“Signs of New Times”

a talk by Rt. Rev. T Allen Greenfield

[Delivered at the Fifth National OTO Conference (NOTOCON) at the Sheraton-Reston Hotel, Danville VA, on Saturday, August 13, 2005, with the able assist of Alyssa Nance. Materials provided by Eye of Providence]

A little over a hundred years ago, something happened. Exactly what it was that happened, precisely, will, no doubt, be debated by scholars and theologians and philosophers endlessly for centuries to come, with as little absolute resolution as there is over the Resurrection or the parting of the Red Sea.

Nevertheless, for our purposes here, I want you to take – not a leap of faith, for Scientific Illuminism has little time for superstition – but, let us call it, an assumption for practical purposes here and now, for the duration of this workshop. The assumption I would ask all of you to make is that, first, periodically in the course of the universe, a fundamental change occurs, sometimes known under the identification “a New Aeon” and, second, that such a new Aeon began in the Spring of the year 1904 of the common era, with the dictation of Liber AL vel Legis and the events surrounding it, which may collectively be considered under the loose-knit heading of “the Cairo Working”.

Taking this premise, one might expect that profound changes would begin to take place in the world in all spheres of life and indeed existence. When the Formula of the Aeon changes, the Aeon can be expected to be different. If certain organizations reflect this change, if it is a real change and not an attempt to change, one may expect such changes to go far beyond the reach of any such organizations. But, let us examine the kind of changes we are considering.

Let me hasten to acknowledge that all of history involves change. No era goes by without change, indeed no generation, no year. Slippery purveyors of snake oil have made a comfortable living since the heyday of the Roman Empire selling notions of “signs of the end times” and there is a brand of that sort much abroad right now. One cannot visit a bookstore without being informed that we have been “left behind” something-or-other, or even the check out at the grocer with tabloid prophecies of the “end times”. So let us begin by saying that “wars and the rumors of wars”, earthquakes in California or ticks in Tennessee are not signs of a New Aeon, but evidence of the continuity of existence, a quality of which is, as the Buddhists will tell us, change; always and eternally, change.

But, I propose, what if a New Aeon is proclaimed, and, lo and behold, there are, let us say, not endless and predictable wars, but weapons of war so fantastical and terrifying that the thought of war, real war, out-and-out war, becomes unthinkable? That would be something new beneath the Sun. If we were able to predict Earthquakes, or weather events, even alter them, this too would be something quite original. We shall not speak of ticks in Tennessee – that problem is perhaps beyond any Aeon to change, but we might speak of the notion of “the silent spring” where – as we now as never before have evidence, periodically the long history of this planet includes mass die-offs, mysterious events in which virtually all life is extinguished from the planet. That would be sobering, and indeed new.

In a sense, my dear sisters and brother, I would submit to you that in the century in which our purported “New Aeon” has begun to settle into place, there have indeed been unique changes – special only to the most profound moments in history. Let me start with but a single example. The earliest Homo Sapiens looked at the skies and wondered. We know this from the earliest artworks painted or scratched in stone, for the sky was even then important enough to attempt to capture – in pictorial form, if not in fact.

In July of 1969, I was standing on the deck of a ship crossing, of all places, the Bermuda Triangle. Suddenly everybody on deck was staring at a brilliant light in the sky, ascending higher and higher until it disappeared. A few days later, with tens of millions of other people around the world, I watched with my father as Astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on another celestial body beyond the Earth. It occurred to me that my father, born within scant hours of the beginning of our ostensible New Aeon, to say nothing of but a moment in time of the brief flight of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, had lived from that truly transformative event to see a human being walk upon another body in space. I asked him how it felt, to go from heavier than air flight over a few yards, through transcontinental flight, to men on the Moon. He shrugged, “It was so gradual it seemed natural.”

I do not dispute this, but my father was not an elderly man when he said this. In the long view of history, the rapidity of change in the period immediately preceding and immediately following the supposed advent of our New Aeon has been truly breathtaking. If there is historical precedent, the age of revolution, of scientific and technological development, of forces of creation and destruction, of human beings no longer, at least in theory, and in spite of any temporary setbacks, dependent for their existence and further evolutionary development even on the continued existence of this planet, it is hard to see. This is not a mere new toy, a new idea, a predictable change as things always change, or any kind of business as usual.

Rather it is fundamental…precisely the sort of development one should expect in a change not merely of progression, but of procession – procession of the equinox, if you will; in short, a legitimate sign of a New Aeon.

