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Bohemian Grove Is Boring!
Jeremy recently posted a link to some photos from inside Bohemian Grove, the supposed secret lair where world leaders come to molest children and sacrifice puppies. Oddly enough though, the photos are completely boring. Even the giant stone owl which is supposed to be something of myth and legend is nothing more than a rock that you can barely make out the shape of.
Looking at those pictures really just made me realize how boring a lot of this stuff has become. I mean, when you first enter into the twisted mindspace where ritual abuse and Satanic sacrifice becomes a real possibilty, it’s all very tantalizing and exciting to find out more and more details and speculate harder and harder on it. But after a while the glamour of it all starts to fade away.
I remember for me, the first stage of growing disinterest happened when I started finding more first-hand style accounts of alleged ritual abuse. Some of those are pretty graphic and I realized, “Hey! This isn’t how I want to spend my time. This isn’t what I want to fill my mind up with!” Over time, I pulled back more and more from that worldview of obsessive over the deep dark dirty secrets of those in power. Mainly because focusing on other people’s power tends to diminish your own. You suddenly feel small, insignificant and powerless… and paranoid. And I found that I could simply make the choice to not be that way anymore. And I haven’t looked back.
With that though, gone are the really tantalizing late-night freak-outs that used to happen when I was knee deep in the creepiest types of research - going down the rabbit-hole, as they like to say. Well, not to say I don’t go down some pretty weird rabbit-holes, though. They’re just a lot different now.
Part of me also wonders whether the increasing exposure and acceptance of so much of conspiracy theory has also contributed to a lot of it becoming kind of stale and boring. People seem to be not so much uncovering new facts, or trying out bold new interpretations to explain events, so much as filling in the gaps of now long-standing belief systems. I mean, I haven’t really heard a new conspiracy theory in a long time that really knocked my socks off and made me re-evaluate everything that I held to be true about the world. Whereas, early this year and before that, I’d happen across one of those every couple weeks. Something truly earth-shattering, you know?
When’s the last time you’ve had the walls of your reality crumble? Where’s the next big blast going to come from? They seem to be getting smaller and smaller lately. Maybe that means something. Maybe it’s just me that’s changed. I’m not sure. Maybe I’m ready just to see Bohemian Grove as a place where old men like to dress up and act funny. Maybe we all need a place like that.
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November 6th, 2005 at 4:57 am
[…] otally blown away by three posts I read tonight. Here’s the problem, as defined by Tim. “Part of me also wonders whether the increasing exposure and accep […]
November 6th, 2005 at 11:24 am
It seems to me there’s a bit of a disconnect between saying one doesn’t want to fill one’s mind with possibilities one finds threatening and wanting something to come along and destroy one’s worldview.
Isn’t it supposed to be empowering to know one’s enemies? Perhaps that power causes one to feel one’s powerlessness — a deeper understanding of what one can change and what one can’t. (Because there are things that fall into either category.) I’m thinking it’s like courage, which requires the experience of fear.
I’ll end with two quotes:
“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”
- John Cage.
“Nothing is interesting if you’re not interested.”
- Helen MacInness
November 6th, 2005 at 1:08 pm
john cage is boring.
to become overbought regarding the power of others strips one of the ability to develop one`s own power. granted, any inquiry into the occult necessitates visiting the environments where political power resides, but to take up residance would tend to make one become one of the inmates.
November 6th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
haha ha. i knew somebody was going to try to come along and criticize me for “putting my head in the sand”
thats very much the opposite of what im doing. im not just sticking my fingers in my ears and saying nothings happening and that none of this stuff is real. that would be a mistake.
November 6th, 2005 at 3:01 pm
Here’s a Robert Anton Wilson quote that I think speaks to what I mean:
http://www.deepleafproductions.com/utopialibrary/text/raw-inter-utopia.html
I guess what I’m trying to say is that for most people, when they get involved in learning about the really dark conspiracy stuff, what they are doing is learning how to re-program their brains, disconnecting themselves from the ordinary consensus reality which they’ve been raised with. This is a good thing. But too many people stop there. They exchange one oppressive belief system with something darker and more overtly mythological, and miss the greater lesson of - “I’m in control of my brain and my perceptions. I changed them before by getting involved in this stuff, and I can change them again however I want.” Almost nobody takes that second step though and crafts a conspiracy to make themselves satisfied and fulfilled.
