My name is Michael Aquino, and I think it's kind of fun to do the impossible; Ask Me Anything.

reply to post by maquino

She's the best Starbuck in my humble opinion! She can really throw a punch.

LivingUnderGlass
I am always intrigued by which prolific authors themselves are influenced by.

Could you name some books that you consider to be most interesting or remarkable within the UFO/paranormal field?

I don't really follow UFO literature, though I do like and recommend John Alexander's recent book on the subject, which I reviewed for AFIO [and think I posted the review elsewhere here on ATS].

I originally assembled the Temple of Set's Reading List, of course, which you can find appended to Black Magic.

The most recent review I wrote, a few days ago, was for a friend of mine, Lara Parker, concerning her new Dark Shadows novel Wolf Moon Rising. Here it is:

* * * * *

Do you remember that scene in Superman I where Lois Lane was about to fall to her death from a wrecked helicopter, and suddenly Christopher Reeve came running at the screen, tearing his shirt off to reveal that big red/yellow \S/ on his chest? All the boomers in the theater were instantly on their feet, tears in their eyes, yelling “GO SUPE!” while their startled kids gaped at them as though they’d gone completely out of their minds.

Well, that’s Wolf Moon Rising. If you were there to be seduced by the original Dark Shadows television series - and I don’t mean the painful TV & movie revival efforts - reading this book is like being mugged by angels: your mind and body end up in complete disarray but you still feel blessed.

Almost everyone from the original gang still living [and a few who aren’t] is here. And, in the usual Collins tradition, in lots of trouble seasoned with romance, violence, and neurosis. All of which pounces on you on page #1 and doesn’t let up for the next 394. Remember how excruciatingly drawn-out some of the show sequences could be? Not so here. Pacewise WMR compares favorably with the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland.

And guess what? After two earlier DS novels in which she cracked her literary knuckles, Lara Parker hits the ground running this time as a writer with as eloquent a pen as Nelson DeMille or James Ellroy. Her characters sizzle with vitality, her scenery preempts your outside-the-book surroundings, and you find yourself joining in everything from rebuilding a Duesenberg to dodging tommy gun bullets. All of this comes together in a lush, sensuous, decadent tapestry of fantasy that leaves you thoroughly gruntled. How very annoying to find yourself on the last page!

In addition to showing how well she can yarnspin, Parker clearly had fun putting this thing together. The narrative ripples with in-jokes and nostalgiquips for the DS junkie to find like Easter eggs. - And the women!:

Grayson Hall’s Dr. Julia Hoffman was perceptive, practical, sensitive, and warm. What she wasn’t was sexy. Like a bad-girl version of Cinderella’s fairy godmother, Parker brings Julia back as a vampire with vamp: a flameflowing cascade of hair, glowing jeweleyes, and a take-no-prisoners gown to showcase ... well, Julia’s teeth weren’t the only two parts of her anatomy to grow!

We know from the jacketnotes that there’s going to be a Roaring 20s timetrek. Right above the text Parker gives you a wake-up kick in that direction: a period photograph of a stunningly-beautiful young woman. Then you get it: Joan ... Joan Bennett! Good lord. Most of us who watched the original series knew vaguely that she’d “been a famous movie star”, but she was so ... underwhelming as the wan, matronly, passive Elizabeth Stoddard. I don’t think many of us bothered to look her up in those preGoogle days. Try it now and prepare to fry your eyeballs: She and her sister Constance were full-fledged drop-dead-gorgeous sirens of the Golden Age.

All of which makes you cheatread ahead to the 1920 flashback to see how Parker rejuvenates her [and her sister!]. It’s deliriously hilarious. With Collinwood the glitzy setting for a Gatsbyesque orgy, David’s bewildered girlfriend - Angelique’s latest reincarnation - is whisked away by the Bennetts for a head-to-toe makeover. “Flapper or Gibson Girl?” they speculate mischievously, then decree the former. [While this fits the frenzy of the party and properly stupefies David, I found myself hitting an æsthetic snag here: the cool, distant, and aristocratic Angelique is much more Gibson, even though that Grecian-goddess image went out with the Art Nouveau of the turn of the 1900s.]

