All this theorizing around Michael Jackson CIA-connections and conspiracies has really been nudging my thinking in a new direction. By that, I don’t mean that I necessarily “believe” everything that I’ve said to be 100% verifiable fact. Because I don’t. I’ve been trying to say again and again that so much of it is conjecture - which means it shouldn’t be taken literally, but can offer deep insights into culture, and a springboard for your own research.

But what kind of research? I realize that if you get too far down these “underground tunnels” of conspiracy theory, you can end up at some pretty whacky places. But all along I’ve been harboring a secret belief that conspiracy theory - when done with the right intentions - can become a sort of spiritual pursuit. I’ve written about that more and better in other articles, so I won’t try to recap that here, but I would like to point out the similarity between this latest batch of conspiracy theorizing and the work we’ve all been doing with the pop culture/celebrity tarot deck. I feel that they are absolutely 100% related - if not the same thing wearing different clothes.

The whole trick of conspiracy theory seems to be relentless connection-making. While researching last night, I found myself in this sort of suped-up mode of thinking where I was just looking for connections like crazy - any connections. They don’t have to necessarily make total sense, or even be from a reliable source. The whole point (when you get to a really heady level) is merely just to link A to B to C to D and so on… I’m not going to say that all conspiracy theory research is like this, but it’s certainly where I found myself last night. And it’s the sort of thing that’s both invigorating and honestly a little freaky. It puts you into this very strange headspace where suddenly everything you think you know drops away like a pair of underwear just before you’re about to get laid.

Heheh. Sorry. That was a hilarious analogy, I just couldn’t resist. But there is sort of a similar “frenzy of passion” that can happen with this kind of research. You just get so amped up that you kind of stop thinking about the consequences. Everything you find just becomes fuel for the fire. Facts and speculation take on equal or at least supporting roles to one another. And if you can pack the whole thing tightly around a really solid thematic core or a good story, then you’re pretty much golden. Even if none of it turns out to be objectively “true” you can get yourself and others completely caught up in the story and all kinds of wild implications based on it.

Not saying that I did any of this on purpose with that research though. I was more just sort of following hunches and trails through the forest to see where I came out. The whole thing was actually really instructive. And like I said, I think my “success” in it has everything to do with the pop culture tarot work I’ve been doing. I wrote recently how it also has really enhanced my ability to work with symbols in a huge way. I think this is very much what conspiracy theory is all about, although few people seem to recognize it. In a way, it’s essentially a right-brained activity - just like religion. If I had to define religion, I might say something like:

Religion is an attempt to create and maintain a self-consistent narrative structure (story-system) to bring some kind of order to a non-rational transcendent symbol.

These pop tarot cards have everything to do with that as well. I recently quote Jung who said:

A symbol is an indefinite expression with many meanings, pointing to something not easily defined and therefore not fully known. But the sign always has a fixed meaning, because it is a conventional abbreviation for, or a commonly accepted indication of, something know.

So with the tarot cards, we’ve been dismantling and reconfiguring cultural signs in order to expose the underlying symbolic content. The trick of symbolic/archetypal stuff is that you can never access it directly. It’s indescribable (ineffable) so the only way to approach it is with using outward cultural signs which act as sort of guideposts to get there. It’s like how Buddha said that he didn’t teach englightenment, he just taught a path that he used that might get you there.

Conspiracy theory I think would benefit from a similar analysis. In it, we’re taking culturally defined semiotic signs and splitting them open and rebuilding them into weird parodies and alternate possibilities. I think the problem we get into is that once we’ve accomplished this rather big task of freeing ourselves from the original cultural meaning of the signs, we begin to believe literally in the new meanings we have invested them with. They may be real, they may be true - I don’t doubt that in many instances. But I think the real message to be learned through this process is that meaning is malleable, and that whatever we see or study, we end up projecting ourselves into it.

When I build a tarot card with Lisa Simpson as Conscience, it’s because I like the Simpsons, and I recognize the struggle she stands for within myself. Similarly, when I deconstruct the Michael Jackson story, and look at it from mythical and subversive angles, it’s because I’m interested in those things anyway, and by applying these filters, I can learn more about how culture works, but also how I work. What do I think about all this? How much am I really prepared to believe? Admittedly, it’s a tricky road to walk on. But what’s not in life, really? Everything has risks. I could step out in front of my house and get hit by a bus. That doesn’t mean I should stay cowering in my house all day because of that possibility. It just means I should go out, use my sense, look both ways before crossing the street. And if I was really smart, I would learn the bus schedule, and map out all the stops, and then go for a ride and enjoy myself. Well, as best you can on a public bus, I guess - but you see my meaning (I hope).