I have dwelt upon this event – Neil and Buzz walking on an airless lump of rock in the sky, precisely because it is not the same sort of event as, say, the discovery, or, properly, the European rediscovery of the Americas, as important an event as we would all acknowledge that to be. To go off world, to touch the very celestials of classical astronomy and astrology for that matter, is a quantum leap in the human equation, and has rapidly been so assimilated into human consciousness that there are now people who deny it ever occurred. Superstition is forever at war with history, even as the purveyors of the formulae of an old Aeon remain for some time locked in combat with those who recognize, even if they do not fully attain, the formula of the New.

While I have been taking you to the Lunar surface, hopefully you have all received cards and pens or pencils to give us feedback here on your own ideas of what events or turns of history give us evidence of fundamental change—a change from an outdated Old Aeon to the New. I hope when I conclude to read some of these to you and comment upon them, and, if time permits, to take some additional feedback from those of you who have been kind enough to attend this workshop.

As this is circulating, allow me to give you a few additional examples – a few among many, both large and small, both personal and transpersonal, which indicate strongly that a New Aeon is indeed manifesting. It is beginning to take on the form that will eventually, I assume, be as clear as the dimensions of the Old Aeon became in the long course of its history of rise, flourishing, decline and, as may be expected of all Aeons, fall. It is in the process of moving beyond the interest of small circles of enthusiasts, and into the dimension of broad general consensus reality.

Two related quotations come to mind at this juncture.

“The hypothesis adopted by the present writer requires that cases of cosmic consciousness should become more numerous from age to age, and not only so but that they should become more perfect, more pronounced…” Richard M. Bucke, M.D.

“There is, however, one form of miracle which certainly happens, the influence of the genius. There is no known analogy in Nature…What is there in common between Christ, Buddha, and Mohammed? Is there any one point upon which all three are in accord?” Aleister Crowley

When I approached the question of what one should expect to see if one assumes, for purposes of argument, that the world literally entered a New Aeon at the time of the Cairo Working, that is, in March and April of 1904, I did not have in mind any particular type of changes. Rather, I had in mind well credited transformations of any sort which (A) are definitive and qualitatively different from the sort of modifications one would expect during any period of human history, and (B) are easily recognizable as such.

My favorite type is what can correctly be termed the paradigm shift – that is, the consciousness phenomenon that occurs when the accumulation of data or circumstances overthrows conventional wisdom or the orthodoxy of a given time, and occasions a sudden, radical shift in fundamental realization.

Yet such shifts are focused on the consensus perception about reality in society, in either some broad social system, or some specific area – say, the hard sciences. Thomas Friedman’s current book , “The World Is Flat,” argues rather persuasively that we are undergoing such a change right now…the kind of “Tofleresque” future shock predicted thirty years ago, and seen by Friedman as a social and economic global ‘leveling of the playing field’ largely set in motion by rapid technological acceleration and innovation.

I have serious misgivings about Friedman’s nearly spellbound enthusiasm for this work-in-progress paradigm shift. It tends to focus on beneficiaries of such change while giving little attention to the great bulk of humanity that probably will be left behind, if not left out altogether. It reminds me a bit too much of the “Interstate America tunnel vision” phenomenon. This idea goes back to the construction of the Interstate Highway System, and the tendency for a special widespread popular culture to grow up next to these highways, now pretty uniform throughout the United States. This perception sees the whole of a society in terms of what lines the main roads (Waffle House, Wal-Mart and McDonalds, endless tract houses with thirty year mortgages and a twenty year lifespan). It almost never goes ‘off road’ to the old byways and state highways, and seeing the off road reality that probably constitutes what most people are experiencing most of the time, satellite dish TV notwithstanding.

Be that as it may – and I will save it for another time, Friedman’s paradigm shift is going on; you are benefiting (I trust) from a direct product of it right now. I started my merrie career in trying to change the world grinding out spirit duplicated or mimeographed newsletters that eventually reached 350 subscribers, printed in the early period on my father’s office duplicators, and usually typed by one or another of the hapless secretaries from the now nearly mythic secretarial pool. That was it—it was no competition for mainstream print media, let alone electronic media.