By contrast, the men in the story are just their usual petulant, grumpy, homicidal selves, spending most of their time drinking [though Barnabas and Quentin prefer slightly different cocktails]. Barnabas thoroughly alienates his latest objet d’amour, who attracts him because he thinks she looks exactly like Angelique whom he hates. Yes, I know: go figure. Also happens to be the same lady Quentin has his wolfy eyes on, so you know she’s in for some bummer dates. What Barnabas does manage, for the first time in Dark Shadows history, is to terminally piss off the ever-loving/loyal/suffering Julia. Way to go, Barney - particularly now that she looks so, um, outstanding.

Considering that it’s Lara P. who’s telling this tale, one would think that Angelique would get center stage, and some finale fulfillment. Oddly, no. The story spends most of its sequence in a sort of identity tag-team between David’s teenage girlfriend and her mother, a worn-out 60s’ hippie who apparently learned her vocabulary in the Marine Corps. The “real” Angelique just drops into one or the other of them now and then to confuse the reader and jerk Barnabas’ chain. [I thought that they fell back in love with each other at the end of the Gerard Stiles caper in DS episode #1198, but what do I know?]

I wish I could tell you that after everything that hits the fan in this book, it at least has a happy ending. Well, it doesn’t. Everyone still alive is just catching a breath before the next troublemaker knocks on the Collinwood door. While watching the original show, I remember thinking that six years of actual, plus several more of wayback and paralleltime, trouble could have been averted by just putting a deadbolt on that door and leaving it locked.

It’s peachy that Lara Parker decided, after all this time, to fling that door wide open again and let over 40 years of accumulated Bad News shamble in and run wild in her book. I’ve only one request: For her next one, will she please, please let Angelique at last have some simple happiness: love, snuggles, and laughter [and I don’t mean that famous “you’re in for it now!” wickedgiggle]. The poor girl has it coming.

scojak
a 'psy wheel' (a piece of creased paper sitting on a needle to create ~zero friction which one then tries to move with the mind).... Is there some explanation other than telekinesis or psychokinesis you can give me that doesn't include the phrase, "the fact that you are delusional"?

I'd start by Googling "psi wheel explanation" and doing some reading. I see from doing this that there's also an ATS thread on the subject, so you might take a looksee there.

Activity in the Objective Universe (OU) is very cause-and-effect; just sometimes the cause is not immediately apparent. There are also all these annoying "field phenomena" like magnetism and gravity for which no one's been able to find any connection. [That's why they call this stuff "fields"!].

Sir, is "law of attraction" part of Gbm?

Philippines
What are your thoughts on the I Ching, or Book of Changes? Do you find any truths to it?

In the Temple of Set we use devices like these in two ways: as Lesser Black Magic mechanisms and as Greater Black Magic "mind mirrors".

LBMwise you can use the IC or the Tarot to manipulate people, hence events. Thus you are taking the wands or the cards from being a passive, random force to an active, intentional one. Most people are accustomed to switching their brains off when they use these things. This also makes their use by the Black Magician that much easier.

For instance, people are used to magician's tricks with regular card decks. They never expect them with the Tarot, so you can do a "mind reading" trick or a fortune-telling force with a borrowed deck at a Renaissance Faire and scare the pantaloons off medieval bystanders.

GBM is a bit different. In GBM you enhance your concentration and mood by the construction of ritual chambers, which can be as simple or elaborate as desired and facilities permit. Any kind of device, such as the T or IC, can also be used in this way. Again this is discussed in some detail in my Black Magic, but it was Anton who really had this down to an artform. Around 1970 in the Cloven Hoof of the Church of Satan, he wrote:

Anton Szandor LaVey
Room size: If your area is no bigger than a closet, just limit the length of your sword. It is far better to have a small dagger with a tastefully decorated but miniscule chamber than to own a grand sword with no place to swing it.

Soundproofing: There’s no point in conducting a secret ceremony if everyone else can hear you, so consider this when you construct your chamber. It is not necessary to scream your invocations at the top of your lungs; it is the deliberation of your delivery that counts.

Color: Black is limitless in perspective when properly lighted. Contrary to popular belief, black is less confining and therefore more conducive to the expulsion of the will. [He went on to suggest such alternatives as scarlet, silver, orange, blue, purple, and the use of hangings and mirrors.]

Lighting: So long as candles are employed, tastefully dramatic artificial lighting may augment them.

