9 years ago on this date an alternate future came onrushing into my life after an operant Working in the Temple of Set, in which the magic realism became all-too-real. This cascade had dramatic effects: a relationship break-up amidst the fall of 21C Magazine, and consequently a journey through the cremation grounds. Although the symbolism was primarily Aghori, you might prefer the Bardo Thodol realms or Thelemite Crossing of the Abyss as metaphors. The audiovisual triggers that capture dimensions of this include the Babylon 5 episode "Z'ha'Dum" and the Laibach documentary Predictions of Fire on the gathering Balkans storm in the early 1990s.
Phenomenological aspects of this experience seeped into several articles I wrote over the next year: a Nine Inch Nails album review; the darker aspects of George Gurdjieff's cosmology; and my use of Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies deck for the Disinformation subculture site. It also led obliquely to meeting author Howard Bloom and becoming involved with the new media and arts festival This Is Not Art. Later, the experiences prompted me to develop a Film Scanning methodology using the values systems model Spiral Dynamics, and to examine the "early indicators" of genocide.
Half-way through an 18-year cycle the future has turned out to be very different from what I expected. In the immediate aftermath, the relationship break-up put me in a mindset evoked by the films In A Lonely Place and Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. Yet this is a microhistorical cycle within a larger cycle . . .
"No one returns from Z'ha'dum." Or at least not the same . . .
Comments (2)
Hi Alex
When you fell at Z'ha'dum, who was your Lorien...who caught you when you fell?
Chers
Andrew
Posted by Andrew Wynberg | March 5, 2007 9:44 PM
Posted on March 5, 2007 21:44
Hi Andrew,
In a profane sense: family.
In a myth/metaphor sense: an idealised aspect of my future Self, and my Jungian Shadow.
I just hope Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski doesn't file the experience under typical 'fandom' if you know what I mean . . .
Posted by Alex Burns | March 5, 2007 10:01 PM
Posted on March 5, 2007 22:01