November 6th, 2005 at 4:52 pm
I dont need evidence of the conspiracy, I own it!
More serious Bush occult Nazi Freemason Satanic child kilelrs is so boring is because the audience it is designed for: is boring! Historically from the time of the knight templars and Rilles de Gilles to the 80s child moelestation investigators feeding lurid people their own slop and calling themselves moral for being “against” it. If it’s so diabolical as to be unhuman, then it’s probably not real (I would make an exception with Nixon and Kissinger, those are evil people!). Why was the X-files so popular? Why is the book of revelations popular? If you buy one you probably buy the other. The real conspiracy is out in the open for _anyone_ to see, and we don’t know what our collective history really is because we (or You or Them) are not the ones making it, hence la conspirator.
November 6th, 2005 at 5:31 pm
Maybe I’m missing something here, but why would one “Craft a conspiracy to make themselves satisfied and fulfilled”? It seems almost anti-gnostic to me. To use the cave metaphor, it’s like discovering your “divine spark”, and instead of trying to leave the cave to explore, you just stay in the cave and play with the new light you’ve discovered. In the end, you just play in to the hands of those in power, the archons, what have you.
By creating your own “conspiracies to make yourself satisfied and fulfilled”, you never reach any true satisfaction or fullfilment, IMO. You’ll always be creating new “conspiracies” to fill the gaps of your knowledge, and never actually learn anything, become any wiser, or take another step towards gnosis.
It’s like the hero myth (which is almost identical to Plato’s Cave Allegory). Once you begin to learn the truth, or “hear the call”, you have two choices: you can either choose to do something about it, or stay where you are. In these conspiracy theories you have two choices once “it gets boring” (hence you’ve heard the call, learned the part of the truth you were supposed to, etc). You can either choose to do something about it, to help those who are victims of these acts, to expose the truth, etc, or you can choose to play with your new-found mind-fucking tool, and do nothing for humanity. Because that’s really what all these conspiracy theories are, mind fucks. The question is, are you addicted to the mind fuck, or are you dedicated to using your experiences to help others. I guess thats the true separation between a whore and a saint (like Sophia, reincarnate as Helena), are you just looking for a way to loosen up ur mind, or a way to help people?
November 6th, 2005 at 5:48 pm
Weird, I feel like I’m being really clear, but maybe I’m not. I’ll have to sit on this and try to find another way to talk about it…
I guess for Ktulu, my main question would be: does sitting up all night reading about satanic paedophile rings really actually “help” anybody? I feel like on one level an obsession with it can easily become a sort of masochistic titillation, rather than a real quest for the truth. What if none of this is “true”? What if the most important truths you’ll ever find aren’t somewhere outside Plato’s Cave, but right here inside of you all along?
Another part of me wonders if it wouldn’t be more helpful to go and help your neighbor unload her groceries from the car than spend your time chasing mind-fucks.
November 6th, 2005 at 6:10 pm
I like what’s been generated on this topic.
Part of the equation I think is the entertainment value of the “internet stories”.
Or the alternate news that you consider interesting and possible.
It’s a good read and can take you out of a more mundane day to day mindset.
“the crumble the walls of reality” quality of books, mags, movies, music, dope, alcohol, etc…
Which is something that enthusiastic readers look for in a story.
But it’s not necessarily the “real” world in day to day life, which is filled with your own real things…
I think the overwhelming amount of info and various conspiracies, sham conspiracies, etc we have seen born alongside the internet media delivery system
have made it just another interesting thing rather than an earth shattering thing.
I guess the only real totally earth shattering thing would be some proof of your own that something was a real experience or possibility that was unexplainable or washed over in media. Or some variation of that.
