I picture myself organizing a new 'Institute' with many branches, only this time not for the Harmonious Development of Man but for instruction in hitherto undiscovered means of self-satisfaction.

And there is no doubt that a business like that would run as if on greased wheels.

~ ~ George Gurdjieff, 'The Material Question' chapter in Meetings With Remarkable Men ((London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963): 301-302

Miracle healers. Sacred travels to Egypt. Vibrational healing techniques. Future-life progressions. Cosmic octaves. Tibetan singing bowls. These are just some of the artefacts, ideologies and memes that are featured in the pages of Magical Blend magazine.

Recently, an advertisement for Motherwave caught my eye. It was featured on the back-cover of Magical Blend issue #73 (September/October 2000). What intrigued me about this particular ad was not the therapies being offered by Kathryn and Jittendra Darling (which might work), but rather the ad itself, which exemplified what photographer William Mortensen referred to as the Command To Look and what marketers understand as the Gruen Effect. Lock in attention, modulate awareness, then phase-shift consciousness to your desired ends.

Except that the behavioral micro-cues being fashioned across time-space, by the ad-designing persuasion professionals, to remotely will "brain-change" in their target audience, was a little too obvious.

The advertising imagery, such as the background watermarks of Spiral and Tao logos, seemed pre-assembled from the signs and symbols found in New Age culture. The advertising copy was crafted from the detritus of used 'new paradigms' - the tools by which we navigate the domain of conceptual spaces and psychological levels of existence. What disturbed me was that copywriters could use the language of certain states-of-consciousness without having experienced personally them (and the expansion of psychological awareness and ethics that follows). Which meant that "they" (us?) were deploying surface-level beliefs and ideas to win their readers' deep-level 'hearts and minds' values. Which means that they cannot be trusted or taken at face value.

Meet the new paranoia, same as the old paranoia.

Occulture Is Our Business

"It’s not a conspiracy against us, exactly, it is simply a science that has gotten out of control."
~ ~ Douglas Rushkoff

The occultnik has it wrong. Their tools are out of sync with their times. Their Enochian Calls and rune-casting may be flawless, but the most cutting edge magical workings are not found in the traditional canon now commodified by New Age stores and mail-order companies. The most immersive spells are Virtual Reality Modelling Language environments and multimedia Web sites, not Middle Age grimoires or Golden Dawn doctrines. World-class designers such as Clement Mok and Roger Black, who are a half step ahead of the public, understand that design can be a postmodern magical form. The art of meta-communication lies in the art of concealing the art.

Postmodern magic is largely concerned with decoding the "linguistic" and "semiotic" markers that impoverish our everyday mental maps. The “either-or” framings that collapse the middle ground into extremes. The Transactional Analysis parent-child scripts that need re-writing and updating. The hypnotic double binds that keep us consensually entranced. Trying to upgrade these mental maps from the logic of Aristotle, Newton and Descartes to Einstein, Korzybski and De Bono. Most New Age products draw upon these techniques, including the author-hyped books, documentary television shows and video seminars. But many of these techniques emerged from the Dark Side of History.

After World War II, the growing Military-Entertainment Complex and Alphabet Agencies studied many of these depth and social psychology techniques. Drawing upon interdisciplinary findings in linguistics, psychology, sociology and other fields, these organizations amassed information about how the mind naturally deletes, distort, generalize and nominalizes data. Although the reality of subliminal advertising is still hotly debated, the globally successful advertising agencies have, like their intelligence counter-parts, codified how pre-selected graphical design elements (aesthetics, metaphors, and symbols) hijack the brain's neurological levels to engineer how people perceive reality.

Just as CIA and MI6 operations were compromised by double-agents, the global advertising agencies now face a lucrative cottage publishing industry of disgruntled consultants who 'expose' their techniques. From Vance Packard’s Hidden Persuaders (1957) to Jeffrey Robinson’s The Manipulators (1998), these books attack the public relations caste. ’They’ offer insider details of how speed seducers and shopping mall floor plans work. ‘They’ explain why advertising agencies are tearing society’s fabric apart. By the way, have you ever sensed what social fabric feels like?

In their Icarus-like attempts to escape these crippling social fictions, many New Age groups have nested their transformative Self-change methodologies within coercive advertisements. The much-hyped Aquarian Conspiracy (Marilyn Ferguson), if shaped by partial truths and unhealthy structures, can turn inwards, devouring its own. The quest for the black diamond that represents the core Self can become a nightmare in the surge to storm the reality studio.

Heaven's Gate and the Branch Davidians transfixed the gaze of cult researchers, partly, because they were microcosms of the dysfunctionality found in contemporary mercantilist-faire societies that are undergoing periods of rapid change. Whilst I disagree with some of the arguments offered by cult researchers, namely that most attempts to create self-identity beyond commodity fetishism and mass society is doomed to failure, they got some things right. Erich Fromm is definately still alive and well in the ritual chamber.