It is my pleasure to announce an ongoing project documenting these FoolishPeople and their living legacy, to share their tale of travel from avant-garde theatre, if one must fall into transient terminology, to manifesting Strange Factories, a cinematic spell that takes their tradition of magic and ritual into the digital age. With Theatre of Manifestation Unveiled we are invited to join them on a jocund journey, a rare opportunity for exploring a contemporary artistic tradition that remains well tried in the mysteries.

The artists life, the life of the writer, and creative, is already filled with financial woes and the eventual alienation that attends any who begin to fracture the thin wall between reality and imagination. Adding magic to the mix, and worse a social conscience, you have a recipe for liminal disaster. Yet, it is in this chaotic matrix where those who seek illumination must go, and what seeker is more earnest than one who has no other choice but to go on.  Called to the precipice of the abyss, some learn to dance on the edge.

The FoolishPeople are not a group brought together by common interests, although they share a few, nor are they gathered on some artificial insinuation of talent, although each of them is more than capable in what they do, they are brought together by a force which none of us can speak of, it is nameless, and yet we see it’s effect manifesting within our lives. Each member of the core group within Foolish People speaks of finding a place in the circle where they have discovered access to mysteries and truths that have haunted them while awake and dreaming. Each member speaks of discovering in the freedom of this ritual theatre a doorway and vehicle to a wider sense of conscious  life. What is more, in speaking with them, and in speaking to those who have taken up the offer to enter their world, I’ve found that these discoveries are not without fruit, and efficacy is ever the test of practical magic.

Shall we begin with an anecdote? A rumor caught in conversation? Foolish People’s immersive theatre is more than just a night out, it is ritual, and like all rituals, when the set and setting are properly prepared, something Other comes through.  What comes of this we’ll discover at a later date in our unveiling, but don’t worry if you are skeptical. This is theatre after all, you needn’t do more than enjoy the show, what sneaks in after the curtain closes is yours to take for whatever reality you’d like.

I can speak personally on FoolishPeople’s emergence as an active agent, in some ways the same forces which foster their creative fire have been at play in my own experiments in art and culture.  John Harrigan, founder of FoolishPeople, and I became acquainted through the strange networked interstices of those whose interests lie in a more esoteric application of contemporary cultural technology.

I have spent many years investigating the curious crossroads of culture and myth.  My pilgrim’s path leading to a set of unique credentials in folk magic and ritual, psychical research, esoteric philosophy, cognitive science, and cultural studies.  It’s an odd arrangement of expertise, yet as a sagacious shepherd reflects in the Second Shepherd’s play of the Wakefield cycle:

We that walk in the nights, our cattle to keep,

We see sudden sights, when other men sleep.

John’s work with FoolishPeople, and the work of all those who participate in the experience, speaks for itself, and my own experiments have lead me to a place where I am able to bring you with on a guided tour of the twilight world where light and shadow play out the lives of gods in the experience of human flesh.

So please, accept this invitation, come with us in our exploration of this theatre of manifestation, you will find we weave through the web, a digital immersion that carries on the immersive ritual theatre which has become the hallmark of FoolishPeople’s production. This is a story we are creating, and like all stories it exists wherever there is word and will to carry it.

Although I must warn you, not everyone can survive the violence of creation.

www.strangefactories.com

-

Note: Many thanks to John for inviting me to participate in this project, and to Lucy Harrigan, Tereza Kamenicka, and Craig Slee for wonderful conversations in preparation for this journey.

-

FoolishPeople create Weaponised Art, Ritual Theatre and Film.

Over a number of years, FoolishPeople has developed a unique practice, Theatre of Manifestation. This is a form of ritual theatre that combines mythology, shamanism, drama therapy, strategic forecasting and open source collaboration. We create stories by merging film, performance, sound, art, light and the location to create a unique, dreamlike world that living characters inhabit.

Our audience must choose their own journey without guidance, a technique which challenges their habitual way of watching art and entertainment in a conventional manner. Static consumption is not possible, active engagement and participation is vital and absolutely necessary.

David Metcalfe is an independent researcher, writer and multimedia artist focusing on the interstices of art, culture, and consciousness. He is a contributing editor for Reality Sandwich, The Revealer, the online journal of NYU’s Center for Religion and Media, and The Daily Grail. He writes regularly for Evolutionary Landscapes, Alarm Magazine, Modern Mythology, Disinfo.com, The Teeming Brain and his own blog The Eyeless Owl. His writing has been featured in The Immanence of Myth (Weaponized 2011), Chromatic: The Crossroads of Color & Music (Alarm Press, 2011) and Exploring the Edge Realms of Consciousness (North Atlantic/Evolver Editions 2012). Metcalfe is an Associate with Phoenix Rising Digital Academy, and is currently co-hosting The Art of Transformations study group with support from the International Alchemy Guild.

I have always noticed that wherever you find flowers, no matter whether in a garret or in a palace, it is a pretty sure sign that there is an inner refinement of which the world is not cognizant. I have seen flowers cultivated and cherished by some of the lowest and poorest of our people. Where these emblems of purity are found, you may rest assured that they represent a  hope, and speak of a goodness of heart not to be found where they are absent.”

- from My Prayer Book – Happiness in Goodness: Reflections, Counsels, Prayers and Devotions by Rev. F.E. Lasance (Benzinger Brothers, INc. Printers to the Holy Apostolic See, 1944)

Tracking the flowering of the Santa Muerte tradition is a fascinating way to study the development of an “official” religion from the seeds of folk practice.  In the United States alarmist media has spurred the interest of popular kitsch, and the images of La Madre Poderosa that have become part of the commercial aspect of Her cultus are an interesting way to engage in the changes that occur when a tradition begins to develop enough efficacy in the social domain to elicit commodification. 

Those seeing Santa Muerte in the United States are probably familiar with two general iconographic forms. First there are the images that conflate La Flaca with variations on Our Holy Mother. The Virgin of Guadalupe is one of the most frequent transpositions, having developed out of Santa Muerte’s relationship with Chicano nationalism:

The Virgin of Guadalupe motif is what caused tensions in Lebanon recently when fundamentalist Christians began protesting the sale of this Bershka tank top:

I hope that the strange implications of using iconography drawn from a Mexican nationalist representation of a “Narco Saint” on a product marketed to trendy global youth is not lost on the Berksha design team that gave the green light for development. Within this repackaging process I personally like the interplay between Santa Muerte and the Mater Dolorosa more than the reworking of the Guadalupe iconography:

The second common iconic trope is to use images that tie Holy Death to  the more familiar images of the Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, tradition:

This is a favored motif for t-shirts, where graphic artists have been popularizing fashionable versions of the Dia de los Muertos tradition for a number of years. Renaming already familiar stock images, or reworking them, to gain association with Santa Muerte is an easy commercial fix when you’ve got a fast growing market on your hands that is unaware of the roots you are tapping.

Here we also see the addition of Dia de los Muertos costuming and makeup to Santa Muerte’s assumed tradition. I’ve noticed a number of bloggers mention Santa Muerte’s connection to this festival, and it seems this is coming, in part, from the commercial use of this imagery on t-shirts sold in the United States under the auspices of being representations of Santa Muerte.

There is some tie to Dia de los Muertos in that She is at times referred to in correlation to La Catrina, a popular figure associated with the festival:

However, this is just one small aspect of the active folk tradition associated with Santa Muerte, and may have emerged through the playful and amorphous name play that attends Her devotions more than any actual ties between the two figures.  La Cavalera Catrina, or the Elegant Skull, is a character developed by the Mexican artist  Jose Guadalupe Posada in the early 20th century to satirize the influence of European aristocracy on Latin American culture.

With the appellations of beauty lauded on Santa Muerte from Her devotees it’s easy to see how She has taken on some associations with a figure implying wealth and elegance. We can even see this as a continuation of the social critique inherent in Posada’s original characterization.

Santa Muerte masked as Catrina opens up a very direct challenge to official and orthodox hegemony, sneaking in through the back door of a symbol that they have come to accept as part of their cultural heritage.  In Her correlation to La Catrina we see Santa Muerte taking on a socially acceptable facade that obscures Her love of the dispossessed. When fine artists like Laurie Lipton get in on the mix,  Our Lady of Shadows becomes even more refined:

In all of this, if we are really searching for the White Flower, we have to ask ourselves if we are truly seeing the face of Holy Death that Her devotees see. Elke Weesjes, the lead editor for the United Academics magazine, asked a very pertinent question along these lines during a panel discussion on Santa Muerte hosted by the Morbid Anatomy Library. Even considering an honest commercialization born on the enthusiasm of Her followers,  how doe we separate the commodified changes from the ones which actually speak to the tradition, and having said that, at what level can such a distinction between commercial and devotional be made.

Weesjes’ question has been eating at me since the panel discussion, and as I’ve continued to observe the growth of commercial items bearing Santa Muerte’s image something struck me as a bit off with the products that are easily available in the United States. I’ve seen product listings that include Virgin Mary/Santa Muerte in their tags, along with tags indicating that sellers are under the impression Her iconography is saleable to the Emo market. Perhaps it’s just me, but the statues of Santa Muerte from Mexico don’t look as though they are portraying a dark mirror of the Virgin Mary, and are a bit more visceral than the effete delicacy of death evinced by Emo graphic design:

If we want to see Her “true” face, we need to start with precursors to Her entry into the international market, and the inevitable expansion of her product line which this entails. When we do this, we find a very different figure from the one being promoted in the U.S.

As Dr. R. Andrew Chesnut, who was featured on the Morbid Anatomy panel, points out in his book Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, The Skeleton Saint, when we go back to the original iconography, and look at how She is represented in other parts of the Americas, we find that Her imagery draws much more from the Grim Reaper, as portrayed in 1980′s and ’90′s fantasy art, than She does any kitsch reworking of the Holy Mother to fit more saleable ideas of Santa Muerte’s nature.

The pictures in the following slide gallery show how Santa Muerte is represented on the devotional material, websites, and t-shirts that cultivate the tradition within its original environment:

Coming to terms with these images, which are in stark contrast to the safer and cultivated versions appearing in the United States, we meet with a number of powerful insights into the emergence of folk practice. Here we see a pattern that goes beyond Santa Muerte’s devotional tradition and into assumptions made when facing any tradition emerging outside of cultural orthodoxy and institutionalization. This quest leads us into some odd and unexpected territory as we encounter the interstice of mass distribution and the commercialization of the cultural zeitgeist.

For those saturated in the ironies of popular culture the Mountain t-shirt company has become notorious for its animal shirt designs, one of the more popular ones being three wolves poised melodramatically mid-howl against a full moon. Available at Walmart, Spencers, and many other stores catering to less discerning markets, these products have the distinction of being rather culturally radioactive, and even wearing them in jest  requires a rarified self conceit to pull off. They conjure cultural stereotypes of basement dwelling gamers, or socially awkward pagans, more than a righteous representation of Holy Death’s devotions, yet it is here that we find a clue to Santa Muerte’s original commercial iconography.

If you are a savvy entrepreneur in the Mexican market, looking to quickly capitalize on the growth of a popular tradition, or if you are an intent devotee looking to represent La Nina Bonita through your clothing, where would you start? There aren’t any companies making Santa Muerte specific shirts,  nor does it make commercial sense that there would be, you don’t have access to a graphic design team or the proper printing facilities, you’re also limited in terms of time, money and transportation, so you grab the first thing that fits the bill within your environment. In Santa Muerte’s case this just happened to be shirts with illustrations of the Grim Reaper, and that’s where the Mountain T-Shirt company comes in.

