While we’re on the topic of conspiracy theorists misinterpreting symbolism, I wanted to bring up an interesting video series by Michael Tsarion, called “The Subversive Use of Sacred Symbolism in the Media.” Actually, I want to tackle the topic of the video as a whole in a separate piece. But I think it’s very relevant to our conversation.
Tsarion’s big thing seems to be going through pop culture and corporate materials and drawing references between elements he sees as originating in occult symbolism. It is a noble goal on the whole and one close to my own heart, of course, but the problem I’m finding is that his work is simply RIFE with factual inaccuracies.
This is one of the more blatant ones I’ve seen so far. He shows a picture of the gas station ARCO’s logo going into this whole thing about how it’s logo features a Cross of Malta - which is already a tenuous connection at best. And then he says how ARCO does in fact *not* stand for Atlantic Richfield Company, which it does and then tops it all off by explaining how “ARCO” actually comes from a Latin word, “archon” which means “fallen angel.” And this is when my gnostic spidey sense started going off like crazy.
As far as I can tell, though I too am no expert, archon is actually a *Greek* word, which simply means “ruler”. Evidence from Wikipedia seems to support that it’s original connotations were merely political:
In the early literary period of ancient Greece the chief magistrates of various Greek city states were called Archons. [...] In Athens a system of three concurrent Archons evolved, the three office holders being known as the Archon Eponymous, the Polemarch, and the Archon Basileus. Originally these offices were filled from the aristocracy by elections every ten years.
So, my question is - what exactly is this guy Michael Tsarion’s deal? Does he just have a totally wacky grasp of linguistics and history, or does his work point at some kind of deeper undercurrent that mundane sources simply can’t track? I’m certainly open to whatever, but at this point am rather skeptical about the whole venture. Thoughts?
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On that note, I find this customer testimonial from Tsarion’s own website to be very ironic:
Another person writes:
More than nitpicking about factual elements though, the thing that really gets me about his video is that he throws out all these supposed symbolic elements, but never explains what they mean. We’re presented with images of checkered floors and so on, but never told what their significance is because of “time constraints” in the video. It becomes kind of like an endless parade of quasi-factoids without ever giving a whole lot of context for any of it and that’s for me where it *really* falls apart.
Other info on Tsarion I have collected online:
http://www.psitalk.com/tsarion.html
(Apparently he is linked with the Seattle Metaphysical Library as well, so I’m sure this will get back to me in one form or another. Oh well. I think it’s important that we challenge each other and engage each other in meaningful conversations about what truth really is)
His video on sacred symbolism in the media has a lot of useful concepts and ideas. However, I think he’s a bit too paranoid at times. Yes, advertising and the media use sacred symbolism to peddle their wares. Sometimes it’s sinister, but sometimes it’s an inbreaking of the Logos via the trash stratum.
Also, when he gets down the phoneme level he loses me entirely. He has a whole list of consonant-vowel pairs and consonant-consonant pairs that have occult or sacred meaning. There goes about a third of the English language.
arco is also a musical term that means played with the bow, (as opposed to pizzicato).
Let’s see if there’s something sinister in that. Hmmm, well, the Devil has been known to play the fiddle!
Playing someone like a violin means controlling / directing their actions.
It’s a stretch alright.
I’ve seen his stuff, I think he’s an Icke wannabe without the lizards.
Tim, I saw the video about six months ago and had the same exact reaction you did. Tsarion is a bit paranoid, plays loose with some (many) facts, but may be onto something at a deeper level.
For the last several years I have come to the opinion that the corporation represents, in fact, the body of an egregore (often a malevolent one). When you talk about egregores, sigils can’t be far behind, and therefore one can think of a corporate logo as being the sigil corresponding to the egregore entity.
arco is also a musical term that means played with the bow, (as opposed to pizzicato).
