I’d all but forgotten about James Shelby until listening to the WTF? Podcast interview with Adam Parfrey today.

James Shelby Downard (March 13, 1913 – March 16, 1998)[1] was an American conspiracy theorist whose works, most of which have been published in various anthologies from Feral House, examined perceived occult symbolism, twilight language and synchronicity behind historical events in the 20th century. Shelby is known for his addition to Masonic conspiracy theories with his belief that the Freemasons were responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy through a ritual known as “Killing of the King”.[2][3] ~ Wikipedia entry

I first read the essay mentioned above in the book Apocalypse Culture in the early 90s. I had discovered Feral House and Re/Search both published books to my taste, so I picked up quite a few from both houses back then. I even still have some of them.

Downard was an absolute kook, like all true conspiracy theorists. At first glance, I found his viewpoint amusing. His beliefs were so far-fetched and the relationships he drew so tenuous, it was simply unbelievable on any level.

Yet reading what he had to say became somewhat fascinating to me, not for reasons of agreeing or disagreeing with him, but for coming to the understanding some folks have a perspective so incredibly different, so diametrically opposed to the rest of us, they can (and do) go completely off the deep end. Even our cliches “outside the box” or “out of left field” are insufficient to describe how their neurons fire. By the end of the essay, I had taken the man as a warning: If I started considering the world around me the way he did his own, I could just as easily slip out of my reality tunnel, too. Scary thought, that.

He may have been a prime example of how insane a person can go when they stop seeing coincidences and start seeing synchronicities, but I did receive a grand gift: A perspective on perspective. I didn’t share his, but only because I have a firm grip on this specific reality tunnel. Loosen that grip and who knows? It could happen to any of us. Just click on the category It’s a Conspiracy! here for but a smattering of stories like Downard’s, or go read Robert Anton Wilson’s Everything is Under Control: Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups.

Just don’t get sucked in too far. Therein lies madness.

Madness, I say!

Way back in 2007, I wrote a post about a completely nutty conspiracy theory based on Stanley Kubrick’s movie, Eyes Wide Shut. In it, I said this about the 9/11 “Truthers”:

… our government can’t manage to get the most mundane things done without fucking up. So to expect they’d have the expertise and the perfect timing to plan and implement an attack on our own soil? Ludicrous. It also requires a trust network much too large to expect that it wouldn’t have leaked to the press before, during, or after the attacks. There’s a new leak about the administration just about every day as it is.

I quote myself today because I’m hearing the whispers of conspiracy again and I can’t believe my ears: There are actually people out there among us who believe the shooting deaths in Newtown, Connecticut last month were all a set up by our government … wait for it …

… as a first step to take away our guns.

Let me let that sink in.

The massacre was a ruse to subvert the Second Amendment.

Wait … what?

If you’re not as angry as I am at the very idea, quit reading. In fact, just block me from all future contact, because I don’t care to even know such heartless, ruthless people exist in the world.

Nevermind the witnesses – emergency services personnel, police, and all the other students, staff, and teachers at the school who were lucky to make it out alive. Nevermind the pain of parents – nay, entire families – who lost a 4, 5, or 6 year old child in the most horrible way imaginable. Nevermind the incontrovertible proof of 26 dead, 20 of them children.

Our government couldn’t wipe its own ass some days, much less get hundreds of people, including little kids, to agree to a conspiracy of that scale. It’s not just preposterous, it’s impossible.

So say the good people of Newtown aren’t involved; that means you think our government, in the quest to remove guns from society, sent someone in to a sleepy little Northeastern town WITH THE INTENT TO KILL CHILDREN.

Can you hear yourself? You sound nuts. Absolutely bonkers. Not crazy enough to shoot up an elementary school, but crazy all the same.

Listen, I know it’s hard to wrap our heads around the fact that some people are just crazy evil – who but a crazy evil person enters a school and shoots kids?! – so we make shit up to compensate.

You’re making shit up. I’m calling shenanigans. Here, nutjob, read this refutation of all the main tenets of this particular conspiracy theory. (Don’t watch the video at the end. That’s where this horseshit started.)

If the facts aren’t enough, perhaps consider your perspective is a little skewed. I once met a sad little man who saw hidden penises in all print advertising (seriously!) and of him I wrote:

He assumed intent based on his vision of the world, not on what was really there.