Take a look at some of Mountain’s designs for the 2013 season and see if you recognize Our Lady of the Most Holy Death:

You’ll notice that these shirts have the Mountain logo on the front, and are tagged with additional brand logos near the neck, yet the Santa Muerte shirts don’t have these markings on them. The shirts related to Santa Muerte also have Her name written on them, something that would not appear on a Mountain t-shirt.

These signs give us a clue to a continuation of Her subversive influence, the shirts aren’t branded because they are black market copies that have been retrofitted to represent Santa Muerte, just the kind of black market copies that would be available through street vendors that specialize in these reproductions, street vendors that come from the social milieu in which Santa Muerte emerged, and which take advantage of global distribution models created by the fact that the same foreign factories producing the Mountain shirts very likely make a decent part of their profits through knock off versions. This same repurposing and reuse is seen on websites and pamphlets, where recycling available imagery is even easier (as this article, with its use of borrowed imagery, itself attests.)

Those looking for authenticity may scoff at the possibility of stores like Walmart and Spencer’s eventually carrying Santa Muerte related items, yet these iconic brands of cheap commercialization simply sell a more established, and official, version of the black market reproductions where Santa Muerte first met the marketplace.  They specialize in cheap, mass produced knock offs that mirror more culturally sophisticated products and represent the success of this process for vendors selling their wares street side or at flea and craft markets.

Does this negate the potency of these items in terms of the devotional tradition itself? America’s long tradition of repurposing popular brands for spiritual needs (think of Hoyt’s cologne or Florida Water within American folk magic) shows that it may have very little effect.

In the first place we have the necessity of illicit intervention to strip away the official logos from these images, which is then replaced with a logo for Santa Muerte.  Already we are dealing with a commercial item that has increased it’s liminal efficacy through piracy. If we are to look at loss of effective value, this depletion is more apparent in the United States where Santa Muerte has been relegated to being the Virgin Mary’s dark half, or some late coming dark avatar of the Mother Goddess mythos, neither of which have a very strong footing in the foundational mythography of the United States.

Here loss of potency is implicit in the misdesignation of symbolism, and in the routine familiarity of the iconography being used to represent Her to U.S. audiences. While this is an aspect of commodification, it is not the most obvious one that comes to mind when thinking about how this process affects spiritual practices. The commercialization itself has no effect on how these products interact with the spiritual tradition, it is in the symbolism used where we find the real decline.

We need to consider why a devotee would want to wear a shirt with Her image on it.  In the U.S. clothing is most often associated with class status and sub-cultural ties, but within the spiritual domain we have to begin thinking of how this relates to the public performance of faith. Again, there are parallels here in terms of the public performance of class and sub-culture, however they become subtly different when we begin thinking of this in terms of spiritual practice where symbolism has an added level of proposed power over effecting change in the world.

Looking through some of my friend Shannon Taggart’s photography of Pastor James Morrow and the Edwina Church of God in Jesus Christ Name in Del Rio, Tennessee I found an example of how shirts are used in a spiritually efficacious way within Pastor Morrow’s Jesus’ Name tradition:

For a worldview that includes concepts of spiritual warfare, and what scholars would suggest is a form of magic more than religion, a properly anointed shirt becomes a symbolic talisman. How far this goes is up to the individual practitioner. It is the same process through which a relic gains spiritual power through direct association with a sanctified persona, only here we find it operating within a looser framework for beatification.

Returning to Santa Muerte, if you think of all of the oils, baths, perfumes, colognes and incense that are sold to increase the effect of petitionary prayer, and add this to concepts of ritualism inherent in folk Catholicism you begin to get an idea of how even a commercial product could quickly become an active talisman.

Meditating on Her influence as a patron of the dispossessed, and considering what this means in terms of hijacking the false authority of rigid orthodoxy, we can find Her actively at hand in the illegal reproduction of branded imagery, and in the confusion faced by those in the United States seeking an established iconography for the Saint. There is also the ambient fact that the original Mountain shirts bear a cultural stigma which puts them firmly in Her domain.

Marketing Her to U.S. sub-cultures we can see how brands are aiding Her silent entry into the mainstream behind safer imagery. Because they need to focus on trends, company’s capitalizing on Santa Muerte need to make Her imagery more inline with already accepted, and profitable, items. Here She has access to areas of culture that would shut the doors on Her more open influence.

One can imagine that any kid who bought an “Emo” Santa Muerte shirt wouldn’t find their stay in the barrios of Mexico City very pleasant. Those fostering the heart of the tradition, and providing the real belief and activity that fuels its expression and growth, exist in a world that would be very disturbing to suburban and commercial interests.

There is an amazing alchemical aspect to this whole process where the prima materia of cultural detritus propagated by businesses like Walmart and Spencers is transmuted into an iconography whose cult status has drawn the official ire of representative orthodoxies at all levels of society.  What looks like cheesy fantasy art to the carefully mediated eye of U.S. sophisticates provides the imaginal infrastructure for a movement that has been drawing increasing concern from the military and law enforcement establishment since at least 2005.

While erstwhile devotees in the U.S. are sporting a weakened strain of Santa Muerte’s iconography, the swirling matrix of global capitalism continues to support and cultivate the black market distribution networks where more virulent representations of the faith are fostered. So if you are looking at picking up a Santa Muerte t-shirt, you’ll be better served heading to a local flea market or digging through Ebay listings for Grim Reaper shirts than buying something with more official branding, and you should also make sure to pick up the additional spiritual ephemera you’ll need to give it a proper anointing. Or better yet, repurpose Rev. Lusance’s advice and make your own, a t-shirt which will be a true flowering of your interest in the shadowy devotions of this misunderstood saint.

Whether She is seen in the form of a skeletal virgin or a wrathful reaper, She is always outside of the established norm. Commercial interests, cultural commoditization, and orthodox critique all meet with the same negation in Her empty eyes. Black or white market materials make no difference to She who rules the Most Holy domain of death, Her only interest is in the Blood and the Life.

Note: Special thanks to Dr. R. Andrew Chesnut who wore a very striking Santa Muerte shirt he received from Dona Queta to the Morbid Anatomy event, helping  to foster my curiosity in regard to the commercialization of the Santa Muerte tradition.

You can see t-shirt peaking out in this photo taken during the event:

Odd questions like this become more relevant as developments in cybernetics and communication technology allow for strange interactions with the world around us. Without the aid of creative imagination you get a bizarre bit of cultural kitsch, delving deeper you can encounter profound questions that crack into the mystery of mind and body, and the synaptic symetry defining so much of our self perception. If you tread carefully you enter the realm of Sacred Geometry, encountering applications of mathematics and ratio that bridge the gap between material science and the more aetheral realms of human existence.

It may seem counter-intuitive to connect Sacred Geometry to cybernetics, but in this kind of wider application is exactly the domains where theories of integral mathematics can be most fruitfully applied. The neuro-chemical maps that connect our nervous system to our body and allow us to move are predicated on mathematical relationships that can be found throughout manifested reality. Seeking to understand these relationships, and the structural web that they work throughout the universe, can provide a revolutionary change in how we view our place in the world, and guide our applications of science to more material concerns.

In partnership with Evolver Learning Labs, I’m hosting a live, 5  part, interactive video course starting on Sunday, April 21st, which will explore the connections between modern advances and ancient algorithmic insights, while looking forward to how these ideas can be used to guide us into more mindful use of our technological proficiency. We’ve invited some of the leading scholars in sacred geometry to bring their specialties together for a rare opportunity to open up this art to contemporary concerns.

Our guests include:

With a field of inquiry which can quickly slide into gross speculation, we’ve cultivated a group of scholars willing to remain intellectually adventurous while keeping their insights grounded in conscientious methodology. We will be covering everything from the natural emergence of these patterns in geological formations to the impact of these forms on our conscious perception.

This potent meeting of minds will foster an expansive discussion which seeks to work through the full implication of these ideas. My recent trips to the Morbid Anatomy Library and Observatory Room in Brooklyn have demonstrated how fruitful a thoughtful gathering can be. I’m hoping that this webinar can be an extension of that into the digital sphere, while carrying the same potential for connections and creative growth.

There’s still time to sign up if you are interested in joining us for the series, and I’m sure those of you that do will find your immersion into these areas of investigation as intimately fascinating, and personally fulfilling, as those of us who are creating the event.

Head over to the seminar page at Evolver Learning Labs for more information.

(This invitation was first published on Modern-Mythology.net)

-

David Metcalfe is an independent researcher, writer and multimedia artist focusing on the interstices of art, culture, and consciousness. He is a contributing editor for Reality Sandwich, The Revealer, the online journal of NYU’s Center for Religion and Media, and The Daily Grail. He writes regularly for Evolutionary Landscapes, Alarm Magazine, Modern Mythology, Disinfo.com, The Teeming Brain and his own blog The Eyeless Owl. His writing has been featured in The Immanence of Myth (Weaponized 2011), Chromatic: The Crossroads of Color & Music (Alarm Press, 2011) and Exploring the Edge Realms of Consciousness (North Atlantic/Evolver Editions 2012). Metcalfe is an Associate with Phoenix Rising Digital Academy, and is currently co-hosting The Art of Transformations study group with support from the International Alchemy Guild. For more information on his collaborative work please visit Liminal-Analytics.org.

An Open Mind from Russell Lizzie on Vimeo.

“I’ve learned how to separate the psychic signal from the mental noise.” – Russell Targ

“The mind is no longer limited to the perimeters of the body.” -
Russell Targ

Russell Targ’s most recent book The Reality of ESP: A Physicist’s Proof of Psychic Abilities provides an essential overview of his experiments with anomalous cognition.  As a laser physicist he worked as a Senior Staff Scientist at the Lockheed Missile and Space Company, receiving two National Aeronautics and Space- Administration awards for inventions and contributions to lasers and laser communications, but his passion for exploring the human mind put him at the center of the U.S. government’s attempt to tap psychic abilities for operational concerns.

Working with the Stanford Research Institute in the 1970′s, Targ taught 6 Army intelligence officers the Remote Viewing process and laid the ground work for the development of the U.S. Army’s psychic corp. in 1978.  In this short video, created by Lizzie Rose, he discusses his career, and reflects on the nature of what he discovered in his quest to find the limits of human potential.

(Note: Thanks to the Rhine Research Center for pointing out this video.)

“It is doubtless a peculiar psychical state that confers mediumistic power, but we know nothing of its nature, and we often ruin our experiments and lose our results by our ignorance. Certainly it is very probable that the psychical state of those present at a seance will be found to re-act on the medium. We should get no results if our photographic plates were exposed to the light of the room simultaneously with the luminous image formed by the lens. In every physical process we have to guard against disturbing causes.

If, for example, the late Prof. S.P. Langley, of Washington, in the delicate experiments he conducted for so many years – exploring the ultra red raditation of the sun – had allowed the thermal radiation of himself or his assistants to fall on his sensitive thermoscope, his results would have been confused and unintelligible. We know that similar confused results are obtained in psychical research, especially by those who fancy the sole function of a scientific investigator is to play the part of an amateur detective; and accordingly what they detect is merely their own incompetency to deal with problems the very elements of which they do not understand and seem incapable of learning. Investigators who, taking an exalted view of their own sagacity, enter upon this inquiry with their minds made up as to the possible or impossible, are sure to fail. Such people showuld be shunned, as their habit of thought and mode of action are inappropriate, and therefore essentially vulgar, for the essence of vulgarity is inappropriateness.

