Chris Knowles of Secret Sun on the Met Gala Psyop |381|

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Chris Knowles of Secret Sun on the Met Gala Psyop |381|
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Chris Knowles spots pop culture deception in phony celebrities and the Catholic church.
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photo by: Skeptiko
Alex Tsakiris:
Today we welcome the very excellent host of The Secret Sun blog and the author of such books as, Our Gods Wear Spandex, The Secret History of Rock ‘n’ Roll and The Complete X-Files. If you’re watching this video you can see all of those up on your screen. Chris Knowles is here. Chris, welcome back. Thanks so much for joining me.

Chris Knowles: Great to be back, really looking forward to this.

(later in the interview)

Chris Knowles: …What people really need to understand is that while all this was going on and it’s interesting too because you have Catholic imagery with a number of very prominent celebrities, female celebrities dressed as scarlet women. One of the best examples of this is the rapper Nikki Minaj, who said that she was dressed as the devil and she was wearing this long flowing red dress, with what’s called a waterfall trail, but…

Alex Tsakiris: And didn’t you say there was another one where it’s something, an ode to the abyss? So, it’s not just that they’re doing the Easter play and showing the devil. They are venerating and celebrating…

Chris Knowles: Yes, I believe that was the Ariana Grande dress which was of The Last Judgement, the apocalyptic symbolism is very strong here. So, what people really need to understand is, that image that you’re looking at right now on screen, which is that twelve-foot alien demon and it’s not like I’m just using it [unclear 00:11:34] here, that’s what it actually is. That’s what’s it’s presented as, that’s what the artist who created it explains it as and look at that image. If that’s isn’t like something out of Hieronymus Bosch’s worst nightmares, I don’t know what is. It’s a twelve-foot demon, with the three heads similar to the Janus heads or the Cerberus heads or the Hecate Triple Goddess kind of feeling there. I think…

Alex Tsakiris: But, we’ve got to switch back to the cultural bracketing on this one too, right? Because as soon as you say that, someone’s jumping in saying, “You fool! It’s just art. People in the art world do all sorts of crazy stuff”, and you pull them back and go, “Well no, let’s go back and look at the intent of the artist, what they said they were trying to communicate. Let’s look at it from the spiritual dimension and analyze whether there’s any evidence for that to be true and then let’s look at the people who have decided that this should be presented in this way and what are their beliefs?”

I think, that it’s so difficult to switch people over, because that one bracket is so strong and is so dominant. It is the ‘Good Morning America’ bracket and it is so comfortable because we have been entrained, if you will, to be comfortable with that bracket. So, we just get into it like a warm bath, as Marshall McLuhan said…

(continued below)
 
Alex's question at the end of the podcast:

What do you make of my idea of a bracketed reality view of certain events, in particular this Met Gala event and its strong and bizarre connection to the Catholic church?

This interview might as well have been in Serbo-Croat for all the sense I could make out of it. Maybe I'll need to check out Chris Knowles' blog to get an inkling.

All I can say is that the Internet is changing everything. The last couple of days, I've been investigating what would be the best speakers for me to buy, wanting as I did to connect both a PC and a TV in my home study. Not so long ago, I'd have had to check out as many magazines as I could, ask around, visit shops, and so on.

But in a couple of days I've been able to achieve much more: checking out how prospective speakers sound in comparison to others (there are many A-B comparisons on YouTube, so even if you can't actually hear the speakers as they actually sound, you can determine which sound relatively better than others); reading reviews and checking out prices on Amazon; deciding how best to connect the speakers; getting speakers to which you can connect two sources; downloading manuals to see what's supplied with the speakers and their sizes; and on and on. It's been quite fun, and now I've made my decision, so I'll order from Amazon and they'll be here soon along with any extra connectors I'll need, plus, I discovered, a DAC. The process of purchasing things is so much more immersive than it used to be, and I feel I'm taking considerably less of a risk than I once did.

This might not seem to have much to do with anything, except that it points to a general tendency for things to have speeded up and become more involving and immersive. Many opinions I might have held in the past and never voiced are now, so I find, voiced by many others all over the world. For any opinion, you can find many, perhaps thousands or even millions of people who agree with you. This might be having the effect that, while everyone is well used to how to use the Internet as a source of information, and does so in the same sorts of ways, nonetheless many different factions are becoming organised around certain viewpoints, certain world views.

To a large extent, this has, like Topsy, just "grow'd" in an organic way. And like anything else, some people try to take advantage of it for business or political purposes. Some may even do so in a conscious, even -- dare I say it -- conspiratorial way. But I don't think the Internet can be so easily controlled by any one faction in the same way that government and the mass media could control things in the past.

It's not just the fact of the existence of the Internet, but the amazing speed with which ideas can arise, be disseminated and grab the attention of so many people. Things seem to be accelerating and there is this tremendous sense of impending change. No one knows where it is going and when/if it will start to stabilise. Meanwhile, we are in this period of great uncertainty, maybe even apprehension. There seems to be a lot more to be worried about, and it all seems to impinge more urgently on us.

One question is, are the sorts of things Alex and Chris were talking about no more than shadows of reality? Is it just that the very nature of the Internet has enabled them to identify and discuss things that don't actually have much substance? Buggered if I know. We live in interesting times...
 
I guess I'm kinda the odd man out here... but that's ok :)

I guess if you're way past the Christian thing, and way past the Catholic thing, then it's much to do about nothing. but there about 1 billion Catholics that still believe Jesus died on the cross for their sins and all the rest. I'm not sure they were consulted about the Gala, but if they were I suspect many would have objected to the way their sacred images/symbols were depicted.