One year we held the annual UFO convention in my hometown, and, as usual, we got local media coverage. I went to do a TV show at local boy Ted Turner’s WTBS, then only recently ensconced at the old cast-off studio of the local CBS affiliate, WAGA, with a couple of fellow luminaries on the High Weirdness scene, among them my friend Geneva. The studio was in Atlanta, the owner was in the wings, the host was future major talk radio host Neil Bortz (Lamentably, I think I may have introduced him to libertarianism at the old WTLK radio station, but that really is another story). I was just trying merely to promo the convention for the public sessions where we all put on suits and pretended to be scientific scholars rather than the crazy hippies and conspiracy nuts we really were. Geneva asked Neil if the show could be seen in her home town in a neighboring state, ‘cause she wanted to call her parents if so. I rolled my eyes, smiling amicably. Local TV, even (ta-dah!) network local affiliates did not get out that far. So, imagine my surprise when Ted says, “Yeah. We get this out on cable in five states.” Wow, I thought. Forget flying saucers. Cable. I had experienced future shock on the future Superstation and parent of the future CNN.

Today on CNN they do daily reports on what Internet bloggers have to say. I didn’t know that then, but my little schmeckle magazines were about to give way to BBS boards and, via the cute little computers the astronauts were using to find their way to – and more importantly – back from the Moon, were soon to morph into …Well, there I was, processing this presentation on a machine infinitely superior to the one Kevin Bacon kept pressing buttons on in Apollo 13. (Actually, Kevin was not on the Apollo 13 mission. But he did press buttons on the mock-up in the movie.) The word processor I developed this chat on exceeds the capabilities of the machine that took men to and from the Moon. That is my point.

So much for consensus reality. What about individual reality? Doubtless such rapido el speedo (As I typed this I muttered to my animated quacking spell checker to shut up—it was not switched to speak Spanish and neither am I. Obviously.) Anyway, the “information superhighway” profoundly impacts personal consciousness, but shouldn’t we expect, in a truly new Aeon, that the phenomenon Aleister Crowley called “genius” and others have termed “illumination” or “enlightenment” would undergo some kind of conspicuous change? Shouldn’t we expect a lot more examples either of such genius, or a greater awareness of examples, or – something?

Enter the curious figure of Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, M.D. (1837-1901), distinguished Canadian Psychiatrist, member of Walt Whitman’s inner circle and author of the equally curious volume “Cosmic Consciousness – A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind”, which first appeared only the year before his tragic accidental death. The work was an unparalled pioneering study of the phenomenon of “genius” as Crowley later used the term, up to Bucke’s own generation- notably including Whitman and Edward Carpenter- looking for patterns and anticipating an acceleration of the number of examples.

Bucke tended to concentrate on the “great cases,” arguing, “We know that at present there are many of what may be called lesser cases, but the number of these cannot be compared with the number of similar cases in the past, for the reason that the latter are lost.” Still, even confined to the “great cases” he asserts from his perch at the beginning of the Twentieth Century of the Common Era, “…cosmic consciousness has been 4.8 times more frequent during the latter period than it was during the former…”

By the time I happened across one of the many reprints of Bucke’s work some sixty-odd years later, some other studies of sorts had been made of this phenomenon, and some were yet to be made. Aldous Huxley’s “The Perennial Philosophy” (1944) and Evelyn Underhill’s “Mysticism” (1911) come to mind in this regard. However, to my knowledge, no comparable work matching Bucke’s in approach and scope has been done to the present day.

In the meantime, however, there have been many minor, and some major examples of persons who either plausibly claim or have had claimed for them, the same quality of consciousness, whether one calls it “genius” or cosmic consciousness” or something else altogether. While there have been extensive investigations of some of these individual purported examples, even anthologies devoted to the type, the question of any perturbation of the phenomenon itself, and what this might mean, including in the examples from the century plus since Bucke first published, has thus far not been forthcoming.

In an informal way, over the years I have examined many purported modern cases, even including some field study, and in my extremely limited circulation monograph on sexual magick, I took a stab at updating Bucke’s catalogue of the so-called major cases. Again, informally, if the number of purported major and minor cases since the beginning of the New Aeon is compared to the major and minor examples offered by Bucke during the century preceding, the number has increased very significantly. This would be in keeping with the notion that a New Aeon characterized by a magical revival and consciousness exploration and premised upon the expectations engendered by the Cairo Working, would lead to such an increase. Thus – a sign of new times.