Inasmuch as we know nothing of the peculiar psychical state that constitutes mediummship, we ought to collect and record all conditions which attend a scucessful seance. Mediumship seems in some points analogous to ‘rapport’ in mesmeric trance, and it would be interesting to know whether a mesmeric sensitive is more open to mediumship than the rest of mankind. Again, are those who are good percipients in telepathic experiments also percipients in spontaneous telepathy, such as apparitions at the moment of death, and are these again hypnotic sensitives? Similar questions also arise as to somnambulists; in a word, is there anything in common between the obscure psychical states of these different classes of sensitives? Very probably there is, for all psychical phenomena, as we shall see directly, involve to a greater or less extent the operation of an unconscious part of our personality, a hidden self which in a medium emerges from its obscurity, as the normal consciousness and self-control subsides. This fact does, indeed, afford some clue to the peculiar psychological condition of mediumship.”

- from p. 120-122 of On the Threshold of the Unseen, by Sir William Barrett, F.R.S. (1917)

In researching parapsychology it has been fascinating to see how these studies have developed over 130 years of scientific scrutiny since the official founding of the Society for Psychical Research in 1882. Existing in a liminal realm of inquiry which penetrates both the center and the periphery of human experience, studying the history of investigation into exceptional human experiences provides a very potent ground for understanding the intellectual development of the past century.

The preceeding excerpt is taken from the 1917 edition of On the Threshold of the Unseen, by Sir William F. Barrett, F.R.S. At the time of writing the aetheric theory, which posits an unseen ground of material existence, was in vogue. Now we have non-local fields and dark matter which serve the same function, and in some ways are merely a renaming of similar ‘antiquated’ theories in light of more socially acceptable terms.

Similarly we find the “amateur detective” style of research, typified in the contemporary sense by debunking excercises such as the recent “Psychic Challenge” issued by Chris C. French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, London, Michael Marshall of the Merseyside Skeptics Society, and science writer Simon Singh, was an issue that came up early in the research history. Reading Barrett’s comments on this practice provides one of the clearest critiques of careless debunking, not only is it inappropriate to the phenomena, and to scientific inquiry in general, as he puts it, it is quite simply “vulgar.”

In a more positive light, we can see how inferences that he, and the other scientists investigating this area, made at the beginning of the 20th century have been further confirmed through contemporary research. The idea, propogated by F.W.H. Myers and in this excerpt by Barrett himself, that psychic phenomena represent the interaction of some kind of subliminal, or pre-subconscious, functioning of the mind, has been further investigated by researchers like Dr. Jim Carpenter. Carpenter’s recent book First Sight: ESP & Parapsychology in Everyday Life, codifies the results of his long term study in this area, and provides experimental evidence to support this hypothesis.

As he explains in an article on Huffington Post:

“”Research has told us that brain events stand behind every thought we think and lead to them.  And we have learned that many implicit psychological processes precede our experiences too, processes like subliminal sensations, stored memories and long-term values.  These things aren’t conscious in themselves, but the unconscious mind uses them to help lead to whatever we do become conscious of.

A difference about this theory, called “First Sight,” is that it assumes that a much bigger domain of unconscious information stands behind experience.  This includes things that are beyond the reach of our senses — it includes the extrasensory.  And it assumes that this reference to extrasensory information is not rare, but that it is continual.

First Sight brings in what is popularly called the “paranormal.”  It is different from previous ways of thinking about the paranormal in that it shows that our use of extrasensory information is actually normal and helpful, although unconscious.  No “para” is needed anymore.  This theory leads us to an expanded idea of our normal psychology.”

Direct Voice Seance Phenomena – Photo from the Leslie Flint autobiography Voices in the Dark showing Flint being studied by Society for Psychical Research members using infrared telescopes and microphones. Picture via Mark Russell Bell

While researchers continue to make advances in our understanding of these areas of human experience, reading Barrett it becomes obvious that the dialogue has been stunted, and in some ways remains stuck in, the same issues that were being outlined in 1917. As I mentioned in an article for The Teeming Brain, it is very disappointing to see how static things have remained due to clearly defined biases on all sides of the investigation into human potential.

Beyond a sense of stasis, reading historical material, has shown me how the assumptions, and in some sense dualistic thinking, that have arisen in the public debate don’t do justice to the depth of possibility that these phenomena hint at. Barrett’s citing of aetheric theory shows just how radically our use of words can alter our understanding of the same underlying situation. It also shows that the cultural framework of discussion is as important for deciding a theory’s reception as any factual basis that might be inferred from the data that supports it.  Scientists can live with non-local fields, at least in theory, but the idea of aether draws them to reading material that strikes a cord of mysticism, which they reject outright.

Much of the material from the 19th century and early 20th century remains a vital resource, as fads and fashion in the scientific milieu have never allowed for a proper investigation into many of the theories that were put forth by the pioneers of psychical research.  One can look to Jeffrey Kripal’s examination of F.W.H. Myers theories in his recent book Authors of the Impossible, to see just how relevant this historical investigations really are.

Hopefully with the increased communication, and cross disciplinary approaches, that are fostered with today’s digital technology, we can begin to reignite the same honest curiosity and scientific exploration of these areas that we find presented in examples such as the excerpt from Barrett’s work. The issues raised in examining the history of parapsychology are no less evident in other areas of scholarship and scientific engagement, and it seems that now, with digital technology, it is possible through the necessity of cross-disciplinary approaches, to begin to rebuild the framework for holistic approaches that will, in the end, benefit our collective efforts to explore the depth of our existence, and the potential that lies within us for a greater vision of life.

In his upcoming book, Proof of Heaven: A Neuroscientist’s Journey into the Afterlife, Alexander describes in detail his Near Death Experience, which is detailed in brief through the Newsweek article, Heaven Is Real: A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife. His experience, as he understands it,  radically altered the static assumptions that he had developed throughout his career in academic science.

Such an integral moment becomes very hard to explain on the cold grounds of academic dispassion. This is not to say that objectivity is in need of being abandoned, however it points to a central problem that has plagued contemporary science, which, when applied under the wrong assumptions, has been unable to relate to our lives in any kind of holistic way.

Having been hammered by the politicized, back and forth rhetoric of the Neo-Atheist and Creationist movements, it may come as a surprise that the leading edge of our current scientific investigations are pointing to a reality that is more complex than stock answers that make for good soundbites.  While Alexander’s book is an anecdotal account, it represents a drastic shift in our understanding of the world, a shift which began when NDE’s were first moved out of the psychological category of ‘delusion’ in the mid-1990′s.

At the heart of this are advances in neuroscience, physics and biology that are showing some of the unqualified materialistic assumptions that have undergirded popular science are difficult to fit with the evidence. Many of these questions are arising from explorations of non-local field effects, and the question of just how relevant they are to physical phenomena.

Stephan A. Schwartz, a former Research Director at the Rhine Research Center, recently pointed out, in a presentation preceding the first, global, online Remote Viewing experiment, that peer reviewed independent studies, across a wide range of disciplines, are more and more indicative of the fact that there is more to be studied regarding non-local fields, including the underlying nature of consciousness.  The scientific worldview is at a tipping point where a synthesis of the data is going to cause a drastic change in the current model.

I’m working on an ongoing feature series for Reality Sandwich focusing on consciousness studies, and anomalous human experiences, and I’ve been  shocked by my overview of the field. The current reporting by the media is far behind what 130 years of data indicates is going on.  In fact, experimental models in the area of Dynamical systems theory, such as those being developed by mathematicians like UC Santa Cruz’ Ralph Abraham, are coalescing insights that draw on even deeper sources. Recent studies and experiments applying these insights have been very provocative.

The cultural shift we’re seeing expressed in this Newsweek piece, is beginning to make these areas of speculation more open to the public conversation. While the conclusions regarding the ultimate meaning of his NDE are  subjective, Alexander’s account points to the fact that there is still much to explore in our understanding of consciousness, and ultimately the universe itself.

Alexander, himself, admits:

“The brain is an astonishingly sophisticated but extremely delicate mechanism. Reduce the amount of oxygen it receives by the smallest amount and it will react. It was no big surprise that people who had undergone severe trauma would return from their experiences with strange stories. But that didn’t mean they had journeyed anywhere real.”

However, he continues, regarding his own experience:

“When I entered the emergency room that morning, my chances of survival in anything beyond a vegetative state were already low. They soon sank to near nonexistent. For seven days I lay in a deep coma, my body unresponsive, my higher-order brain functions totally offline.

Then, on the morning of my seventh day in the hospital, as my doctors weighed whether to discontinue treatment, my eyes popped open.

There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was alive and well. While the neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them, my brain-free consciousness journeyed to another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility.

But that dimension—in rough outline, the same one described by countless subjects of near-death experiences and other mystical states—is there. It exists, and what I saw and learned there has placed me quite literally in a new world: a world where we are much more than our brains and bodies, and where death is not the end of consciousness but rather a chapter in a vast, and incalculably positive, journey.”

Alexander’s experience is not proof of anything beyond the fact that we don’t know quite as much about the workings of the universe as the proselytizing pundits would have us believe. However,  this does nothing to negate the importance of what he is expressing.  His background allows him insights into the experience that others who have had NDE’s do not have.

It is also an important moment when a neuroscientist comes forward with something that goes against the publicly accepted worldview that his discipline espouses. Each step taken to bring these questions forward into a more open discourse is an important step in opening up our ability as a society to explore areas that remain closed if they are locked by a tired game being played by fundamentalist factions of faith or scientism.

No doubt the game will continue for some time, as evinced by LiveScience publishing yet another inaccurate, random, but rhetorically compelling, article on the in-existence of ESP & Psychic Abilities just as Alexander’s story begins to gain ground in the media: ESP & Psychic Powers: Claims Inconclusive

“The time-space age has begun.”

- Andrew D. Basiago

Amidst the post-millennial resurgence of conspiracy culture and the boom of alternative media, many self-identified whistleblowers have stepped forward with public revelations of their “insider knowledge” on the secret doings of governments and the so-called  ‘Elite.’ Typically, they are believed by some, and ridiculed by many.  These potential whistleblowers tell stories that are often impossible to corroborate, and push our accepted notions of reality to their limits.

In 2009, the controversial “Web Bot”, an internet software program that predicts future events by tracking keywords on the internet, began describing the impending emergence of a “planetary-level whistleblower” calling for disclosure to the public of life on Mars and the existence of time travel and teleportation technology.  In its September 15th2009 ATLA report (Asymmetric Trend Language Analysis), the Web Bot identified its whistleblower:  Andrew D. Basiago.  Since then, Basiago’s life (here on Earth) hasn’t been the same.

A lawyer by trade, and relative newcomer to conspiracy/truth media, Basiago made his first big splash into the forum less than a year earlier with a paper he published on December 12, 2008 called The Discovery of Life on Mars.  In the paper, which was originally submitted to National Geographic but rejected, Basiago attempts to provide photographic and analytic evidence based on images taken by NASA’s Mars exploration rover, Spirit ,that (1) numerous types of life exist on Mars, including two “humanoid” types, and (2) there is evidence of artificial structures, such as buildings, aqueducts and monuments on Mars, with similarities to the culture of ancient Egypt.

However, according to Clif High, the administrator of Web Bot and publisher of its ATLA report, Basiago’s emergence as the leading candidate for this prophesied “planetary-level whistleblower” role may have been related more to the internet buzz generated by a six-hour interview posted on YouTube from August 29, 2008 with Jessica “Mystic” Schab, in which he detailed his involvement as a child in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s in a top secret U.S. time travel and teleportation program called “Project Pegasus.”  In the interview, Basiago also claimed that in the early 1980’s, when he was in his late teens, he became involved with the CIA’s Mars Visitation Program and made several visits to the secret U.S. Mars colony via a “jump room.”