If you’re worried that Obama is coming for your guns, you’ll believe something as ludicrous as “Sandy Hook was an inside job.”

Here are the FACTS:

The government doesn’t want your guns. They can’t get them because of that pesky Second Amendment. I went over this and many more reasons fairly recently right here on this very blahg.

Crazy evil people exist and crazy evil people do crazy evil things. Have you ever considered why you need a different explanation? Can’t some people just be crazy evil? Or do you have explanations for the University of Texas (1966), McDonald’s (1984), Luby’s (1991), Columbine (1999), Trolley Square (2007), Virginia Tech (2007), and the Aurora Theater (2012), too?

THIS. HAPPENED. “You can have your own truths, but not your own facts.” (Ricky Gervais)

Please, for the love of whatever you hold dear, leave the good folk of Newtown alone. They’ve suffered enough without any of us adding insults to their injuries.

JUST STOP IT.

The bodies are barely in the ground and someone has already gone and made a documentary about how the theater shooting here in Aurora, Colorado this past July was a conspiracy.

As if one gunman, with an (imaginary and insane) axe to grind and an Internet connection (which is how he got most of his weaponry and supplies), couldn’t have done it all by his lonesome.

I wonder sometimes if our ability to suspend disbelief for movies like The Dark Knight Rises also allows for a suspension of disbelief when real-life tragedy strikes.

Or perhaps it’s simply some people don’t understand the old adage: Reality can be a LOT stranger than fiction.

Fiction has to be plausible.

Because it’s Beyonce and Jay-Z now, apparently.

So whoever is on top of the pop music charts is part of the ancient, worldwide conspiracy to rule the world. Uh-huh. But wait, Billy & Mandy and Spongebob are also involved. Evidently you can’t even parody the whole idea of the New World Order and secret societies without getting some people’s panties in a bunch.

*sigh*

Jay-Z said it himself in the video above: This is retarded.

Now tell me more about your mother.

What the …

I don’t even …

I can’t …

Just …

*double face palm*

I do wish the conspiracy theorists would get their stories straight.

I wrote nearly three years ago about the folks who think Lady Gaga is a puppet of the Illuminati. Now, it turns out, Madonna is the Illuminati puppet.

Or are they BOTH up to something?

*sigh*

Whatever. Repeatedly saying Madonna and the women who perform with her are “skanks,” which the guy does in his video, is uncalled for and doesn’t help his case any. I don’t care for Madonna, Nicki Minaj, or M.I.A., but to call any of them a slut based solely on their public image is chauvinistic, plain and simple. How a woman dresses, on stage or off, has nothing to do with her character or worth as a person.

But what really gets me about these particular theories is how inherently, blatantly, fantastically sexist they are. Seriously: Isn’t it possible a woman – of any age, shape, mindset, or orientation – can just be a pop star and/or fashion icon in her own right?

It is necessary for her to be under the control of a shadowy (not to mention non-existent) group of men?

If there were an Illuminati, I wouldn’t put Lady Gaga or Madonna under their thumb. Strong, independent women who think for themselves would never ally with a global conspiracy.

They already run the world.

Go sistah, soul sistah.

Years ago, I went to an estate sale in search of a desk. The gentleman who was selling off his recently-deceased mother’s property was very friendly and we got into a conversation about what we each did for work. I was a student at the time and he seemed to take particular interest in that fact. He disappeared to another room inside the house and came back with two black binders. “I want to show you something,” he said, excited to perhaps have someone in which to confide.

He opened one of the binders to a printed advertisement he’d torn out of some magazine or another. “I’ve been studying the subliminal messages in print ads,” he said. “Do you see anything unusual in this one?” The black and white ad featured a small family having a picnic on a large spot of grass. I looked and looked and saw nothing strange about it.

Excitedly, he turned to the next page in the binder, where he had drawn all the instances he saw … of penises in the ad. In pen, all over the grass, were dicks of all sizes, some with balls and some without, and before I could say a word, he went back and forth between the original ad and his “modified” one.

“Do you see them now?”

Well, yes. How could I not see them? Yet I never lost my doubt that any of them were placed there on purpose by the designer of the ad. This poor, gentle soul simply saw more than what was there.