Arco: bow, as in rainbow (”arco iris” in Spanish). Rainbow is the symbol given to humankind after the Flood, a symbol of God’s promise never again to destroy the world. God, a.k.a. Ialdaboath, great Archon and liar, who has since demonstrated a willingness to destroy the earth in fire (nuclear war?), floods (hurricanes caused by global warming), etc.
How’s that?
this guy’s a moron. if the archons really wanted to start an evil corporation and take over the world, they wouldn’t hide behind symbols. they’d be completely forthright.
Right?
I mean, right?
Completely out in the open.
Right?
Slomo, that’s a very good way of looking at it. Someone (Grant Morrison?) has been giving lectures on creating corporate logos as sigils, which at the time I thought was pretty funny, because they already are. In fact, some are much more powerful than the typical magician’s creation (golden arches?), although some end up having the opposite effect than what was intended. (enron?) Fortunately, though, it’s almost always a minor manipulation…I see no ‘global conspiracies’ in these.
Well, I tend not to believe in the monolithic Illuminati-type conspiracy theory. However, I do believe that there is an ideology that drives much of the very destructive (in fact globally destructive) behavior we see. The effect is far from minor.
Right now I’m reading Welcome to the Machine (sort of Michel-Foucault-lite, or a more theoretical Ran Prieur), which I think sums up this idea very well. In a nutshell, for the last 3000 to 5000 years our culture (but especially the last 1000), our way of being has embodied, by way of metaphor, the panopticon. The panopticon is the ultimate prison, and our way of life increasingly serves archonic forces. The corporation is one of the principle actors at the center of the panopticon, where the archonic forces live. Anyway, very interesting book, I’d love to discuss with others who have read it.
I absolutely agree- it’s a very strange construct, as it really has no center- the on ly glue that holds it together is rationalization of immoral and irresponsible behavior. We all do it- from the guy at the top who rationalizes that expectations of Chinese laborers are different to the consumer on the bottom who rationalizes that they ‘need that gas’ to go to work, weall make daily choices that put the needs and desires of our bodies over the welfare of others. The s
Sounds like an interesting read, I’ll check it out.
Hey wow, egregore. You learn a new word every day.
I already know that concept, though not by that name. It’s not unfamiliar to me at all. The left-wing evangelical Christian theologian Walter Wink has constructed his ‘Powers Theology’ around the concept of ‘institutitional spirits’. The ’spiritual mapping’ evangelical submovement (C. Peter Wagner et al) also plays with the concept, though I’m more dubious of their politics. It’s based on the cosmology that distinct spiritual and physical planes both exist but are interwoven or interpermeate each other, rather than being separated - which seems to be an occult idea with a fairly ancient pedigree.
I associate the concept also with the idea of ‘group mind’, with the mathematical notion of ’self-similarity at all scales’ from fractal geometry, and with self-organising business theories such as ‘chaordic commons’ and ‘open space technology’ (also the Internet’s ‘end to end principle’ and the core ideas behind democracy itself, including the notions of both ‘class consciousness’ and the ‘nation state’ which otherwise don’t make a lot of sense - certainly Libertarian and Objectivist thought take as an axiom that group consciousness, including all forms of altruistic human relationships, simply doesn’t exist, but that makes them quite strange, as most other political theories seem to have that as a base element that’s not really spoken about because it’s so fundamental.)
Nate, do you have any good links online about Wink, powers theology and institutional spirits and the rest? I’m having trouble tracking it down…
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[...] One of the things I did actually like about Michael Tsarion’s video series was this part towards the end where he suggests that companies aren’t actually motivated by money. He suggests that the people pumping money into advertising don’t actually need more money, because they are the same families and groups who have ruled the world for the last several millenia. (It’s an idea I’ve put forth in other forms elsewhere myself.) [...]
[...] While I enjoyed some of the thinking in Tsarion’s video, it is roughly what you’d expect from a presentation at a conspiracy conference. It is big on outrageous connection-making and small on factual accuracy. And it goes without saying that it’s extremely paranoid. [...]