With an article written by his friend, collaborator, and fellow “truth movement” activist, Alfred Labremont Weber (who would go on to write additional articles about Basiago’s revelations and discoveries),  Basiago’s profile continued to rise in late 2009. An inaugural appearance on the popular conspiracy-themed syndicated radio show Coast to Coast AM with George Noory coincided with the launch of his websites projectpegasus.net and projectmars.net.   Perhaps he hadn’t reached the “planetary-level,” but within a year Basiago had gone from relative obscurity to the tip of the tongue of many conspiracy theorists surfing the web.

One of the more fascinating aspects of Basiago’s mind-bending story is that, at one point, he had forgotten most of it.   It wasn’t until the late 1990’s that he says he started to remember blocked memories of his experiences as a child and young adult in the U.S. Time-Space Program, and he says he spent the next 10 years researching them.  “My account is really a memoir that I’ve recovered from the recesses of my own life experience four decades ago.  And, in fact, if I had not gone about the process of recovering the memories, that is to say, focusing on them for 10 years, I’m not sure I would have been able to correlate much of the information, I would have simply forgotten it and moved on with my career as a lawyer and as a writer.” (Coast to Coast AM, 11-11-09). Memories of his experiences, according to Basiago, had been blocked by project administrators with the use of hypnosis, memory blocking drugs, and Pavlov-type conditioning.

Understanding a bit more about the man himself is important as we step into exploring his claims. Andrew D. Basiago was born on September 18, 1961 in Morristown, New Jersey, and grew up in Northern New Jersey and Southern California.  His father, Raymond F. Basiago, was the Senior Projects Engineer for the Ralph M. Parsons Company in the mid 1960’s, and according to Basiago, was one of Project Pegasus’ principals, serving as the Parsons Company’s “point man” to the CIA.  “Project Pegasus fundamentally was a classified defense related R and D program that was focused on remote sensing and time, it was hoped that it would be an intelligence gathering program and become even more so in the future” (Coast to Coast Am, 11-11-09).  Basiago says Project Pegasus was administered and developed by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which back then was known simply as ARPA, and began officially in 1969.

“Pegasus was chosen because the technologies would take us over the rainbow. That in the same way that Pegasus in Greek Mythology flew to the summit of Mt. Olympus, these technologies would take us into non-ordinary experience, some of which would seem almost magical or fantastic in its reach, and in fact, that is what happened.”
- Andrew D. Basiago on Coast to Coast AM, 11-11-09

Basiago claims he became personally involved in the secret U.S. Time-Space Program in 1967 and 68, when his father took him on some test runs through “an energetic Tesla array”, making Andrew the first American child ever to teleport.  Two previous test subject groups, one comprised of Navy enlisted men, and the other comprised of disadvantaged Latin American children lent to the U.S. by their respective governments, had already been used to study teleportation.  In 1969, Project Pegasus created a third group of test subjects, recruiting 140 American schoolchildren from talented and gifted education programs from around the country to participate in the program, for the purposes of studying the physiological and psychological effects of time travel and teleportation on American school-aged children.

Interestingly, Basiago says his father didn’t push or choose for his son to be included as a participant in the program, but rather was informed by his superiors that Andrew would be a participant.  Basiago thinks this may have been prompted by information collected from visits to the future that indicated Andrew was destined to be the U.S. Time-Space Program whistleblower, which made the project principals want to get Andrew involved, and, therefore, his participation may have been the result of “retro-causation.”

According to Basiago, Project Pegasus was developing and experimenting primarily with two different types of “quantum access” teleportation technologies:  (1) “Tesla” teleportation and time travel technology, which was pioneered by the work of conspiracy theory darling Nikola Tesla and allows one to travel into the future, the recent past, or nearly instantaneously to a distant location, and(2) a technology called “Chronovision”, which allows one to view and/or enter holographic images from past or future events.

“I could see on the side of the tunnel that there were sort of luminous effects of other events going on that were rushing by very quickly, and then suddenly popped into view Santa Fe, and the tunnel closed, and we had essentially teleported 2000 miles across the country in a several seconds“
- Andrew D. Basiago on Coast to Coast AM, 11-11-09

During his experiences using the Tesla teleportation technology, Basiago claims to have made numerous, nearly instantaneous trips back and forth from a Curtiss-Wright Aeronautical Company facility in Morris Plains, New Jersey to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which he says over was used “as a sort of collection area for these teleportings that were going on from different, similar labs from around the country” (Coast to Coast Am, 11-11-09).

Along with these instantaneous trips, Basiago also describes teleporting into the future to the years 1991, and most notably, 2045 through what was described to him as a “stargate” located in a facility in Los Cerillos, New Mexico.  However, in contradiction with predictions of a bleak future made by other conspiracy theorist or truth movement types, Basiago describes 2045 as somewhat of a utopia.  While there to pick up microfilms with information about events that happen in the future back to the early 70’s, Basiago describes 2045 as a “positively transformed society” built on “peace and environmental sustainability.”

While Basiago believes that the Tesla teleportation technology could allow one to go back in time as well, it could only go back as far as the invention of the technology, itself.  Basiago claims he spent four “phantom summers” in New Mexico, after which he would teleport back to the day he left at the beginning of the summer.  Adult time travelers, like his father, also would teleport to New Mexico, spend several years there, and then teleport back to the day they left in order to brief the Executive Branch on the intervening events during that time.

One of the many experiences Basiago describes is one he had with a different type of teleportation technology that could also allow one to travel to the distant past. This technology, he says, sent him from a time lab in East Hanover, New Jersey in 1972 to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863, the date of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  He was told that the technology was a “plasma confinement chamber” which would allow him to “transit through the quantum plenum.”

As evidence of his journey, Basiago claims that he actually appears in one of the only existing photograph taken on the day of Lincoln’s famous speech.  “I can confirm that this image was taken right after President Lincoln arrived on the dais, because when I walked over to this location and stood in this manner to detract attention from my shoes, I had been standing over by the dais, and Lincoln had not yet arrived, and I only stood in this position for several minutes until the quantum field effect produced by the plasma confinement chamber ended, and I found myself back in the time lab in New Jersey”  (Secret DARPA Time Travel Program May Hold Key to Understanding the Deep Politics of 9/11, examiner.com).  Basiago says that during his teleportation to 1863 he lost his shoes, but was helped by a cobbler he was able to later identify through historical records as “John Lawrence Burns.”

To accompany his experiences with Tesla-derived teleportation technologies, Basiago also had numerous experiences using a technology called “Chronovision.”  Basiago says Chronovision was able to “capture the residual signals of a past events and the insipient signals of a future events” which would then by amplified to create a holographic image.  Basiago says this technology was initially stumbled upon by Father Pellegrino Ernetti and Father Agostino Gemelli of the Vatican in the late 1940’s and early 50’s, who were attempting to separate and study the different frequencies present in Gregorian chants, who then passed it on to the U.S. government in the early 1950’s for further development by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi.   “As Father Ernetti said, ‘Every individual from birth to death traces an arc in the quantum hologram of light and sound.  Everything that has happened is happening now or will happen, is stored somewhere in the quantum hologram.  The challenge is to find it and capture the signal of it and amplify it.’  And that, in fact, is what Project Pegasus achieved” (Coast to Coast Am, 5-17-11).

During his Chronovision sessions, Basiago viewed major historical events such as the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the assassination of President Lincoln, and the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York on September, 11, 2001.  Basiago also once observed Earth around the year 1 Billion B.C., as well as the Supreme Court Building in Washington D.C. in 2013, then submerged in brackish water.  However, as Basiago explained, this doesn’t mean that the Eastern seaboard will be flooded by some sort of catastrophic event before then- Chronovison was a technology that not only received images from past and future events from our timeline and reality, but also received images from past and future events from parallel timelines and realities.   “Project Pegasus proved the existence of the multiverse- the notion that the quantum hologram consists of a multiple set of adjacent timelines that are essentially similar, but that differ slightly, and are sort of densely packed, inter-nested sets of timelines” (Coast to Coast AM, 11-11-09).  This meant that from session to session, and subject to subject, details from past and future events would be different, limiting the usefulness of Chronovision as an intelligence tool.

Retired Command Sergeant Major Robert Dean’s
Image Alleged Martian Base

After his experiences in Project Pegasus in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Basiago would become involved again with the U.S. Time-Space Program in the early 1980’s as part of the CIA’s Mars Visitation Program.  Basiago claims that by the late 1970’s Tesla teleportation technology had been developed on a larger scale into a “jump room,” located at a Hughes Aircraft facility in Los Angeles, California, which allowed nearly instantaneous teleportation to Mars.  “A jump room is essentially an elevator like device that you stand in, and while you’re standing in this sort of freight elevator like rectilinear box, it morphs into a cylinder and arrives somewhere else.  Now how this is accomplished, I have no idea.  It was never explained to those of us who were placed in the CIA’s Mars visitation program beginning in the summer of 1980” (Coast to Coast AM, 11-10-11).

“Mars harbors life.  That is to say, The Red Planet is an inhabited planet.  And this can be demonstrated by an analysis of NASA’s photographs from Mars”
- Andrew D. Basiago on Coast to Coast AM, 11-11-09

Basiago says he was told that the U.S. wanted to establish a “defense regime”  located on Mars not only to protect against possible attacks by extraterrestrials, but also to defend Earth from asteroids and other celestial objects that might collide with it. The government also sought to put as many US civilians as possible on Mars, not soldiers, diplomats, or astronauts, so that a basis would be created in public international law for the United States government to later assert a claim of territorial sovereignty over Mars.  Basiago claims he was one of 10 teen-aged participants in the program, including several people that went on to rather distinguished careers in public service.  One of these alleged participants, according to Basiago, was a young Barack Obama.
Basiago originally claimed he met Obama in 1982 through a mutual friend, while Basiago was a student at UCLA.

At the time, Basiago says Obama was introduced to him as “Barry Soetoro,” as he was still using the Indonesian last name he used before later taking on his father’s last name “Obama.”  During this alleged encounter, Basiago and Obama argued about politics, after which their mutual friend told Basiago “you better be nice to him, because he’s going to be president of the United States some day.”   Apparently, Obama, along with other future U.S. presidents, had been informed through intelligence gathered by teleportations to 2045, that he was going to be president some day.
More recently, Basiago has dramatically amended the story of his association with Barack Obama.

After his initial appearance on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory in late 2009, Basiago was contacted by a man named William “Brett” Stillings, who also claimed to be one of the 10 teen-aged participants with Basiago in the Mars Visitation Program of the early 1980’s.  It was through their discussions, that Brett reminded Basiago that Obama had actually been one of the other 8 participants in the program, and therefore had taken the jump room to Mars, himself.

Possibly a sign of Basiago’s truth campaign beginning to reach a “planetary-level”, or a sign that in the age of digital communications such widely disseminated mytho-poetic narratives need to be taken seriously for their influence on society, the White House responded to inquiries made by wired.com for an article they published entitled White House Denies CIA Teleported Obama to Mars.  Seeking a comment on Basiago and Stillings’ claims that President Obama had travelled to Mars as a young adult, Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council, told journalist Spencer Ackerman that Obama went to Mars “only if you count watching Marvin the Martian.”