Murals: Some suggestions are: Demonic landscapes, nightmare visions, eccentric and confusing angles, wraiths, gnarled and twisted trees, storm- and lightning-swept skies, volcanic peaks, broken ruins, flames, broken battlements against a night sky, the Sigil of Baphomet superimposed on a full Moon centered over a storm-tossed or quietly rippling sea, Egyptian/Roman/Greek/Norse, etc. design motifs, nymphs and satyrs in a bacchanal, etc. Let’s see a stained glass window crammed with saints stand up to a wallful of the aforementioned for sheer drama!

Gongs: Gongs that don’t sound like a hub cap when struck are often hard to come by. Rather than do without the brazen sound so highly desired in ceremonies, substitute a good crash cymbal.

Musical Equipment: The emphasis should be on solemnity and dignity, however tribal. Avoid bongos like the plague; this is a Satanic Temple, not a coffee house.

Miscellaneous Artifacts: Appropriate wall hangings (not posters), sconces, chandeliers, masks, studded doors, weaponry, vials, retorts, stuffed animals, skulls, mummified remains, coffins - in general, all things you’d expect to see in an old Boris Karloff movie! Don’t worry about being “phony”. The idea is to make you feel like what you are supposed to be, so let any harmless but well-established imagery work for you.

reply to post by maquino


I heard about the alleged castration of LaVey's son by LaVey in an interview via YouTube: www.youtube.com...

In it an Anthony (Jess) La Vey, the son, tells his story to the interviewer who implicates GHWBush in the group.

At 1:30 in the video there is a photo of the young man who is claiming to be the son who defied his father by turning against Satanism, refusing to follow in his footsteps.

Here is the video.

Thank you, Dr. Aquino. I very much appreciate your time and contributions to our AMA feature. Excellent job. You are helping raise the bar with your detailed responses.

I expect this is as good as any place to raise this question, a trifling really. I was an active member of the Temple of Set from the 90's to the early 2000's until I retired from work, left the country, and let my membership lapse. Of course I have taken on many new activities that demand my attention but I still refer back to my ToS reading list and Crystal Tablet, still visit the site online and read or refresh myself of some of the material, still do an occasional Working, maintain my commitment to excellence and strive ever along.

If the subject comes up I might tell someone I am a former member of the Temple of Set but that always begs the question of why I left, or if left unanswered, or perhaps unquestioned, there might be the lingering suspicion I became discontented with the Temple - which is not true. There are many reasons I am not active such as distance, time constraints, that I live on a cash-only basis now, books in English are difficult to locate without ordering them - which is impractical, etc. Perhaps I am just too spread and scattered to really put myself forward as a Setian of any kind these days, in a sense that would be appreciated by the Temple organization and what it means and the commitment one makes to be an active Temple member in good standing.

Is there a recommended form or description to use that states my affinity to the Temple but denotes my inactivity? Inactive member, former member, unaffiliated Setian perhaps? Or, not knowing if I am still of worthwhile character and still rolling my dung ball along, would it be preferable if I just did not mention the Temple of Set at all? What might appropriately be my un/official standing these days?

Bybyots
You know, I managed to lay hands on a copy of LaVey's "Satanic Bible" when I was about 14 years old. I had already digested Wilson's Illuminatus! and Shah's Secret Societies so I was a little better prepared to assess LaVey's book when I got hands on it; even at that tender age.

It was obvious to me, even with that limited amount of experience, that it was a pile of sensationalized crap. The instructions didn't even sound like a good idea to an adolescent boy, so I have to ask: how could it have possibly been attractive to a full grown man with a college education and a career in the military?

I realize that people usually become engaged in those sorts of things for "The Kicks", but you were schooled at Bragg, I would think that your adrenals would crave more rarefied stuff, but no; you went for the Satanism. Why?

Your question is answered in considerable detail in my The Church of Satan. Trying to understand Anton LaVey and the original Church of Satan from just the Satanic Bible is futile.

Shah's survey was just one of many at the time, and has no particular relevance here that I can see. As for Wilson's Illuminatus!, it was a satire, of course [and a very delightful one].

The 1980s was really scary for all occultists especially in 86-87 when you were running around, declaring the Word of The Aeon of Set, and consecrating yourself "The Second Beast" of The Book of The Law and "the Christian Revelation".

I actually Uttered the Word Xeper in 1975, and I've never noticed it scaring anyone. There is no "second beast" in the Book of the Law, and I am indifferent to the Christian Bible's "Book of Revelation".

Oh, what the heck ... BOO!



There, feel fulfilled?