November 6th, 2005 at 6:33 pm
man i’m totally with you on this one. in some ways (and hopefully this doesn’t make the web even more complex), it’s almost like conspiracy theory is a great starting point for many people on their own paths, but it’s not a place to move in and live. it’s like with the whole ‘gnosticism and conspiracy theory’ thing– eventually you’re supposed reach a point where you get past the conspiracy theory stuff.
http://www.snant.com/fp/archives/gnosticism-the-ultimate-conspiracy-theory/
you’re supposed to *move past,* go further, dig deeper and keep striving. that point, for me and lots of people, is when you realize how stale and repetitive it is. it’s like when you take a long bus ride– you get off and stretch your legs in some backwater burg that seems really great compared to the bus, but you’re supposed to get back on the bus and keep going, not to settle down and start a family in the little nowhere-town.
the whole ‘dark politics’ conspiracy theory thing looks more and more to me like mouse-bait set by the archons to trap people who otherwise might attain enlightenment or self-knoweldge.
November 6th, 2005 at 6:40 pm
When you put it like that though, that kind of sounds really appealing. That’s kind of a fantasy of mine, disappearing to some little town, and that being that.
November 6th, 2005 at 6:43 pm
yeah until your kids get sacrified by dick cheney to a giant, boring owl-god . . . .
November 6th, 2005 at 6:46 pm
I think that may be a good point about the archons laying lots of different kinds of traps. One type of trap is becoming fascinated by their evil doings - in the original meaning of the word: bewitching, enchanting.
It might even be a stronger spell to be under than the one where you are just completely oblivious to their doings. It’s like how Frodo, when he puts on the Ring, he can feel Sauron looking for him, searching for him. He sees the One Burning Eye gazing back at him. He can see the Ring Wraiths as they really are, instead of just the hooded shadows they appear in the day world. And because of that, he becomes paralyzed, weighed down by being exposed to the glamour of their evil.
Maybe that’s why neither Gandalf or the elves would take up the Ring themselves, because they knew what would happen if they entered that world.
November 6th, 2005 at 6:49 pm
Yeah, I know. Man, if I was gonna make a giant owl for us all to worship and sacrifice under, I would make it the most horrible terrifying thing you’ve ever seen. You’d be so scared by it that you’d actually just kill yourself. It wouldn’t be just some crappy rock that doesn’t look like anything.
November 6th, 2005 at 6:59 pm
if you`ve listened to ted gunderson or malachai martin long enough you start to find yourself in altered state of illness. at that moment you have to decide whether you enjoy the feeling or not. regarding helping others…..if you are wondering if you are helping people in your actions, look to see where those you helped are. most of what passes for compassionate interest is moral indignation. those in power are amoral, apolitical and detached from just about any other value other that that which preserves thier claim to power. all of the beautiful theories about reptilians and angel races serve to hold our attention on things that, as my father used to say, are none of our business. r.a.w. meant precisely this when he suggested crafting a conspiracy for our own benifit. focus on what is empowering for us and ignore the endless crap designed to set off our moral indignation alarm. when we are destabilised by a message we tend to take the prescription for stabilisation provided by the same messenger. that is the classic hegelian dialectic that david icke goes on about. he`s right about the political mechanism though i have a hard time with the reptile bit though.
November 6th, 2005 at 7:07 pm
do you think that BG is where David Lnch got his owl from in Twin Peaks?…
November 6th, 2005 at 7:08 pm
Extremely well said.
November 6th, 2005 at 9:07 pm
What I mean by helping people is this:
If you’re going to focus on conspiracy theories, DONT get satisfied with just reading and “knowing the truth”. If you really do know something, or if you’ve analyzed facts and made logical deductions that fall outside the “accepted theories or reasons”, then you should dedicate yourself to showing other people, and helping them understand the discrepencies. In the end, what those people do with your help is entirely up to them, but you should at least feel satisfied with knowing that you tried to “open up their eyes”, or “lift their face out of the grass”.
If you’re not going to focus on conspiracy theories, GREAT! I agree that it’s just a trap, a faux-pas end-all. The ability to think outside the box, and see “official stories” for what they are, is a great skill, a great expansion of logical methods, but it is just that, a skill, a method, NOT enlightenment. Enlightenment is a way of life, enlightenment is action.