Many other notable people have been or were involved in the U.S. Time-Space Program if we are to believe Basiago’s story.  Two notable participants are former Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, whom Basiago claims was the defense attaché between Project Pegasus and the Pentagon, and another participant who was a young Project Pegasus staffer that helped corral the kids as they arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico after teleportation, former Governor of New Mexico, as well as a Former U.N. Ambassador and Energy Secretary under Bill Clinton, Bill Richardson.  “I’m calling on these two distinguished public servants to join me under the rotunda at the Roundhouse in Santa Fe, the state capital building, in light of the fact that Santa Fe essentially is the Kitty Hawk of teleportation, and I want them to acknowledge the following:  One, is that there is a higher interest in public service than serving the cause of state secrecy, and that’s the overarching human interest that can be served and now needs to be served by the disclosure of life-advantaging information, such as is embodied in this revolutionary form of transport, that our great American civilization developed and that we now need to share with the entire world” (Coast to Coast AM, 11-11-09).

“I think the most significant figure, in fact, in the hidden history of US time travel technology is, in fact,  Enrico Fermi, and not John Von Neumann, or Albert Einstein, or other people who have been suggested”.

- Andrew D. Basiago on Coast to Coast AM, 11-11-09

On one occasion, according to Basiago, he met future presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush at a luncheon, at which he claims a young George W. Bush was going around joking that “my daddy and I are going to be president.”  Many scientific luminaries of the 20th century are implicated as being involved in Project Pegasus, such as Dr. Harold Agnew of Los Alamos National Laboratories, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller of the Manhattan Project (who helped developed the atomic bomb), as well as former DARPA director and current Google executive Regina E. Dugan, whom Basiago claims was one of the 10 Mars Visitation Program participants along with Basiago, William “Brett” Stillings, and Barack Obama.

One individual mentioned in Basiago’s narrative that has come forward to refute his involvement, is remote viewing guru and entrepreneur Major Ed Dames, an original member of the U.S. Army’s remote viewing program and formerly the training and operations officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Psychic Intelligence Collection Unit (PSIINT).   In his interview from Coast to Coast AM from November 10, 2011, Basiago claimed that through their discussions he and William “Brett” Stillings were able to recall that Dames “with 100% certainty” was the main person training them late in the summer of 1980 at a facility in Mt. Shasta, California in preparation for their visitations to Mars.

According to Basiago, Dames “trained individuals like Brett and I to take the jump room to Mars and to survive on a surface where there were a variety of different predator species, some of which we could to outrun, some of which we wouldn’t be able to outrun” (Coast to Coast AM, 11-10-11). Coast to Coast AM host George Noory seemed shocked that Major Dames, a frequent guest on Coast to Coast, had never mentioned his involvement with Basiago and the CIA’s Mars Visitation Program.  Basiago responded by saying “some of us have chosen to go forward and tell the truth, others have taken I think an equally honorable approach of abiding by what they promised to do.”   The show was then joined by Basiago supporter Laura M. Eisenhower, the great-granddaughter of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who claims she had been recruited to join the Mars colony in 2006 and 2007, but decided not to accept.

Major Ed Dames

Late in the show, Major Ed Dames, himself, called into Coast to Coast to refute Basiago’s allegations.  Dames said that in the summer of 1980, when Basiago and Stillings claim he trained them for their Mars visitations, he was an Electronic Warfare Officer, the first in the history of the 2nd Army Cavalry Regiment, patrolling the former East Germany/Czech border.  He also said that this was before he was involved with or knew anything about remote viewing.

Initially gentle in tone, Dames grew frustrated over the course of his appearance, and started lashing out at Basiago.  “The Pegasus Project doesn’t exist.  And the Montauk chair doesn’t exist.  No, not in our day-to-day reality.  Maybe in somebody else’s.”  When asked directly by Noory if he was Basiago and Stillings’ instructor, he responded:  “Uh, you’ve got me, you caught me.  Also, I don’t remember Barack so much, but I do remember Elvis, and Mel Brooks, and Lady Gaga.  I remember them distinctly.  Like the back of my hand too.”

During the contentious exchange, Basiago kept his cool and maintained his position.  ““Well, I’m sorry, I just don’t believe that.  I believe that’s a military cover story.”  Dames immediately responded, saying:  “Great, believe what you want.  But please, do me favor, and don’t include me in any of your fantasy delusions in the future.  No more emails, okay?”
Dames left the show, and when asked again by Noory if he stood by his story, Basiago said “I’m sticking to my guns, and I’m not going to call Major Dames a liar. I’m simply going to stand in my truth. I’m under no duty to prove my truth to anybody, but I am under a duty to stand in my truth and tell it, and I have during all my appearances on Coast.”

Basiago’s narrative of time travel, teleportation, and life on Mars is one of the many secret space program and Mars conspiracy theories that have gained popular attention over the last several years.  In fact, many of the most popular conspiracy theorists incorporate some element of the alleged “secret space program” discussion in their theories.   Conspiracy scene stalwarts such as Jim Marrs, David Icke, and long-time secret space program and Mars conspiracy theorist Richard C. Hoagland, are some of the most influential.

While interest in conspiracy theories regarding time travel, secret space programs, and life on Mars has gained popularity in recent years, these ideas certainly aren’t new.  Since the publication in 1895 of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, the concept of time travel, specifically through the use of a “time machine”, has captured the imagination of scientists, philosophers, and dreamers the world over.  Before the Wright Brothers flight in 1903, and before the discoveries of Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Schrodinger, etc. in the strange world of quantum mechanics in the first quarter of the 20th century, people have been pondering the possibilities and paradoxes of time travel.  Writers such as Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Kurt Vonnegut made significant contributions to the intellectual exploration of time travel paradoxes and mythology.  To this day, time travel continues to be a fruitful source of exploration for science fiction films and literature, such as in the cult classic film from 2001, Donnie Darko.

Belief in the possibility of teleportation and remote viewing can be traced back even further, into the early history and writings of mankind.  “Kefitzhat Haderach” is a Jewish Kabbalic term meaning “contracting the path”, and is used refer to a miraculous travel between two distant places in a brief period of time.  Such “Kefitzhat Haderach” type events appear in the Talmud and other Jewish writings.  The concept of remote viewing is also similar to that of clairvoyance, or E.S.P. (Extra Sensory Perception), which can be found throughout ancient literature, mythologies, and religious texts.

The concept of life of Mars has compelled humans gazing up at “the red planet” since the early stages of mythology and science, and continues to mystify as we begin exploring the surface of Mars via  NASA’s Mars rover, Curiosity.  H.G. Wells, once again, helped popularize the idea of life on Mars for the people of the 20th century and beyond, with the 1898 publication of his novella, The War of the Worlds, which has seen several movie adaptations, as well as Orson Welles’ infamous 1938 The War of the Worlds radio broadcast that convinced many Americans who were listening at the time that Earth was being invaded by Martians.  Science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlien also made a giant contribution to Mars literature and mythology, with his 1951 novel, The Puppet Masters.

In fact, one of the criticisms of Basiago’s narrative is that it seems to mirror elements found in popular science fiction sources and other conspiracy theories.  His description of watery, shimmering “stargates” is quite similar to those rendered in the 1994 film Stargate, and his story of a man finding pennies from the future is similar to a plot element found in Richard Matheson’s 1975 novel, Bid Time Return, which was later adapted into the popular 1980 film, Somewhere in Time.

However, Basiago’s response to these criticisms seems somewhat plausible, and is similar to those often cited by other conspiracy theorists.   “One thing I can add to the discussion of science fiction that it is a literary genre that was partially developed by the US intelligence community and military to take information from real clandestine projects and place them in fictional accounts so that the public would either be confused about the nature of things like new technical developments that were being kept secret, or if somebody who had been an insider pointed to the technology or described their experiences, their accounts could be attributed to a fictional genre.  So for example, with Star Trek they were revealing a teleportation technology right around the time it, in fact, emerged in the defense technical community in the United States, but they were depicting a form of teleportation that was literally the opposite of the teleportation technology they had developed”  (Coast to Coast Am, 11-11-09).

Other criticisms of Basiago’s story concern the quantity and quality of the evidence he provides to back up his claims.  In his paper from late 2008, The Discovery of Life on Mars, Basiago points out structures, animals, and even “humanoids” he is able to spot in NASA’s Spirit photographs that other observers might not see, such is the nature of interpretative photographic evidence.  Blurry photographs of the surface of Mars, or photographs of a supposed shooter on the grassy knoll in JFK assassination conspiracy theory, can act as a sort of Rorschach test, where one finds what one is looking for.  Also, with the photographic alteration software available today to anyone with access to a computer, it is often difficult or impossible to tell the difference between an original photograph and a doctored photograph.  From a theoretical standpoint, Basiago’s claim to be the boy in the photograph from the Gettysburg Address introduces a set of paradoxes common to any time travel story, fictional or otherwise.

While Basiago has talked of recent conversations and meetings he has had with Project Pegasus principals such as former CIA agent Courtney M. Hunt, and alleged program administrator Dr. Harold Agnew, transcriptions, audio tapes, or video evidence of these conversations has yet to be provided.

According to Basiago this is due to the fact that all of the evidence he has collected regarding the secret U.S. Time-Space Program, including Project Pegasus and the CIA’s Mars Visitation Program, will be presented in his tell-all book, Once Upon a Time in the Time Stream:  My Adventures in Project Pegasus at the Dawn of the Time-Space Age, which as of his last interview on Coast to Coast Am in November of 2011, he said he hoped to complete by the end of 2012.  However, no recent updates regarding the completion and publication of the book can be found on either of his websites, projectpegasus.net or projectmars.net.

As noted at the beginning, the validity of Basiago’s story may concern the accuracy of “recovered” or “repressed” memories.  In the field of Psychology and in the U.S. legal system, there continues to be much debate as to whether repressed and recovered memories are a real phenomenon  and can be trusted within a reasonable degree of certainty. It should be noted that recent experiments in neuroscience have shown that false memories can also be implanted during hypnosis, and via various cognitive therapy techniques.

According to the American Psychological Association, it is not currently possible to distinguish a true repressed memory from a false one without corroborating evidence.  However, in the case of child sexual abuse, there is evidence that repressed and recovered memories are a real phenomenon, and a common psychological response in children to block out trauma that may be too difficult for them to retain on the conscious level.

In the U.S. court system, contradictory findings have been made as to the admissibility of recovered or repressed memories as evidence.  In a 1996 ruling, a U.S. District court allowed repressed memories to be submitted as evidence in court cases, while in July, 2012, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that repressed memory is not acceptable as evidence in a legal action and is the equivalent of superstition, hearsay or “junk science.”

Regardless of the believability or verifiability of Basiago’s claims regarding his experiences with the secret U.S. Time-Space Program, as with other figures on the alternative media fringe, his motivation for conducting his “truth campaign” can be assessed in any number of ways.

Is Basiago just another cynical alternative media entrepreneur? To assume this one has to consider the drastic decision he would face creating these kinds of stories just to make money from the few appearances he makes at conferences and seminars, and the memberships, t-shirts, and coffee mugs he sells on his websites. Claiming to hold five academic degrees, including a B.A. in History from U.C.L.A and a Master of Philosophy from Cambridge University, as well as a law degree from Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, it stands to reason that he could probably find more fruitful sources of income.  In fact, Basiago claims that money earned from his private law practice is what allows him to go on his fact-finding missions and pursue the various aspects of promoting his truth movement.