Why were you trying to take over the O.T.O.?

I never tried. My friend Francis Regardie read my Commentary to the Book of the Law (which is included in Don Webb's Centres of Pestilence, shortly to be published by Inner Traditions), and recommended I share it with Grady McMurtry, then Caliph of the O.T.O. in Berkeley. So I did, and we became and remained good friends until his death. I've remained lifelong friends with GTG Bill Heidrick and GSG Jim Wasserman. The O.T.O. and the Temple of Set have also remained friendly organizations over the decades, with occasional cross-memberships.

PhoenixOD
Hi Mr Aquino, what is your take on the Cathy O'Brien & Mark Phillips story that multi-generational child abuse victims were being sold to the military and then mentally tortured in extreme terror centers using methods like simulated (or otherwise) child murder in satanic rituals in an attempt to make compliant programmable assassins/spies with no long term memory or conscience?

Complete cranks.

Also do you think Sirhan Sirhan could have been a programmed assassin?

As discussed previously, I don't credit the concept of a "programmed assassin". Manchurian Candidate fantasy, which the CIA idiotically and of course futilely tried to replicate with MKULTRA and all that.

cosmicexplorer
So according to your stargate dialogue one of the members of Jefferson Airplane (Paul Kantner) had knowledge of Stargate? Am I reading that right?

It had begun with Blows Against the Empire, that 1970 spaceflight-of-fancy album which had won Paul Kantner both a Hugo Award nomination (which he knew about) and a Defense Intelligence Agency file (which he didn’t).

DIA, located across the Anacostia River from Washington, D.C., was the Defense Department’s in-house answer to the civilian Central Intelligence Agency. CIA, after years of more sensationalism and media glamor than it cared for, had been rewarded with a good deal of Executive and Congressional watchdoggery. DIA reported only to the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because it had so-far-successfully maintained that its only concerns were strategic national defense intelligence.

But in the aftermath of the 1969 Apollo-13 Moon-landing, the National Aeronautics & Space Administration’s civilian funding for its sensible but unglamorous Space Shuttle program had begun to dry up. NASA did what many another desperate agency has done under such circumstances; it went knocking on the doors of the Pentagon. Could DoD help with the bills?

Yes, it could. But there was a price. Those old, quaint ideas about peaceful use of space, about shuttles to carry civilian research and commercial packages, even tourists, as a possible prelude to orbital space colonies? - off the table. The shuttles will now be doing - our business. Special satellites. For intelligence, for secure communications, for space-based defense. You don’t have a need to know exactly what they do. Your job is just to get them up there and keep them there.

None of which was known by, or of the slightest concern to Paul Kantner when he wrote and sang a series of songs about hijacking the United States’ first functional spaceship for pacifistic planetary touring. However DIA, which now had assumed a counterintelligence mission regarding the “new” NASA, decided that it was concerned about him. Was he serious? Wasn’t that Jefferson Airplane of his one of those agitation-bands that had worked right along with Jane Fonda and Daniel Berrigan to f**k up the Vietnam War? Turn an entire generation of once-well-bred Eisenhower kids into long-haired acidheads? Now that the war is falling to pieces, are we going to have to worry about interference with our space programs?

In April 1971 the Kantner file was tasked to the Missile & Space Intelligence Command (MSIC) of DIA’s ambiguously-named Directorate for Analysis & Production (DI), where it was eventually Compartmented and ultimately, on January 17, 1972, designated with an MJ-prefix, removing it instantly from DIA’s normal Intelligence Library tracking system.

DI/MSIC/MJ agents thus carefully followed the progress of Kantner and his band, now the Jefferson Starship, through the 1970s. Their tours, interviews, lyrics, and private lives were annotated to the file and scheduled for periodic analysis.

By 1980 MJ’s interest had lessened somewhat. The NASA security issues raised by Blows showed no signs of materializing, and while several additional Kantner space-themes had been introduced, all were clearly in the realm of fantasy. That was, until ...

Oops, there are some MIBs at the door ... I'd better get this post off the screen in a hurry!

RoScoLaz
it is not possible to 'do' the impossible, by definition. impossible = not possible. pedantic semantics in tha house.

Ah, but for a magician it is:


THE PRINCE AND THE MAGICIAN
from The Magus by John Fowles

Once upon a time there was a young prince, who believed in all things but three. He did not believe in princesses, he did not believe in islands, he did not believe in God. His father, the king, told him that such things did not exist. As there were no princesses or islands in his father's domaines, and no sign of God, the young prince believed his father.