Or to add another metaphor, you’re just a student learning how to theoretically build buildings, until you actually go out and master the knowledge you’ve theoretically learned. Once you can solve complex problems, overcome challenges of space, time, and physics, and create not just stable buildings, but aesthtic (sp) buildings, too, then you are truly a genious of architecture, an enlightened engineer. Bringing that back to conspiracy theories, you’re just a student until you actually do something with your theoretical knowledge. If you truly want to be enlightened, you should try to change the stone cold truth alistair pointed out:
If we can actually create power systems in which leaders are responsible, are held responsible by the people, and actually serve the people, then the “conspiracy student” will have become the political master. If one’s goal is not to help people with your supposed enlightened knowledge, then you are no better than a college student wasting his/her parents money, while partying and failing out of college.
I believe conspiracy theories are a powerful step, and a definite mind-fuck (kinda like if you stand up too quickly and run up the stairs, your head gets real thin and loopy), but if you just stop at that step, you’ve failed, and the archons have control over you once again.
November 6th, 2005 at 9:27 pm
Hey Tim, sorry to be a ghost lately. Working on reading dead languages. They just told me this week I’m going to be learning Coptic once the Greek is finished.
I totally expected scarier pictures from the grove. Like, actual skeletons maybe. But noooo, just an owl and an effigy.
Any idea the address of this place? This deserves a nice old-fashioned Google-Earthing.
November 6th, 2005 at 9:29 pm
Ooh! great point. I’ll look into it. I’m sure we can find it.
November 6th, 2005 at 9:33 pm
i’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the conspirators themselves who are boring. dick cheney, for instance - profoundly boring man. overall, in my experience, the better i am able to winnow the real conspiracies from the myths, the less impressive they are. not for lack of malevolence (which is legion) but for lack of grandeur. far from being illuminati or dark lords of sith, our “leaders” are basically just a bunch of mean, stupid, stunted people with waaay too much power.
November 6th, 2005 at 9:57 pm
they are dark lords of sith if anyone is. and this isn`t a fairy tale like star wars. this is your consciousness creating reality as you go. don`t waste the opportunity by getting drawn into the archons game and falling asleep. wake up and focus on something better for yourself than grinding over what the “unworthy” have on thier plates and go get your own. if you show fear(interest) in thier game they`ll come over and give you more of what you don`t want. just like in the nightmare you screamed yourself out of in a cold sweat. stay awake with humour, sarcasm, cynicism and hostile inquiry.
ktulu asks us to transcend the human process of setting up hierarchies that put small groups of people in power. political struggle is by definition a struggle between classes. the classes have been battling for centuries. to trancscend that is to transcend our humanity. there are those who suggest that the process of hierarchies is a product of the archetecture of our brains and of our dna. who would be the first one to take the pill that would alter that arrangement?
November 7th, 2005 at 2:15 pm
But aren’t the dark lords of the Sith also just a bunch of mean, stupid, stunted people with waaay too much power?
The ability to do damage is not greatness.
The problem with being a superhero: real villians are just not worthy. And that goes for superheros whose highest power is the ability to enjoy watching a sunset or to read a book to a child.
November 7th, 2005 at 4:17 pm
Yayy!!! I actually have some thoughts to share for change. thank heavens for my new medication….
http://goldenbraid.blogspot.com/2005/11/now-we-know-who-i-am.html
” Most people seem to take one of two approaches to the question of evil. Either you have the quavering deer in headlights approach where you neither understand the problem nor equip yourself to deal with it, or you have the dismissive postmodernist skeptic who deconstructs the problem till it carries no urgency, and no real meaning. Just sick people, just stupid people, just the way things are. Crippled by hysteria or blinded by reason. In either case you’ve allowed no real room for yourself to grow. You’re either a deer, or you’re a product of impersonal forces. ”
November 7th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
Zac, that was a really great piece. Definitely gave me some new thoughts on this whole issue.
November 7th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
You know I have to put my two cents in on this one, Tim.