Another possibility is that he is a disinformation agent working on behalf of the secret U.S. Time-Space Program, to help shield its activities and invalidate the concept of its existence in the mind of the public.  However, it is also possible that Basiago could also be a victim of disinformation, himself.  On October 17, 2011, The History Channel premiered an episode of its Weird of What? series hosted by William Shatner entitled, Parallel Worlds, which in one segment they relate the story of Basiago and his father’s experiences with teleportation and time travel.

However, Basiago says that the show was part of a disinformation attack, and that The History Channel invented and included an alternate set of experiences in the segment about Basiago that he has never claimed to have experienced, in order to discredit his story.  “I don’t think they really defame you on The History Channel until you’ve arrived, or until they’re convinced that you’re telling the truth” (Coast to Coast Am, 11-10-11).   Basiago views Major Ed Dames refutations of his involvement in the U.S. Time-Space program in a similar light.  “I would think that, generally, his response is an example of what I call the ‘high-psy disinformation ploy’, and that is to take real projects that the United States Government has been involved in, in time travel, with discreet time travel technologies, and activities like the Mars program, and attribute them very cleverly to the psy-warfare programs of that era” (Coast to Coast AM, 11-10-11).

It is also possible Basiago could be sincere in his efforts, but delusional.  While Basiago delivers his narrative in a calm, logical, lawyerly fashion, some of his claims are so extraordinary and laced with varying shades of paranoia and grandeur, observers who want to believe his stories may feel apprehensive in doing so.  On one of his fact finding missions, Basiago claims he met with a representative of the Executive Office of then President George W. Bush, whom Basiago claimed had knowledge of and ties to the secret U.S. Time-Space Program.

Basiago says that this representative told him “that (his) memories of having been involved in Project Pegasus were valid, that the project involved black technologies that represented sensitive national security secrets, that I was admonished, or being advised, to cease and desist from investigating my experiences, talking about them, or writing about them, and that if I didn’t do that, they couldn’t, quote-unquote, guarantee my survival” (Coast to Coast AM, 11-11-09).

One of Basiago’s most sensational, claims is that, along with other U.S. presidents such as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, he, himself, had been identified by intelligence collected from 2045 as a future U.S. president.  In fact, Basiago claims he will run for the Democratic Nomination for President in 2016, although he makes no guarantee that he will reach the White House after that specific election.

It is also possible that Basiago could be a genuine whistleblower.  Conspiracies do exist in the world, and often proceed for years without detection.  The CIA was involved for over 20 years in the international drug trade before their activities were exposed in the late 1980’s, in connection with the Iran-Contra scandal.  In relation to the existence of hidden technological advances, the U.S. government had developed “Stealth” technology and had been using “Stealth Bombers” operationally for years before anyone knew they existed.  Basiago maintains confidence in what he believes is “his truth”, and also thinks he has the evidence to back it up.  “This is a case, as a lawyer, I’m going to win” (Coast to Coast AM, 11-11-09).

As a lawyer, Basiago should be well aware of the fact that he could be opening himself up to libel and slander suits from the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Richardson, Barack Obama, etc. for involving them in his story of Project Pegasus and the secret U.S. Time-Space program.  Although, it is highly doubtful that such high profile figures would pursue a lawsuit against someone on the fringe like Basiago who’s telling an extraordinary story that most people would probably dismiss out-of-hand anyway.”

Various personal and geo-political reasons have been evinced by Basiago for why he has embarked on his “truth movement.”   Firstly, on a basic level, he believes that people “have a human right to a true telling of the natural history of the solar system that we inhabit” (Coast to Coast AM, 11-11-09). Basiago says his father, by allowing him to participate in Project Pegasus, “permitted me to enjoy a profound cosmic privilege” (Coast to Coast AM, 11-11-09).

He also believes that teleportation technology can help alleviate the strains of the energy crisis and help curb the effects of climate change.   “It was hoped that teleportation would enable our military to strategically place troops precisely where they were needed on the battlefield.  But the net effect of that decision however appropriate it was during a time of world war, prevented teleportation from being introduced into the civilian sector as potentially our dominant form of transportation.  And so my truth campaign around teleportation is to urge the president to declassify this technology, so that we can implement it on a global basis, to address the crisis of environment and development that we find ourselves in, the crisis of global warming, and launch a new Manhattan Project to establish teleports at all the major transportation hubs around the world, so that we’ll at least have a fighting chance at achieving planetary sustainability” (Coast to Coast AM, 11-11-09).

Privacy rights, Basiago feels, are threatened by the existence of remote viewing technologies such as Chronovision.   “I think that the American public deserves to know this had been done with their tax dollars, and that the remote surveillance technology that DARPA has developed has gone far beyond just filming people on the street and using a computer to go through and make sense of the images and determine who’s a terrorist or whatever.  It, in fact, it involves the ability to invade the sanctity of everybody’s past and future” (Coast to Coast AM, 5-17-11).

Future Mars colonization also concerns him.  “I think that it’s critical that we disclose the truth to the American people and the people all over the world that Mars is inhabited because we’re going to have to do the right thing regarding Mars, and I’m urging that we develop a U.N. protectorate for Mars, under treaty, as we begin to have further activity there” (Coast to Coast Am, 11-11-09).

Despite the ridicule and possible threats that Basiago has received since embarking on his truth movement, he says he has continued the mission because of the immeasurable impact it could have on the future of humanity around the world, and eventually, off of it.  “I concluded that we really can’t implement our destinies as individuals if we hold onto our fear of death.  Achieving great purposes requires basically some form of fearlessness, in the sense that you have to let go of worrying about the consequences of what you’re doing” (Coast to Coast AM, 11-10-11).

If disclosure has yet to happen by his first term as President of the Unites States, Basiago promises to bring down the curtain of secrecy that has shrouded the secret U.S. Time-Space Program and other secret government programs.  “I’m also going to be opening up, where it doesn’t present a clear and present danger, I’m going to be opening up the secret defense and intelligence files so that the American people can know what’s been done in their names and with their taxpayer dollars, and also establishing a truth and amnesty process where individuals who have worked in these secret projects, like Major Dames, can come forward without fear or favor and really reveal what they’ve been involved in” (Coast to Coast AM, 11-10-11). Andrew D. Basiago was contacted for comment on this article through his email address at projectpegasus.net.  Basiago was reached through this address, but ultimately declined to comment on the article.

Regardless of whether one believes Andrew D. Basiago’s story, the popularity of time travel and Mars conspiracy narratives and mythologies is indicative of the deep connection between humanity and the many still unanswered questions we have regarding our relationship to time, space, and the universe, in general.  Maybe these questions will always remain unanswered.  Perhaps Basiago’s “truth campaign” will yield the results he seeks, and in short time, or somewhere in the distant future, we will all learn the true nature of time travel, teleportation, and the existence of life of Mars.  Until then, all we can do is keep exploring, keep dreaming, and keep our eyes locked on the heavens above.

–
Michael J. Hobart is a musician and film theorist. His interest in a rational exploration of conspiracy culture was sparked by a youthful engagement with Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus Trilogy, and an admirable ability to suspend disbelief. Profiles on the Fringe is his ongoing investigative project looking into the lives of parapolitic’s more vocal insiders.

F = 1/T

Original air-date: June 18, 1964. This recording is from the KVOS Channel 12 Films, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Western Washington University, Bellingham WA 98225-9123.

Dr. Barry Taff, who holds a doctorate in psychophysiology with a minor in
biomedical engineering, is a world-renowned parapsychologist who worked out of  UCLA’s former parapsychology laboratory from 1969 through 1978 as a research  associate.

During his 43-year career, Dr. Taff has investigated more than 4,500  cases of ghosts, hauntings, poltergeists and conducted extensive studies in telepathy and precognition, which led to the development of the initial protocols and methodologies for what was later termed “remote viewing.”  He was also himself investigated as a psychic subject in 1969, the results of which were published in Behavioral Neuropsychiatry, “A Laboratory Investigation of Telepathy: The Study of A Psychic,” Vol. 6, Nos. 1-12, April-December 1974-January-March, 1975.

In the spring of 2010, Dr. Taff’s new book; Aliens Above, Ghosts Below:
Explorations of the Unknown was published by Cosmic Pantheon Press, whose title is self-explanatory.

Note: Biographic information taken from Dr. Taff’s website.

Benjamin Screaton Fulford first appeared on the conspiracy scene in the Summer of 2007 via alternative radio host and entrepreneur,  Jeff Rense, of The Jeff Rense Radio Program, RenseRadio Network and the website rense.com.  In the world of alternative media- or rather you call it, conspiracy theory- the skeptic can usually dismiss the novel information presented based on the credibility, or lack thereof, of the one providing it.  “He’s a kook!” or “Who is this lady?” are sentiments easily accepted of some of the more popular conspiracy theorists and their theories.  Even those who readily believe that the world isn’t exactly as it has been presented to us, can find themselves shaken by the flaky surface or dubious background of those they hope to hold up as prophets in a world which seems to lack any.  In the case of Fulford, however, determining the credibility of the source, and the veracity of the information provided, is a trickier proposition for both skeptic and believer, as well as those of us who like to consider ourselves “realists.”

In an article by Dr. Henry Makow (purveyor of conspiracy website henrymakow.com and inventor of the board game Scruples) published on rense.com on June 30^th, 2007  entitled “Chinese Secret Society Challenges Illuminati”, Fulford first rolled out a unique and compelling narrative that he has carried through, and elaborated on, in the five-plus years since:  that an Asian secret society , to be known later as “The White Dragon Society”, had given an ultimatum to the Western banking cabal, or ”Illuminati”- give up your plans for global domination and massive depopulation, or be killed.

Two days later in an article Fulford, himself, published on rense.com entitled “The Secret History of the Freemasons in Japan”, he further detailed the trace of Western influence and of alleged manipulation and control by the likes of the Rothschilds and Rockefellers throughout the history of Japan.  This was followed by interviews on The Jeff Rense Radio Program on July 5th, 2007 and July 23rd, 2007, in which over the course of over 4 hours Fulford fleshed out his vision of how the world secretly works behind the scenes, as well as his own personal history, and the story of how he became aware of the conspiracy and then, subsequently, became personally involved in its opposition.

Fulford’s colorful narrative began to attract attention on the internet and in alternative media, and then broke through into the mainstream on July 25^th, 2007 when satirist Stephen Colbert featured a segment mocking Fulford and his story of the “Illuminati” and its plans for depopulation on his show, The Colbert Report.  Colbert then joked about his desire to become a member of the “Illuminati”, himself.  This is par for the course for the deadpan Colbert, but there existed an irony in his out-of-hand dismissal of Fulford: just a few years earlier, Fulford would have been the type of guest that Colbert would have welcomed as an unchallenged expert- a Canadian expatriate author and journalist, living and working in Japan for one of the world’s most respected business and financial publications.   Prior to his dissemination of “Illuminati” conspiracy plots and descent into alternative/conspiracy media,  Benjamin Fulford worked in the mainstream media as a journalist for roughly 20 years, ending in early 2005 after he left his position as Asia-Pacific Bureau Chief for Forbes Magazine, a position he had held since 1998.

In Makow’s original article on rense.com and in subsequent interviews and articles, Fulford claims that he left mainstream journalism and quit his prestigious position at Forbes after potentially damaging articles he had written on Citibank, G.E., and an unnamed anti-virus software company were rejected by his editors due to conflicts with Forbes advertising interests.  In the bio found on his website, benjaminfulford.net, Fulford has invited Forbes to sue him if what he is saying is untrue.  After his exit from Forbes, Fulford says he began to realize that he was getting too close to the truth, and that the mainstream media wouldn’t support his future investigations.

