A short piece from SA buddy Erik Davis about his recent trip to a Chumash rock art site in sunny California. Some great observations, as ever, from Erik:
One of the things I particularly like about Chumash images is that some of them have a compressed, almost cartoonish quality that reminds me of the pop culture logos and characters of contemporary graphic design.
Other images seem to imply that alien visitation has definitely taken place. Some rock art fans don’t like to emphasize this alien quality, because they think it implies that the ancient people couldn’t come up with these amazing images themselves. But that’s not the point. The point is that whatever aliens may be in our cultural consciousness, the Chumash seemed to have had access to something similar in theirs.
Read it at Techgnosis
June 30, 2008: The year is 1908, and it’s just after seven in the morning. A man is sitting on the front porch of a trading post at Vanavara in Siberia. Little does he know, in a few moments, he will be hurled from his chair and the heat will be so intense he will feel as though his shirt is on fire.
That’s how the Tunguska event felt 40 miles from ground zero.
Today, June 30, 2008, is the 100th anniversary of that ferocious impact near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in remote Siberia–and after 100 years, scientists are still talking about it. Celebrate the centenary of humanity’s closest shave with total annihilation via this nice article at NASA!
Huzzah! Arthur survived another long dark night and will return.
We’ll keep you posted here on Further.
A very cleverly-assembled Grand Unified Mystico-Technological Conspiracy of Everything from French film-maker Seb Janiak.
From vedic vimanas to space weaponry and global mind control in just under 20 minutes - phew!
I’d say it’s about 66.6% accurate…
A 270MB download, but well worth the wait: The Orion Conspiracy
Thanks Mary Burke!
A beautiful, psychedelic 8mm film montage shot by Ric Kemp around Avebury, Wiltshire.
Glorious cosmic soundtrack by Neil Mortimer, with additional tweaking by Mark Pilkington.
Watch it here.
(This is an edited version of the full film, cut down for youtube).
Simon James has just posted this live recording from Interesting ‘08, of he and brother Curtis (seen above) performing alongside Ken Hollings. Ken was reading from Welcome to Mars, his forthcoming book from Strange Attractor Press. The book is now finished and ready to go to press, but won’t be available until October. The first 200 copies sold via the Strange Attractor site will contain a special CD of music by Simon.
Hear it here.
Exciting news from Greg Taylor of The Daily Grail – a new edition of Jacques Vallee’s 1979 classic of paranoid ufology, Messengers of Deception. This re-issue has been lightly revised by the good Dr Vallee and is part of a series of classic fortean reprints planned by Greg.
The picture shows ‘John Shepherd, who has established this UFO-detecting station in his grandparent’s home… His equipment includes radar, sonar, scanners, and homing devices which attempt to track the “Aliens” he believes are studying the earth.’
MOD is a fascinating examination of the UFO subculture’s sinister underbelly. Vallee considers the ways that the UFO mystery can be manipulated by those seeking to exert psychological and psychosocial control over marginal elements of society, and falls prey himself to the kind of controlled paranoia experienced by Robert Anton Wilson in his own Cosmic Trigger. Thirty years down the line we can see that Vallee was absolutely spot on with some of the concerns he expressed in MOD: amongst the groups he investigated were Bo and Peep, the ‘Mysterious Two’ who went on to lead the Heaven’s Gate suicides two decades later.
Messengers of Deception and the work of Dr Vallee have had a profound influence on my own ufological explorations, and I’m sure this will be evident in the forthcoming Mirage Men. I’m also very happy to announce that late 2009 should see the publication of Prodigies, a new book by Dr Vallee and Chris Aubeck from Strange Attractor Press.
More on that in due course, but for the time being you can buy Messengers of Deception here.
This weekend sees Summer solstice and an almost full Moon. But why does it look so big?
NASA have a good page discussing this illusion, which is still keeping scientists guessing.
Is it a trick of perspective - akin to the Ponzo illusion? - perhaps, but then why do pilots report seeing it when there’s nothing between them and the moon to generate false perspective?
Is it something to do with atmospheric magnification? Or perhaps the shape of the sky itself?
A big and ancient question, and one not best considered while staring at a screen – so get out there and watch the skies!
NASA
No, we’re not sure what this is about either, though Dr David Luke who passed it to us, summed it up quite nicely:
‘pro-black fascist esoteric shananigans and perverse use of the pineal gland… is someone yanking my chain?’
Take a look for yourself: And God Made Light
Remember, just because you can smile, it doesn’t mean God loves you.
And for God’s sake, stay out of the sun!
Please excuse the reduced posting rate. Things are extremely hectic at Strange Attractor HQ, with some major publishing announcements due in the next week or two.
In the meantime, please enjoy the sound of Oort, accompanying Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg’s The New Babylon (1929) at London’s ICA on Monday 9 June,
Oort: The New Babylon (excerpt) (MP3, 10MB approx)
Richard Guest (Synth, effects)
Rachel Hamilton (Theremin)
Zali Krishna (Q Chord)
Mark Pilkington (Electronics)
