenario, as well as being a worthwhile pursuit in itself. All of humanity should be inspired to put their attention, energy, will, effort and resources into these goals. We desire enough space, creativity, and time to bring out the best that is within us.
EVOLUTION/APOTHEOSIS: Evolution is not finished. The work described in this Manifesto will create a new environment. This new environment will draw out new qualities and behaviors from its inhabitants. At the same time, the environment will inhibit obsolete qualities and behaviors. These are the environmental dynamics of evolution. The internal dynamics of evolution can be engineered by promoting the general themes of evolution, metamorphosis, transformation and apotheosis. The desire must be built up; the tension steadily increased. Although the scope of this process is grand, its magickal methodology is basically the same as that we use in our personal lives. Austin Spare referred to sigils as the means of accelerating evolution when desire is organic enough to reach the subconsciousness.
We can create homo novis out of ourselves. The Process will unfold at the level "below" the individual and collective unconscious, where mind and matter are not yet differentiated. Burning the automaton armor from us all, we will be propelled into dimensions and dynamics of experience and expression that were previously unimaginable.
Some will be in a position to facilitate the Telesis Process widely and deeply. Others will focus on their own locally intensive scale. Everyone can do something.
Here is one idea that illustrates making use of available resources. Throughout the United States, cable television companies offer public access service to their area. Individuals and groups can receive a free basic education in television production, use studio equipment free of charge to produce their program and get air time to run it. Now, say three groups or individuals in different places have the time, talent and creativity to produce high-quality programs based on the issues, ideas and aims of the Telesis Process. If twenty more groups of Individuals in different places simply go through the procedures to carry programs on their local public access, then a network can be formed for circulating the tapes. Now an underground cable television network exists that is active in 23 areas.
Similar scenarios apply to community, college and pirate radio. Xerox, fax trees, websites and e-zines...the list goes on and on.
Telesis is a total process of cultural transformation. In this essay we have focused on media, but The Process will unfold in education, engineering, architecture, cuisine, fashion and finance. We seek an initiative, efficient and empowered by will, to change our ideas about reality, ourselves and each other and to revolutionize the dynamics of life. Our greatest strategy is in living our own example; Individually, in cells or in communities of our own, as Brothers and Sisters in Abbeys of Chaos. We will to change life. We will to transform the world.
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