But then, one day, the prince ran away from his palace. He came to the next land. There, to his astonishment, from every coast he saw islands, and on these islands, strange and troubling creatures whom he dared not name. As he was searching for a boat, a man in full evening dress approached him along the shore.

"Are those real islands?" asked the young prince.

"Of course they are real islands," said the man in evening dress.

"And those strange and troubling creatures?"

"They are all genuine and authentic princesses."

"Then God also must exist!" cried the prince.

"I am God," replied the man in full evening dress, with a bow.

The young prince returned home as quickly as he could.

"So you are back," said his father, the king.

"I have seen islands, I have seen princesses, I have seen God," said the prince reproachfully.

The king was unmoved. "Neither real islands, nor real princesses, nor a real God, exist."

"I saw them!"

"Tell me how God was dressed."

"God was in full evening dress."

"Were the sleeves of his coat rolled back?"

The prince remembered that they had been. The king smiled. "That is the uniform of a magician. You have been deceived."

At this, the prince returned to the next land, and went to the same shore, where once again he came upon the man in full evening dress. "My father the king has told me who you are," said the young prince indignantly. "You deceived me last time, but not again. Now I know that those are not real islands and real princesses, because you are a magician."

The man on the shore smiled. "It is you who are deceived, my boy. In your father's kingdom there are many islands and many princesses. But you are under your father’s spell, so you cannot see them."

The prince returned pensively home. When he saw his father, he looked him in the eyes. "Father, is it true that you are not a real king, but only a magician?"

The king smiled, and rolled back his sleeves. "Yes, my son, I am only a magician."

"Then the man on the shore was God."

"The man on the shore was another magician."

"I must know the real truth, the truth beyond magic."

"There is no truth beyond magic," said the king.

The prince was full of sadness. He said, "I will kill myself."

The king by magic caused death to appear. Death stood in the door and beckoned to the prince. The prince shuddered. He remembered the beautiful but unreal islands and the unreal but beautiful princesses "Very well," he said. "I can bear it."

"You see, my son," said the king, "you too now begin to be a magician."

reply to post by maquino


Here in the UK we have a well known mentalist called Derren Brown. He did a show on Sirhan Sirhan. Brown demonstrated that it is indeed possible to program someone to kill on demand...the show was done for educational purposes..to help prove that Sirhan may well have been brainwashed. It is actually possible to MKULTRA someone.
Just for the record.

TheBlackHat
Do you consider yourself a narcissist?

For some odd reason I can't see myself in mirrors, so I guess I don't know.

reply to post by maquino


Now I know nobody has asked this but..surely everyone is curious. What about those eyebrows? I have some unruly horns myself that go up like that, but I pluck them.. You look like you have extensions on yours..or do they naturally grow that thick? It doesn't have to be all serious does it?

reply to post by maquino


You call Cathy O'Brien a crank, but did you see the video of her doctor examining her and explaining the graphic mutilation of her private parts?

reply to post by maquino

Are you familiar with the effects of Scopolomine? Couldn't something like that be involved with Sirhan Sirhan, the Aurora shooter, etc.?

Admiral Byrd's account and the hollow earth theory. Is there any truth to his story and/or this theory?

cfnyaami
reply to post by maquino

 

You call Cathy O'Brien a crank, but did you see the video of her doctor examining her and explaining the graphic mutilation of her private parts?

Not to mention the other women coming forward with almost exactly the same stories offering to testify in front of congress.

Personally i think the CIA did try these barbaric programs but dropped them in the end for whatever reason. Maybe because the methods they were using were just to messy. Lets face it they tried just about everything they could think of no matter how horrific under the MKUltra umbrella.

A few years ago I also watched a video with an ex special forces guy who described pods of scloprimine being transported in planes by the CIA to be used in assassination type operations.

What in the hell was MSIC doing with humint? Although, grant you, the bar boojums in the Huntsville area are all MSIC for some reason.

PhoenixOD
A few years ago I also watched a video with an ex special forces guy who described pods of scloprimine being transported in planes by the CIA to be used in assassination type operations.

Meh. Raw scop isn't nearly as useful as pharmaceutical scop. Grant you, it can be an asset in an interrogation when combined with other drugs, but it's not a panacea.