The level of weirdness, of impossibility, of paradox that I have allowed into my mental and personal life has reached a saturation point. I have seen firsthand and heard from others. I believe and I disbelieve at the same time. I want to know and understand but suspect more and more that I never really will, and that maybe no one ever really does. I feel comfortable now living inside the skin of a world where, “Everything is only a metaphor. There is only poetry.”

Conspiracy theory, it seems, is all about the poetry of evil. Or maybe it is the sweet spiritual semantics of those attempting to throw off despair, but who look around at the world and see only mountains of deception and danger ringing them in on all sides. But if we look for a moment at the pure poetry of evil, what makes the best metaphor? What is the most shocking and horrific image of evil which our imaginations can conjure? Predatory aliens from outer space? The dark alien perversions inside of human beings? The cold calculating inhumanity of power? A beast with seven heads rising out of the sea with a lascivious whore on his back? (Personally, I like that one!)

“Mystery, Babylon the Great, The Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.” The language and imagery change to suit the times and the thinker. It’s strange that we live in a world where we’re forced to ask: What’s more scary, the President of the United States allowed (or commanded) 9/11 to happen or that all things are empty and meaningless, and it’s furthermore empty and meaningless that it is empty and meaningless? No wonder we end up spending so much time chasing our own tails.

It’s hard for me to say anymore really, to compare two terrors and decree which is the greater. When everything becomes evil, the horrific becomes banal and boring. “Desensitization!” some might call this, placing the blame squarely on the constantly violent offerings of the media. But “evil” doesn’t thrill me like it used to. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing, because it means that I no longer hurl that epithet like a snowball at people unfortunate enough to pass by my fortress of ice.

And yet the warm transformative power of poetry still fascinates me, the ability of images to penetrate us deeply, to change our lives and our psyches for the better, for the worse, or more commonly for both. For evil, like all things meaningful and important, is a paradox. It confounds us that our myriad self-interests meet at cross-purposes. It seems impossible to us that those we consider “out to get us” might actually be there to help us (although maybe only when it helps them to do so), or that they might not even have noticed us at all. It is quite possible that to be caught in the struggle against evil is to be caught by our own hubris…

I am a victim because I am important, because I am dangerous, because I am “awake”. I fight because I have no choice, because evil must be overthrown!

Yet the battle against evil and its citizen-soldiers, like the image of evil itself, is also poetry. It is a myth that we ally ourselves with in order to draw strength from a great human tradition - a literature of freedom and resistance, of true humanity. What we seldom recognize is that both David and Goliath need each other. Those of us on the ground require “spiritual wickedness in high places” to aim our stones and arrows up towards. And those we perceive as the “rulers of the darkness of this world” need the myth of a people to rule, and of their own inner poetic emotional struggles between stewarding and protecting or manipulating and exploiting those squirming beneath their golden boot heel.

It is a dance that has continued through the ages and which will continue long after we have returned to dust and our theories to bits and bytes floating in the electronic ether. That’s not to say though, that the wiles of evil are insubstantial or that we shouldn’t resist them. Because we should; we must. Our poetry, our mythology, demands it. But if it really is poetry - if any of this is in any way accurate - then we ought to use it to uplift our spirits. For this has always been the purpose of poetry, myth and song; it’s never been intended to degrade, to diminish or to destroy. Therefore, our poetry ought to reflect the rejoicing in our hearts, our gladness that we actually have found a role to play in this life, that there really is a grand story unfolding, with a beautiful prophecy simply begging to be fulfilled. We must recognize that at the end and at the beginning of any struggle is hope. Or else, why struggle in the first place?

If it is all only metaphor, then let us pick the best ones and thumb our noses at the ones that bore us or scare us into complacency. For ours is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory forever ever. It has to be. Our poetry demands it.

The Subversive Use of Sacred Symbolism in the Media is a recorded speech and PowerPoint presentation which can be viewed in it’s entirety on Tsarion’s Taroscopes website. The lecture rounds out at about 100 minutes and was originally delivered at the Conspiracy Con 2003 conference.

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.

One of Tsarion’s main theses seems to be that graphic designers and marketers the world over have access to secret occult archives, from which they are consistently drawing visual and thematic inspiration in a concerted effort to subjugate the human spirit. It’s exactly as preposterous as it sounds - especially if you’ve ever done any graphic design work yourself, or have friends in the business. Like any business, graphic design and marketing are about maximizing your time, effectiveness and profits. With scattered real-life exceptions, esoteric concerns simply do not enter into the picture.

In any event though, the real message that I took away from this video is one that I agree with: that advertising is manipulative (if not always evil). It plays on people’s insecurities, and it attempts to hurl useless and sometimes dangerous products and services into the gaps we all have in our lives as humans. To seek spiritual salvation through consumerist avenues only opens you up more and more to this system of deprivation and domination. So, for that reason, I find Tsarion’s efforts to pull people out of this negative spiral both noble and worthwhile.

I also do think that there is something to the chaotic way he just slams together symbolism and weird imagery from media and occult sources. It shows how the same themes important to humanity have essentially never changed. And it very effectively shows you how to think not in rational/linear terms, but in clusters and by chains of (loose) associations. This can be a very valuable skill for creative thinking and the exploration of truth - or it can simply make you snort in derision as your rational mind is violated again and again. Either way, it is unfortunate that the only explanation he chooses to employ is one of shadowy international conspiracies controlling the media.

However, if we ourselves were to apply this same level of creativity to the meta-narrative he’s employing as to the symbols themselves, we could come up with any number of equally “plausible” possibilities:

1. That graphic designers haven’t got a clue about any of this
2. That graphic designers are intentionally and covertly injecting sacred symbols into mundane media to wake people up and spiritually enrich their lives
3. That media and pop culture nowadays are the natural containers of spiritual symbolism and transmitters of value systems today in the same way that mythology and folktales were in ages past
4. That it’s all evil - business, advertising, etc - but that God or the gods have begun a secret spiritual invasion to transmute this lead into gold, and that the symbols of the divine appear initially in the trash stratum.

The point of all this conjecture is simply this: if you’re going to go in and tinker with your belief systems and worldviews using the methodologies of conspiracy theory or occult investigation, then you owe it to yourself to explore all possible explanations - not just the ones that are sinister and paranoid. And remember that life is more convoluted and confounding and complex - and downright beautiful - than any theory or thesis could ever account for.