One thing I have avoided here is to attempt to examine the more recent cases, or reevaluate Bucke’s purported examples. That would be beyond the scope of defining this as an indicator of the New Aeon. I have also avoided the question of what specifically occasioned this increase in cases, including the question that will come quickly to the minds of many - is there some correlation between some modern system of initiation such as that of the A:.A:. or of the OTO and these, more modern cases of cosmic consciousness. This question is crucial, whatever the answer. This, too, I intend to address presently. Let me say only this – you have doubtless noted than none of these Earth-shaking phenomenon are associated with the accomplishments of any organized “New Aeon Body of Manifestation”. This is not an accident. Clearly, if the Aeon has transited, it has transited without the assist of any overt organization, and should be expected to extend far beyond any such body, out into the greater world.

I mentioned war and weapons. From the very earliest dawn of time, as soon as our overrated opposable thumbs could grasp them, we have been killing and maiming each other with wild abandon with every convenient stick and rock that came to hand. In the process, we came to hold sway over the animal world, at least above the microscopic level. The cockroach may yet have the last laugh, and microbes evolve on and periodically remind us that previous mysterious die-offs did not include them, and, may, in fact, have been their work. If we get a bit too arrogant about being the lords of the Earth upon which we grovel, a black plague or syphilis epidemic or outbreak of SARS or AIDS puts us in our place.

But we have killed with the stick, the bronze sword, the iron-tipped arrow, the lead ball, for so long that we can say nothing remarkable about these developments beyond the stick and stone, other than war and self-inflicted death are part and parcel of human history.

At the dawn of the present Aeon a modest young physicist, a pacifist and humanitarian named Albert Einstein, presented the world with a radical new vision of the nature of space and time. This is itself is a fair to middling example of the formula of the New Aeon at work. It led, uniquely, and for the first and probably only instance in all of history, to a time when the human race, in a few short years, punctuated by revolution and yet another new phenomenon, world war, twice in the last century, had developed weapons capable of annihilating the human race – in effect – the means to end history altogether. This is indeed a New Thing Under the Sun. We, too, could make a Sun, or a thousand suns, and obliterate ourselves. One of the witnesses at the first atomic test was moved to quote the Hindu Holy text in which Shiva says, “I am become Death, the Slayer of Worlds.” The genie was out of its bottle, and the echoes of this Sign of the Aeon are still weighing on our world as I speak.

The other side of this coin comes pretty close on first blush to what we mean by the word, “miracle.” Two of these super weapons were dropped by the United States on Japan at the end of World War Two. Moreover, that, to date, is that. There was a “Cold War” standoff for fifty years between two world powers with enough thermonuclear weapons to destroy one another and, arguably, all life on the planet many times over. My generation grew up in the near-expectation that this would happen. However, the Cold War ended with a whimper rather than a bang, and the inevitable did not happen.

The point of this, presaged by the use of mustard gas in the First World War and not repeated even by Hitler -in combat- in the Second, is that it is possible that the formula for converting matter into energy in the form of thermonuclear weapons is simply too horrifying to use. To be sure, the business of war after war has ground on since 1904 as it had before, but – again we look for fundamental change, and here we have a weapon, which, so far, has proven too horrifying for anyone who has mastery of it to use it. There is no historical precedent for this…neither a weapon, which can destroy history, nor a weapon that cannot be used. I do not wish here to suggest complacency regarding current concerns in this area. Rather, I am once again zeroing in on the historical uniqueness, the paradigm shift. Imagine two Great Empires in the age of Empires just saying, “bows and arrows, swords, and spears are just too awful, let us just not fight”. Not possible -- and it did not happen under the old formula, but Einstein the pacifist may have given us not the sword, but the ultimate ploughshare.

Before the New Aeon began, we had some notions about genetics, some bizarre ideas about eugenics, and general abysmal ignorance, really, about how life encodes itself, let alone how to encode it. Less than half a century into the present Aeon and the DNA molecule was discovered, less than half a century later, we were sequencing our own DNA, cloning sheep, and at the dawn of being able to recreate our own kind with mistakes removed and enhancements added. In fact, as I speak, what was both science fiction dream and dystopian nightmare but a few years ago is now possible, perhaps already being done, and if anything is lacking, it is the Will, not the ability to make super beings, and all that that implies. This is not only a sign of new times, but also a quantum leap so great that we can only, at this moment, guess where it will take us, for good or for ill.

