Paranoid Awareness and History as Conspiracy

from The Lucid View: Investigations into Occultism, Ufology, and Paranoid Awareness

However we choose to look at it, this world is of our own making. To the paranoid understanding, however, there are other, unseen forces to take into account also. There are, for example, unscrupulous individuals (such as the ones behind Hitler) who would take advantage of humanity’s voluntary ignorance, and appoint themselves its jailors.
Secret societies, from the ancient Assassins all the way up to the O.T.O and the Scientologists, have plagued, dogged and finally overrun the paranoid’s version of history; whether their influence is merely through myths and legends or in actual concrete “fact“ seems finally of little import, since either way our beliefs, and therefore our thoughts and actions, have been influenced. For the paranoid, the intrigue began with organized religion itself, the very first conspiracy of “the elect” to lord it over its flock.

The essence of the “occult conspiracy” of paranoid awareness is exemplified by the myth of Lucifer: in a word, hubris. A secret revolt against gods considered obsolete and so ripe to be supplanted. In the human psyche—paranoid or otherwise—a battle rages. It has raged since the inception of time, since Michael rose up in righteous wrath at the glorious disobedience of Lucifer; since the Serpent tempted Eve; since knowledge split in two and good and evil went their separate ways; since the left-hand disdained the right, and right denied left. Like two parallel lines or universes which cannot be reconciled, the parties of the “secret brotherhoods” of schizoid Man have made war across the world and throughout history. As slaves to the cosmic laws that created them, they are like contraction and expansion: one wages war for awakening, the other for oblivion. Both have their agendas, both have their particular methods and specific ends. But though they appear at odds, like day and night they serve to define each other: and what seems to be two is really one.

The central tenet of paranoid awareness is that, behind all the battles, betrayals, conspiracies and deceptions, there exist two primary agendas or powers, and that these factions—according to the modern myth—in turn control or influence a myriad variety of minor conspiracies and societies, plots and traditions, all of which conspire together, despite themselves and their professed animosities, to create the chaos and insanity in which we live. This is the paranoid acceptance, in a nutshell. As John Keel writes:

"Like all other cultures, our own is a conspiracy, a bevy of petty divinities who derive their power solely from our unprotesting acquiescence and constantly deflect our gaze away from the fantastic aspect of reality."

It is the fantastic aspect of reality is what concerns us here, nothing else. It is in this spirit and this spirit alone that I paint the picture which I am now painting before you. For the global or even cosmic conspiracy is of course the most reassuring of paranoid belief systems: it is as it were the very structure of paranoia itself, imposed upon the world at large. It explains everything, without explaining anything.

All people everywhere believe in some sort of conspiracy. The Christians call it God or the Holy Spirit; the scientists call it evolution, or fractals; the nihilists call it Chance or Blind Fate. None of them can actually deny the existence of order or design, however, and they would be fools to try. Only the paranoid attempts to trace the lines of the design to recognizable, identifiable forces, entities, person or parties in the world at large. As such, his ambition is prodigious and fearless: neither ridicule nor personal danger can dissuade him from his course. In his bid to render the invisible visible and make the unknown known, he stretches the boundaries of both collective reason and individual sanity and, if successful, allows a new order to break through.