Fulford says he then began work on a book to be published in English about the Yakuza organized crime gangs and their influence and control over Japanese government that he knew “would be so explosive, he would either have to leave Japan or get killed” (Rense Interview 7.5.07).  The day after sending the first two chapters of the book to his publisher, Fulford claims he was mysteriously contacted by the granddaughter of the Meiji Emperor (who he later believed was alerted by Japanese security police that had been monitoring his email), warning him that he “shouldn’t get the Yakuza angry that way.”

She then urged him to watch the 9/11 truth film, 9/11: In Plane Site.   Fulford says he assumed it was “anti-semitic nonsense”, but after he watched it he followed a long trail of research which led him to view the 9/11 attacks as part of a larger conspiracy orchestrated by the “Illuminati” to establish a “New World Order.”   In 2006, Fulford went on to publish his own 9/11 truth book in Japan, which he says has sold over 80,000 copies.   According to his benjaminfulford.net, Fulford has sold over 500,000 copies of the 15 books he has written in Japanese.

The next major event in Fulford’s story happened in the spring of 2007, when he interviewed former Japanese Finance Minister, Heizo Takenaka.  Fulford says he confronted Takenaka in the interview, asking him why he had sold out the Japanese financial industry to the Rockefellers with the recent reforms that had been implemented, and why Japan doesn’t use its multi-trillion dollar trade surplus to end poverty and environmental destruction.  Fulford claims that Takenaka answered that he was told that if the Japanese politicians didn’t sell out to the Rockefellers and implement the reforms, and instead pursued a plan to end poverty and environmental destruction, Japan would be attacked by an earthquake machine.

Initially skeptical, Fulford says he did his own research and came to believe what Takenaka had told him.  He contends that this earthquake machine is HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Project), a project shrouded in secrecy and developed by the U.S. Department of Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, as it is more commonly known.  This interview was videotaped, but Fulford has only released sound-free footage of it to accompany other online videos he has appeared in.  Fulford later claimed that HAARP was, in fact, used against Japan on several occasions, and that nuclear bombs implanted in the seabed off the coast of Japan by agents of “The Cabal” had caused the earthquake and tsunami that led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011.

Shortly after his interview with Takenaka, Fulford claims Takenaka sent a Japanese freemason and ninja assassin to meet with him and offer him the choice of death, or of joining the Japanese freemasons and being rewarded with the job of Finance Minister of Japan.   Fulford says that at this point he would have had to make the same choice that he believes that many well-intentioned people have to make when they get too close to the conspiracy:  sell out and live, or be killed.  But the day after his meeting with the freemason ninja assassin, Fulford was contacted by another mysterious figure- someone claiming to be a representative of a Chinese secret society offering Fulford protection from the Japanese freemasons, and Rockefeller/Rothschild cabal.

They approached Fulford after being made aware of his situation with the freemasons, and after learning of a book he had written claiming SAARS, or H1N1 virus, was a bio-weapon designed and unleashed by the cabal targeted to affect Asians, with the purpose of reducing the Asian population to 500 million.  They told Fulford they were members of “The Red” and “The Green”, two secret societies that were participants in China’s Boxer Rebellion of 1900 and other political uprisings in Asian history.  They then told him they wanted him to create a new, separate Western secret society, made of members from the different Asian secret societies and some Western secret groups, that would function to fight the Western cabal and their plans for global depopulation.

Their ranks include over 6 million members worldwide, including 1.8 million gangsters and 100,000 assassins, and include influential people in government, education, and business.  This group of Asian secret societies would be now known as “The White Dragon Society,” and Fulford would act as their spokesman and intermediary in negotiating with the cabal.  Fulford accepted their offer, joined the society as their first non-Asian member, and thus began his quest in exposing and fighting the globalist conspiracy of the Western elite.

“The best analogy for what is happening to the West is the fall of the Soviet Union. It started with a ship-yard strike in Gdansk Poland and ended with the fall of the Soviet Union in what in retrospect seems like no time whatsoever. At the time, though the several years in between those two event seemed to last an eternity.

Right now in the West, the regime change against bankster controlled criminal government has started with Iceland but it will end with the United States and the Vatican.

It is something like a Titanic hits the iceberg type of moment where technicians and the ship’s top crew know the vessel is doomed even if they cannot say exactly how long people have to get onto the lifeboats.”
- Benjamin Fulford, It’s Time to Look at the Big Picture Again

Fulford’s mysterious image and story took another strange twist late in 2007, when a video appeared on the internet of Fulford interviewing alleged conspiracy bigwig, David Rockefeller, while Rockefeller was in Japan supposedly solidifying his position, and the position of the people he represents in the cabal, within the Japanese financial industry.  The video of the interview begins with a separately taped explanation (verging on the edge of disclaimer) from Fulford, attempting to provide the proper context with which to view his approach in interviewing Rockefeller.  He reassures the audience that if he appears to be friendly with Rockefeller and not as directly confrontational as most of his articles and interviews have been, it is because he had to “operate within Rockefeller’s matrix” or would get shut out and not get any of the answers for which he was looking.

Throughout the video, footage of the interview with Rockefeller is continuously interrupted by the separately taped footage of Fulford, as he reads between the lines for the audience, explaining what Rockefeller is really saying when answering Fulford’s questions about East/West relations and geopolitics, in general.   The videotaped interview with Rockefeller, believed by many conspiracy theorists to be a high level member of the “Illuminati”, have led some observers to question whether Fulford is the muckraker and revolutionary he claims to be, or simply a disinformation agent working for the very powers-that-be that he claims to be fighting.

Over the next few years, Fulford continued to tell his sordid tale of secret societies and hidden geopolitics through various venues:  regular interviews on The Jeff Rense Radio Program and articles for rense.com, a three hour interview with popular conspiracy website projectcamelot.com, an interview on The Alex Jones Show with guest host Jason Berma (that would be contentious at times when Alex Jones, himself, called into the show to confront Fulford with allegations he had made that Jones had been spreading CIA propaganda concerning China), interviews on Strange Universe Radio with Sean David Morton, numerous articles and blog postings on his own websites, benjaminfulford.net, benjaminfulford.typepad.com, and benjaminfulford.com, and several more books published in Japan.

Fulford kept his audience updated on negotiations, confrontations, and the push-and-pull that was taking place in this epic struggle between the “Illuminati” and “White Dragon Society”.  Negotiations with different factions of the “Illuminati” (Bush/Rockefeller/Oil faction, British/Rothschild/Nuclear faction, P2 Masonic Lodge, etc.), alleged arrests (Microsoft C.E.O. Bill Gates, former president George Bush, Sr., etc.) assassination attempts of key figures in the power struggle (President Barack Obama, Fulford, himself, etc.), and many predictions of game-changing events (multiple reports of the collapsing of the US Federal Reserve and U.S. currency) were reported that would lead to the cabal’s inevitable downfall.

Most of Fulford’s sources for these stories were unidentified “insiders” from different factions of the “Illuminati” and different governmental organizations, foreign and domestic, and therefore difficult , or at times, impossible, to verify.  His predictions often came and went, unfulfilled, according to Fulford, either due to last minute negotiations or sabotage, or simply lack of corroboration by other sources in the mainstream or alternative media.

In the last few years, Fulford has made connections, and started appearing in online videos, with other figures of the new age/conspiracy/alternative media, most notably psychic-spiritualist-conspiracy theorist David Wilcock of divinecosmos.com, who first interviewed him in early 2010.  Wilcock quickly latched on and started to follow and report on Fulford’s story of the Western “Illuminati” vs. the “White Dragon Society”, culminating with what Wilcock and Fulford have referred to as “The Lawsuit to End Financial Tyranny.”

On November 23, 2011 a lawsuit was filed in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by an attorney named Neil Keenan, claiming to represent “The Dragon Family”, a coalition of Chinese families who are seeking over a trillion dollars in damages from the U.S.  Government, U.S. Federal Reserve and other defendants, based on 134.5 billion dollars in 1934 U.S. Federal Reserve Bonds that they had been issued in exchange for caches of gold the Chinese families sent to the Reserve to support the U.S. dollar.

This is in connection with an incident from June 3^rd, 2009, in which two Japanese men were arrested by Italian customs officials and the Italian Financial Police as they attempted to cross the border into Switzerland with the bonds, generally referred to as the “Chiasso” case, named after the town in Switzerland in which the two men were arrested.  The lawsuit claims that a conspiracy was hatched to prevent the two Japanese men representing the Dragon Family from cashing the bonds, and that Keenan was offered $100 million by high level officials to turn over the financial instruments without disclosing their theft to the Dragon Family, so that they could be converted through a United Nations “Sovereign Progam.”

Along with the U.S. government, others named in the lawsuit include UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Giancarlo Bruno, who is identified as head of the banking industry for the World Economic Forum, Italy’s ambassador to the UN, Cesare Maria Ragaflini, Ray C. Damn, president of the Office of International Treasury Council, and David A. Sale, the deputy chief of council for the cabinet of the OITC.   Fulford claims that this “Dragon Family”, are some of the people he has been representing under the “White Dragon Society” banner.

Both the arrests from 2009 and the lawsuit from 2011 have garnered some mainstream media attention, with reports surfacing from Fox News, Financial Times, and other outlets around the time of the initial arrests, and fewer, less notable media outlets, such as courthousenews.com, reporting details of the lawsuit.  According to an article from Financial Times on June 18, 2009, the U.S. Secret Service and Italian authorities had determined the bonds were probably fake, and were attempting to trace their origin, possibly through similar counterfeiting operations run by the Italian Mafia.  The lawsuit was withdrawn in June, 2012, but attorney Neil Keenan claims this was due to jurisdictional issues and that the lawsuit will be re-filed at a later date.

Fulford has also affiliated himself with some even stranger, more mysterious figures in the conspiracy world, such as Alexander Romanov, an alleged drug-runner who claims to be a member of the “Gnostic Illuminati” and rightful heir to the Russian Romanov dynasty, and Leo Zagami, a man who claims to be a member of the infamous P2 Masonic Lodge, as well as other secret societies.  Both men claim to be part of the “Illuminati”, but wish to negotiate with Fulford and the “White Dragon Society” in hopes of coming to a peaceful resolution.  Fulford also has close ties to the self-proclaimed “white hat operative” whistleblower with military ties who calls himself “Drake.”

Fulford has reported alleged developments in the fight against the Western elite orchestrated by dissidents within the U.S. legal, intelligence and military communities as told to him by Drake.  Most notable was Drake’s “green light announcement” that there would be a series of major arrests of figures in the political arena and financial industry before, and leading up to, July 4^th, 2012.  July 4^th passed without any news of such arrests being made, and many conspiracy theorists who had hoped that Drake was the genuine article, and not just a fraud or disinformation agent, began to lose faith.  In response to a letter from a reader regarding Drake’s failed “green light” prediction, on July 6^th, 2012 Fulford wrote on benjaminfulford.typepad.com :  “Many people have given me dates that come and go without the predicted events happening so I have stopped publishing any such announcements.”

Amateur conspiracy theorists, and other members of the alternative media, have varying views on the legitimacy and credibility of Fulford and his work since leaving his job at Forbes and mainstream journalism back in 2005.  Some view him as a genuine muckraker of the highest order.  Some view him as a disinformation agent out to invalidate the reality of the conspiracy for the Western elite.   Some view him as a mainstream, respected journalist that went off the deep end, and can no longer be trusted.  Some view him as a cynical fraud making his living off the naivete of his audience.  The most dismissive of observers view him as a delusional, possibly drug-addled, racist flake.