The main gist of your post is that it’s boring. But I don’t think it’s boring, nor do I feel like I’m filling my head with negative junk. If anything, a theory like the ones that surround Bohemian Grove or the Franklin Cover-up is just one of many theories that helps explain (1) the epidemic of child sex abuse, not just in America but around the world, which is very real, CT or not; and (2) the blatant hypocrisy of uber-Christians with politcal agendas, such as the Bushes.
Back in the days when my only CT passion was JFK’s assassination, I noticed through my own experience that something was gravely wrong with this country and its attitude towards youth. Decades before Britney Spears had 2-year old girls bumping and grinding, I always sensed this underlying dread around me having to do with the impulse to rush women through the maturation process.
CTs like the ones you speak of are more like pacifiers to me: rather than fuel a fire, they calm me down. They help me to relax and understand that there IS a reason why I hate these fucking Republican Born-Agains so much. Whether any of it is true or not, the mere existence of a CT confirms my fears… and in the process reduces them to their proper size. I mean, even if it was true, what can I do about it, right?
The only thing I can do is keep aware of it, that’s all. I was aware of this sickening trend way before I ever got into CTs about such things, so I think it’s something I would feel or think no matter what.
But boring is a matter of taste. Not everything on this page is comment-worthy to me, but you spread the jam thick enough so that everyone can take a bite out of it. In other words, your blog functions in the same way as those CTs. Is it no wonder that, after a short absence from commenting, THIS is the post that brought me back into it? I didn’t ask you to post what you did, but you can’t spend all your time posting about gnosticism, can you? A little variety is always welcome.
Now I have to ask: does it really bore you that much? I think that if it really did, you wouldn’t have posted about it at all.
November 7th, 2005 at 5:48 pm
well i’m not sure how relevant this is but it just kind of hit me when you mentioned child sex abuse and forced maturation. i think it’s almost the opposiste actually.
in my post linked above, i sort of talk about how we’re really in a state of cultural suspended animation. that our unwillingness to face the perils of adulthood, and the threats of the adult world has left us in a perpetualy emotional adolescence.
it’s only natural in situations like that, that we would as a culture sexually fetishise children to rationalise our biology with our psychology. the harder we repress age and adulthood, the more the child becomes a magnet for our twisted shadow desires.
pretty much every area shows this distortion. our politics, our art, our vocabulary, our sexuality and emotionality, all infantile.
November 7th, 2005 at 6:07 pm
Good. I’m really just trying to articulate my own perspective, rather than say that it’s gotta be the same for everybody.
Yeah, it does bore me. Certain aspects of it I’m finding very tedious and tiresome. And yet the sort of “mythic core” of the thing still interests me. I’m trying to figure out what changed. Is it me? Is it the theories? Is it the people? How do I take the things out of it that are still worth something to me? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.
November 7th, 2005 at 6:15 pm
just ’cause tim thinks it’s boring doesn’t mean you have to, too. nor does it mean you need to try to change his mind . . . .
this isn’t directed to anyone in particular, it just strikes me as kinda funny, the reaction this post is getting.
November 7th, 2005 at 6:36 pm
to feel that we have to solve the worlds problems is pure ego….and it makes us terrible easy to manipulate. what point is there in caring about what the conservative right fundies are doing any more than in caring about which overpaid actress is getting married to which overpaid actor. if it was any of your business you would get a wedding invitation. boring. maybe there are some who derive some masochistic pleasure from watching these kind of games unfold but it`s all old hat. read your history. it has all been done before by people with actual charisma.(maybe.) we have this idea that dictators and genocidal maniacs from history were somehow archvillians like some james bond character, but lets look at a list of these people.
hitler.
pol pot.
napoleon.
attila the hun.
attaturk.
vlad the impaler.
stalin.
were these people truly archvillians with passionate sense of adventure in what they did or were they desperate little men who would have run a convenience store with the same hostile sense of tyranny, living empty little hostile lives.
i think you will find that the power that most of these shit little people had was what we gave them. opportunity knocked and they answered. most sociopaths live sad, empty and lonely lives without the cheer of adoring throngs. it takes a good heart and a passion for what you do to move people to do things, and a lot of hard work. decent people know this and make things happen accordingly.