I am reminded of that little man often, especially when I run across something like this:

To most people, the Los Angeles Public Library is nothing more than a functional building, which happens to be beautifully ornamented. When one understands the occult symbolism displayed around the complex, the Library turns into a temple of illumination, dedicated to occult mysteries and Masonic principles. It is a celebration of the accomplishments of the Luciferian elite and of the prevailing of its occult philosophy. The fact that the library is dedicated to secret societies, despite the fact that the LAPL is publicly funded, tells volumes about the true nature of America’s power.

What bothers me about this breakdown of the symbols in and around the Los Angeles Public Library building is the people who see symbols everywhere and in everything – paranoia is a trait of those who believe in conspiracies, after all – miss one major point: All buildings, public or otherwise, are the result of styles which were popular at the time.

The L.A. Public Library was built when neo-classical art deco was all the rage. It may indeed include symbols that are referenced elsewhere in mythology and attributed to secret societies, but that could simply be the result of the architect, artisans, sculptors, and other designers following the fashion of the time. It’s irrational thinking that makes a person see symbols – or penises – everywhere.

Baader-Meinhof syndrome is (link here):

… the phenomenon where one happens upon some obscure piece of information – often an unfamiliar word or name – and soon after encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly. Anytime the phrase “That’s so weird, I just heard about that the other day” would be appropriate, the utterer is hip-deep in Baader-Meinhof.

The phenomenon is better explained, with reasoned examples, here.

Now, follow that sense of “something must be going on, I keep seeing / reading / hearing about it” with knowledge of ancient and modern symbology, and one can start to see every eight-pointed star as an intentional reference to the goddess Ishtar. Nevermind that a color-contrasted, eight-pointed star in a marble floor is just beautiful, especially in round, Roman-style entryways. It must mean something, because when it’s paired with the rest of the items in the building, which mean this and that and the other thing …

A person could go crazy with all of it. I nearly drove myself nuts after I read about the Discordian Law of Fives – for weeks (maybe months) I was finding 5s and 23s everywhere I looked – but I didn’t lose it. I know a coincidence when I see it and I’m such a skeptic, I even question myself.

I’m absolutely sure that little man at the estate sale didn’t question what he saw. He assumed intent based on his vision of the world, not on what was really there.

That is the very definition of psychosis.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I don’t suppose this is any better or worse an explanation for the World Trade Center collapse than any other being perpetrated these days.

Just … I …

Ah, forget it.

*face palm*

We will look at the occult and mind-control elements of Black Swan and see how they relate to some of the realities of the world of professional entertainment.

Huh … and here I thought it was just well-acted, entertaining movie. You know, like it was written and directed to be, because if it wasn’t, it would make $0 at the box office. And you know what Hollywood is into? Cash flow. Not what can be read into the story, cinematography, costumes, backgrounds, or anything else.

The problem with trying to tell people who believe otherwise this fact, however, leads them to believe you are a) refusing to see it, b) just another sheep, or c) part of the conspiracy.

Years ago at a convention panel, someone asked Robert Anton Wilson if there really is an Illuminati. His response was of course not, but more than that, if they did exist, he wouldn’t be standing around talking to conventioneers; he would be out there, actively seeking out the great global conspiracy, to JOIN THEM.

Anyone can see what they wish to see in any visual medium. That doesn’t make it true. More so, though, if you’re just standing around talking about it, have a little more ambition: Find the culprits, infiltrate them, and bring the evidence to light for all to see.

In other words, prove to me the cigar you see really IS a penis. Until then …

It is a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.

We did. More than one over several missions, actually.

Unfortunately, there are those who believe we did not. I say “unfortunately” because anytime misinformation gains a foothold – 9/11 was an inside job, the Earth is only 6,000 years old, the Holocaust never happened – it also gains adherents.

Unscientific, misinformed, irrational, non-empirical-evidence believing, unreasonable adherents.

Hence, I heave a sigh of relief when I run across an article which refutes a conspiracy theory by laying out a healthy dose of scientific evidence.

This is not Schadenfreude on my part (for once); it’s science. Unlike belief, science cannot be denied. As Mr. Gervais said in his article this week, “You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.”

We did, indeed, put a man on the moon. Several of them, in fact, from 1969 to 1972.

To deny scientific advances is to go back to a medieval state of obscurantism that frankly doesn’t add to anything … It’s truly tragic that, instead of embracing the amazing achievements of science, people would choose to close their eyes to reality and believe in a lie.

Who wants to return to the Dark Ages? How about the 1950s?

Yeah, me neither.

And no one can make me.