Inevitably there is Freud. It doesn’t matter, really, that Freud’s therapeutic technique and many of his personal opinions have gone through birth pangs, growth, triumph, revisionist dispute and decline. Freud introduced sexuality and its broad implications for human nature and understanding ourselves out of the underbelly of human existence into the mainstream of scientific, medical, academic, philosophical, artistic and social spheres, and, at the dawn of this New Aeon, yet another jinn was released from its ages-old prison, and an ongoing sexual revolution was begun. To be sure, it was a revolution enhanced thereafter by many other persons, by the birth control pill and generous doses of the newly discovered antibiotics. It was set back by repressive and underestimated guilt engines of the blackest of the black lodges of the Old Aeon, by AIDS and by superstitious backlash. But a jinn, set loose, is rarely rebottled, and in a way this fundamental indication of a New Aeon brings us full circle – or, perhaps more aptly, full spiral, from the repressiveness of the Aeon immediately preceding. The very reaction to it by the rear guard of the old order suggests, really, how fundamental this is.

Finally, while Guttenberg was printing Bibles unquestionably in the heart of the Old Aeon, the communications and information explosion set off by the telegraph and telephone in the half century before the Aeon turned, and wireless and radio, television and the thinking machine, so-called, the computer and its sudden usage as a decentralized but interlinked universal means of communication and exchange of information is a transformative experience unlike any other in human history. It is ongoing, not yet fully assimilated, changing daily and, somewhere in the mix of thinking machines and people interfacing with one another across the globe and, in a sense, via the Hubble and deep space probes to other planets, across the universe, we are headed headlong into what looks for all the world like an entirely new kind of world with a new kind of relationship and a new kind of consciousness the end of which we may not even yet be able to imagine.

However, that, my sisters and brothers, is precisely what I would call a New Aeon, in very truth. Wherever it may be headed, it is a runaway train, not under the direction or control of any group, individual, ideology or subculture, nor should we expect it to be. It is a thing unto itself. It is in truth “the new real” and it is now.

[Some of the Questions and comments from the attendees are listed below. Many thanks to the many people who participated.]

Suggested “Signs” -

Theory of Relativity (1904), String Theory, Harnessing the Power of the Sun, (Fusion & Fission), Space Flight, Probes of the Distant Reaches of the Solar System, The Internet, Satellites, Communications Web, Sex Change Operations, Cell Phones, Women’s Liberation, Men’s Emotions, DNA Discovery

Information Warfare, new types of warfare, using new forms of technology, such warfare was prominent in the Cold War and now in the War on Terrorism. Conquering Minds has become more important than conquering matter.

Development of psychology as a true science and therapy

Not just Moon Landing, but specifically the ridiculously short amount of time between when we made the flying machine and the subsequent trip to the Moon. Nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists

Electricity – humans are no longer limited to particular habitats, population can be sustained in much higher numbers, Sanitation: control over our disease & accident environment; Women’s Suffrage (Scarlet Women allowed their swords!) true beginnings of loss of slavery or “leveling of playing field”, TV – mass produced hypnotic device. InterNet & Google

Reproductive Rights/ birth control, stem cell research, the Nuclear family

The struggle of day to day living has become much easier w/technology, leaving people more time to contemplate the nature of the universe

Increasing dependence on technology, increased globalization, fluctuation of the importance of religion in politics

Sexual revolution – Affordable air travel, shrinking distance/world for the masses, psycho-pharmaceuticals to “correct” “human” mental processes – may alleviate suffering but diminish human experience?

Comments –

Signs of the New Aeon in the 3rd World?

I feel that the advent of the internet has been and will continue to be the most powerful tool in helping to change the old aeon consciousness of individuals. Whereas before, people were quick to simply accept the religious teachings of their parents, they now have so much information at their fingertips that it becomes difficult to just blindly follow a belief system without questioning it. The internet will bring the death of organized Christianity.

Falling out of the tree again.

Heresy – That’s what I meant by asking – “do you ever think outside the fucking box?” (Babbling) The bigger picture is that the consciousness extends out and “initiates” regardless – Some are unknowing but doing.

[Uh, I didn’t get to this last one, but (A) Wolfram’s New Kind of Science” – see earlier posts - would have it that we cannot think outside the box. Most people who know me think I was born outside the box. But, good comments, one and all.]

[Obviously, my responses are not on the cards, so we’ll assume they were witty and incisive, right? Also, we took time for some really good oral suggestions and questions, which also, alas, are not available here.]