November 7th, 2005 at 8:47 pm
I don’t know about all of that. I just delight in taking the piss out of assholes like Bush, Cheney and Rummy, because (regardless of whether they are “cool” in person) they make decisions that are horrible.
And it’s so easy to lump them in with Luciferian baby killers, especially when you read little news bits like this:
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarti...Z_01_SCH782084_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIBBY.xml
I wonder if Scooper ever got the invite to the Grove?
Also: What did anyone think of Harry Shearer’s “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic”? Has anyone even seen it? I think it’s fucking hysterical, but some might find it… boring.
November 7th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
UPDATE:
Aw, man, how can you say this stuff BORING?
Go to Amazon.com, search for Libby’s book, and read some of those customer reviews… This is a fucking riot. And a favorable review of the book points out that The New York Times gave the book a good review also!
Maybe that might shed some light on Libby’s cryptic mash letter to Judith Miller…
Maybe it’s boring to you because you’re not looking at it in the right light. Having a sense of humor about it helps… not that you don’t have a sense of humor, Tim… it’s just that all of this would be terribly depressing if it weren’t for the high-minded sanctimonious BS these people try to pawn off on us day by day…
And it confirms what I’ve always felt about failed-artists-turned-politicians: if they can’t create, they would rather destroy. Just look at Adolph Schickelgruber, an Austrian painter who later became the leader of Germany during WWII…
November 7th, 2005 at 11:15 pm
actually, some of hitler`s paintings were rather good……..and his sense of the dramatic was second to none.
November 7th, 2005 at 11:25 pm
Well, you all know that Hitler wanted to film WWII with him as the main character, a sort of Palpatine, right? He actually based some of his battle plans on where he could get the best shots. The dude really thought he was a movie star (and the producer, and the director, and the editor, ……etc). Quite funny, actually.
November 7th, 2005 at 11:26 pm
“actually, some of hitler`s paintings were rather good…”
Once again, a matter of taste. I thought his paintings were boring, and so did most of the artists in Austria during those years.
When Hitler became Der Fuhrer, he organized an exhibit of “entarte kunst” or “degenerate art”. He corralled all the artists and works he found deplorable and put them on display, with vicious captions scribbled underneath by SS officers. Some of the works were even vandalized. In a way, it was an artistic “ghetto” prefiguring the horrific concentration camps at Dachau and Auschwitz.
Now: Knowing what an insufferable prick Picasso was in his own life, imagine if he had had become Generalissimo of Spain. Or how about fascist-loving Salvador Dali? The line between artists and politicians is a fine one indeed.
November 7th, 2005 at 11:47 pm
It’s the word “boring” that got to me. I dislike bored people, and think interestingness is no criteria of truth. Perhaps it’s something else I could discuss with a therapist. Assuming therapy isn’t another game of the archons.
Let me tell you, negative, self-destructive programming is very, very, very hard to deal with. Especially when it is the basis of one’s identity and reality, and thus prized above almost everything else.
November 8th, 2005 at 1:03 pm
landruc, what if negative, self-destructive programming was very, very, very easy to deal with. how would you feel? or harder than you could possibly imagine? the concepts you choose to entertain are what lead you. you have to decide whether archons actually exist. if they do then therapy will be another one of thier games because by all accounts they are right bastards.
the question is; are you going to let that be an excuse?
oh and by the way, what do you prize most?
November 8th, 2005 at 5:41 pm
I object to people like Dick Cheney retiring to some place with the word “bohemian” in its title… These assholes spend their every waking minute defying regular people their rights to be Bohemians… and then they have the gall to sequester themselves to some little spot where they can act like idiots? Fuck them and their attempts to have cake and eat it too. What, being a scumbag politician isn’t enough?
It’s like if some senator were to promote segregation and go up against civil rights, while having an affair with a black girl the whole time… oh, wait, that DID happen, with Strom Thurmond, the same guy who sold John Lennon out to the Feds…
Yeah, this is real boring stuff, I tells ya…
November 9th, 2005 at 6:41 pm
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