In viewing his work objectively, it is possible to find proof for all of the aforementioned scenarios.  When compared to his work for Forbes (most, or possibly all, of his articles are still available in their online archives,) his current articles and blog entries  are much looser and sloppier, characterized by the use of broad generalizations and extreme rhetoric, which, at times overwhelms any facts that might be presented.  At other times, Fulford provides a wealth of detail that can be fact-checked, and seems somewhat plausible in outlining the wide-ranging conspiracy that he believes shapes our world in its past, present, and future.

One situation in which Fulford’s slipping journalistic standards may have come back to haunt him is in regards to a libel case that was allegedly brought against Fulford and his book publisher in Tokyo District Court by Steven L. Herman, a broadcast correspondent and bureau chief for The Voice of America, based in Seoul, South Korea.

According to available documentation, Herman won his caseagainst Fulford and his publisher (Herman vs. Fulford, Fusosha, and M. Katagiri) on June 14, 2009, and was awarded over 1.7 million yen, or approximately 17,000 in U.S. dollars or Euros based on the exchange rate at the time. Documents from the case can be linked to from Fulford’s Wikipedia page, and include a passage in English that reads as follows:

“I, Benjamin Fulford, am author of a book entitled ‘The Real Identity of Uncovered ‘Rulers of the Dark’ (the ‘Book’), and our company Fusosha Publishing Inc., is a publishing company of the Book and I, Matsuki Katagiri, am the publisher of the Book. On Page 91 of the Book, it was stated that ‘There are CIA spies among foreign correspondents’ and ‘one of such spies is Steven Herman, a foreign correspondent for the Voice of America’. However, these statements contradict the facts. We hereby express our heartfelt apology to Mr. Steven Herman for the fact that with these statements we have hurt Mr. Steven Herman’s reputation.”

Attempts at finding further corroboration of the lawsuit and its ruling were unsuccessful, but the basics details of the lawsuit have remained part of his Wikipedia bio to this day, and are often reproduced on websites that feature articles about Fulford. No mention of the lawsuit and its ruling can be found on any of Fulford’s websites (benjaminfulford.net, benjaminfulford.com, and benjaminfulford.typepad.com).

“The order to stab this writer with a poisoned needle was given by Japanese power broker Ichiro Ozawa and his North Korean faction, according to North Korean, South Korean and Japanese military intelligence and underworld sources.” - Benjamin Fulford, Japanese Power Broker Ichiro Ozawa Ordered My Murder

There are also times when Fulford’s stories seem far-fetched and possibly driven by delusions of grandeur, particularly his numerous reports of attempts being made on his life, or the alleged offers to be made Finance Minister of Japan or the C.E.O. of G.E for his compliance with the “Illuminati” and abandoning his crusade against them.   He also relates other stories that seem even less plausible, such as the assassination of his great-grandfather, George Taylor Fulford, by the Rockefellers for attempting to fund technology developed by Nikola Tesla that would lead to free energy, or his suggestion that a mysterious, salamander-like parasite had been injected into his body and had to be removed from his spinal area in surgery.  On rense.com, Fulford even posted a picture of the supposed creature.

“Benjamin Fulford” – Oil on Canvas, by Tiiu Rebane (2009)

In assessing his credibility, it is also difficult to overlook the previously mentioned individuals with whom Fulford has worked and aligned himself.  If one visits the websites of Jeff Rense and Henry Makow, the men who helped introduce Fulford to the alternative media scene, at rense.com and henrymakow.com, one can find numerous articles and links to websites that appear to be covertly or openly anti-Semitic in nature. This clouds the nature of Fulford’s own intentions, given his preoccupation with the Rothschild dynasty and the “Jewish bankers” he claims help run the world.

While Fulford almost always differentiates the majority of Jewish people from a secret “Khazarian” sect within their community that he claims has manipulated them and lied to them over the course of thousands of years of history, and also claims to have Jewish blood inside him, he often falls prey to using the label “Jewish” as an easy adjective to attach to those he is criticizing.Such slippery language can be found in a post from August 13, 2012 on benjaminfulford.net-  “Message to the Jews:  you have been kicked out of over 100 countries in the past 200 years, so, you must stop pretending you were always just innocent victims. It is time to stop thinking in terms of ‘us’ (Jews) and ‘them’ (Goyim), and start behaving like a civilized people all from the same human race. The Jews are like a beautiful woman (the decent and honorable majority) with syphilis (the gangsters hiding in their midst). If the Jewish people do not remove the criminals from the top of their own leadership, they may once again suffer collective punishment for the actions of a tiny criminal minority. Fortunately, there are signs of just such an internal purge.”  Fulford’s interpretation of the role of this “secret sect of slave drivers” throughout history, and in particular regarding the establishment of the state of Israel, makes one consider if one can be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic.

It seems possible in principle, and when investigations are made into this “Khazarian” conspiracy concept, there are other people who have a similar view of the Jewish people and Zionism as Fulford.  Fulford also seems to loathe Hitler and the Nazis, and points to the U.S. faction headed by George Bush, Sr. as a Neo-Nazi regime, which might make it difficult to deem him truly anti-Semitic.  However, his differentiation between Kharzarian Jews from Europe, who represent Western banking interests, and Jews originating from the Middle East, is commonly found in anti-Semitic conspiracy tropes, and based on genetic research is spurious as well.  Lingering questions understandably remain of these anti-Zionist types, and what their true motivations, feelings, and beliefs might be.

Other associates of Fulford have similar credibility issues, but usually for less nefarious reasons.  Investigations of Leo Zagami’s background  suggest he might not be the “Illuminati” big shot he says he is.  Alexander Romanov, who claims to be a “Grand Master of the Illuminati”, has a background that is similarly difficult to trace.  The “white hat operative” Drake, with his numerous failed predictions and anonymity, also pushes the limits of credibility.

David Wilcock has been a fixture on the conspiracy and new age scene of the internet since the mid 1990’s, providing a stream of failed predictions such as his “Ascension 2000” millennial prophecy which, obviously, never materialized.  Strange Universe Radio host Sean David Morton also has severe credibility issues, as detailed in a thorough investigation of his background by ufowatchdog.com.

Another factor in consideration of the post-mainstream media work of Benjamin Fulford is the existence of a certain architecture in his story that is common to many other conspiracy theorists and their theories:

(1) yes, there is a wide-ranging conspiracy out there, with secret forces controlling the world for their own benefit and to the detriment of the majority of people,

(2) in discovering the conspiracy and aiming to defeat it, he has been drawn into the battle, risking his own well being and livelihood, and

(3) victory of the forces of good over evil is inevitable, with a new age of optimism, prosperity, and peace on the horizon.

The skeptic might point to this architecture with incredulity, while the believer might find truth in this common struggle that we are all facing, and hopefully will defeat.  However, to go along with all these potential red flags regarding Fulford’s credibility, there remains a wealth of work in mainstream journalism with major publications to back him up.

At Forbes.com, one can read through dozens of articles written by Fulford covering subjects ranging from the world economy, technological innovations, market trends, corporate intrigue, Japanese politics, and the Yakuza gangsters.  And while other journalists and skeptical layman observers might scoff at some of the details of Fulford’s conspiracy narrative, would they argue that there isn’t a conflict, financial and political, between Western and Eastern interests playing out on the global stage?

Benjamin Fulford was contacted for comment on this article via email addresses listed on his websites. He replied quickly and with courteousness, and wrote that the article “seems overall to be fair and objective” and that it was “good to see a fact-checking journalist at work.” However, there were a few things he wanted to address:

First, he wanted to clarify some details in the article regarding the formation and constituency of The White Dragon Society. Appropriate changes have been made, and are reflected in an updated version of the paragraph describing its formation, its purposes, and Fulford’s role in the organization.

Second, he wanted to address the circumstances surrounding the Stephan Herman libel lawsuit. “The reason I decided not to contest the lawsuit was that Mr. Herman was forced to leave Japan and got divorced as a result of what I wrote and I felt sorry for him. He behaved towards me in ways that were incompatible with being a journalist, such as trying to get me kicked out of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Japan for spurious reasons after I started writing about 911 and similar topics. That is why I hinted in a book that he worked for the CIA. However, in research during the lawsuit it became clear he did not work for the CIA but rather worked for the propaganda division of the US State Department. It was an insult, I felt, to real CIA members to associate this man with them.”

Third, he wanted to address the allegations floating around the internet that his work over the last several years had been influenced by the use of drugs or drug abuse. “The other issue I would like to talk about is the allegations I am a drug addled crazy. The fact is that I used to smoke marijuana and I openly admit it. Also, after I got involved in all this, I was invited by a long term acquaintance and “music journalist” by the name of Steve Mclure, to have a line of cocaine. I did so, and the incident was filmed and widely disseminated to make it appear I was a coke-head.

I have repeatedly offered to take a blood test to prove the only drug I am taking is alcohol (which I should probably cut down on although I only drink at night). The “Romanoff” character also approached me with 70 kilos of marijuana laced with toxic mind destroying chemicals and told me to introduce him to the yakuza or else he would kill me. I introduced him to a Japanese public security police official pretending to be a yakuza. He was sent by people working for George Bush and Tony Blair. The plan was to get me to smoke the toxic pot and destroy my mind before having me arrested for dealing drugs. It failed.”

Finally, he wanted address the suggestion that his work over the last several years didn’t reflect the same level of journalistic standards he applied while writing for Forbes. “It is true that I no longer have the luxury of fact checkers and skillful editors that I enjoyed at Forbes. Also, because of the nature of the reporting I am doing I have to rely on anonymous sources. Such sources are always less reliable than named sources and need to be treated with extreme caution. Sometimes they manage to fool me into putting out disinformation. If I find out, I issue a correction. It is also true that many of my colleagues have been murdered (investigate Paul Klebnikov and Christopher Story as examples) and many of my sources stay anonymous in order to protect their lives.”

In a sense, Fulford is a symbol of a paradox inherent in any debate concerning the credibility of mainstream journalism vs. the alternative media.  If the skeptic is only willing to believe information from reliable sources, wouldn’t Fulford’s background with a publication like Forbes convince them to give his more unusual theories a chance?  If the believer is untrusting of mainstream journalism, and feels that the truth about the world is obscured by such sources, how are they to trust someone who spent 20 years of his life working in a medium they inherently distrust?

Despite all the confusion, mixed feelings, and uncertainty his post-Forbes work may cause, one things seems to be clear to this observer:  Benjamin Fulford is a sort of litmus test for what one is willing to consider, who one is willing to believe, and how, exactly, one arrives at a point where such considerations are necessary.

Perhaps Benjamin Fulford is a disinformation agent?  A con-man?  A sincere person led astray by manipulative forces?  Perhaps he is a qualified journalist reporting on a reality most other journalists, for fear of losing their careers, are reluctant to write about?  Is he merely a once respected journalist, fallen victim to mental illness, drug addiction, racist ideology, or any of the other things his adversaries have suggested of him?  Clearly, Fulford is a passionate man, and if he is any of these aforementioned things, he embodies them to the fullest.  As he said in his first interview on The Jeff Rense Radio Program- “when you have 100,000 assassins backing you up, you don’t have to be chicken, okay?”

–
Michael J. Hobart is a musician and film theorist. His interest in a rational exploration of conspiracy culture was sparked by a youthful engagement with Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus Trilogy, and an admirable ability to suspend disbelief. Profiles on the Fringe is his ongoing investigative project looking into the lives of parapolitic’s more vocal insiders.