 
Well, I've been to Chris Knowles' blog and checked out a few of his posts, including the Met Gala and Johnny Depp things, and I can only say I still have no clue what either his blog or Alex's podcast was about. Is there anything substantive here, or is it the result of apophenia?:

Apophenia (/æpoʊˈfiːniə/) is the tendency to perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things.[1] Confirmation bias is a variation of apophenia. The term (German: Apophänie) was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia.[2] He defined it as "unmotivated seeing of connections [accompanied by] a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness".[3][4] He described the early stages of delusional thought as self-referential, over-interpretations of actual sensory perceptions, as opposed to hallucinations.[1][5]

Apophenia has come to imply a universal human tendency to seek patterns in random information, such as gambling.[4]

Knowles doesn't seem to have an introduction on his blog, or an about page, or anything explaining what the heck he's on about. It's the ultimate in inside baseball, and apparently Alex gets it, but I still don't. Was there some enlightenment here, I wondered? Not much. How about here? Only a tiny bit in that it gives a little context. How about the previous Skeptiko interview with Chris Knowles? He says he tries to make things plain, but I don't think that's so; whilst it's true the earlier interview makes a little more sense, I still struggle to divine the overall superstructure from which he views the world, and what he's really trying to say.

Maybe he's just trying to make sense out of a complex world and isn't able to articulate an overarching theory. It seems somehow grounded in the occult, symbolism, synchronicity and so on. But does he have a coherent hermeneutic, one that he could describe in 1-2000 words? If he has, his blog could surely do with it.
 
I guess I'm kinda the odd man out here... but that's ok :)

I guess if you're way past the Christian thing, and way past the Catholic thing, then it's much to do about nothing. but there about 1 billion Catholics that still believe Jesus died on the cross for their sins and all the rest. I'm not sure they were consulted about the Gala, but if they were I suspect many would have objected to the way their sacred images/symbols were depicted.


I'm sure that a billion Catholics and over a billion other Christians might object to your comparing present-day Christianity with present-day Islam. Not to mention billions of others who aren't Christian, but can see which of the two religions is the more threatening.

And incidentally, seeing as you raised the point, there are rather less literal ways of understanding such things as the redemption "and all the rest" which make more sense. And like it or not, the whole of western culture, even in its most atheist forms, is predicated on Christian values.
 
I've loved reading The Secret Sun for a long time. I don't need to believe or not believe in an objective reality where what Chris says is an objectively true narrative to enjoy his work. I just respect the hell out of the way his amazing brain functions and how it draws connections backwards and forwards through mythological and historical time and it gets me excited to see him getting excited. It's fun watching the universe play synchronicity dodge ball with him and the fact that he has such a wide audience also synching on what he writes (it's happened to me plenty) and also contributing to his revelations makes it the most global archetypal sync-fest experiment I've ever had the pleasure of watching. (There's also Goro Adachi's work, but from my experience of him on the Synchromysticism Forum and in the Secret Sun comments, he is so ill behaved on the internet and so litigious and thinks that his ideas are some sort of golden flax that no one else dare duplicate that I find him highly distasteful and have refused to even look at his material except when he comes and waves it around like a billy club because he thinks someone has pilfered some subscriber moneys out of him by leaking his content.)

Anyway, lately I haven't been reading SS. I was feeling low and the negativity and fear inherent in it all was wearing on me. I decided to err on the side of sweetness and light and started listening to ridiculous new age youtube videos about 'The Event' instead. I might be deluding myself either way, but at least I'm holding on to hope for a better tomorrow instead of seeing shadows in every corner. Of course there are shadows, that's what corners are for! It was good to hear/see Chris again though and I'm glad he's still at it. I still follow the facebook feed and there's something new every day. Maybe I'll dip back into secret sun land when my mood-armor restoreth.
 
I just respect the hell out of the way his amazing brain functions and how it draws connections backwards and forwards
In all the interviews I've listened to with Chris over the years, that's what irritates me about him. Too much "bowl of spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks".

I'm not saying Chris is unintelligent or uninformed. I'm just saying that I don't find his manner of presentation informative or enlightening.

His typical interview is frantic and scattered with "Hey look at this!" "Did you see that thing on TV?!" "Crowley liked Rice Crispies!" "Class IV solar ejection this morning, Wow!".

This interview with Alex was unusual in two respects:

1.) Chris stay focused and tried to discuss the basic magical thesis / belief system Oligarchs are employing, instead of machine-gunning listeners with the 50 occult bits and bobs he saw in The Media this week.

2.) Alex was prompting of Chris to provide some pleb-tier evidence Alex could use to fend off Normie attack so hard it bordered on shilling. Death to Normies. If they don't get it, too bad, go watch Morgan Freeman on PBS and be happy.
 
Alex's question at the end of the podcast:

What do you make of my idea of a bracketed reality view of certain events, in particular this Met Gala event and its strong and bizarre connection to the Catholic church?

I'm not certain I understand what was meant by bracketed reality. To me, it sounds like saying that people have different perspectives, different world views, different contexts, different frames of reference. Is there more to it?


Alex's question at the end of the podcast:

What do you make of my idea of a bracketed reality view of certain events, in particular this Met Gala event and its strong and bizarre connection to the Catholic church?
In terms of the second part of the question about the connection to the Catholic church, I want to give a philosophical answer, but unfortunately, I think it comes down to filthy lucre:

"The primarily contributors to the exhibition, as well as the Gala, were Christine and Stephen A. Schwarzman . . . . In 2015, Schwarzman gave the largest donation ($40 million dollars) ever received by the Archdiocese of New York."

Source:
http://josephsciambra.com/cardinal-dolan-and-rihanna-shes-volunteered-to-do-some-confirmations/

"He and his wife helped underwrite the exhibition “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” handing over a check that two sources close to the museum said was in the ballpark of $5 million."

Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/style/stephen-schwarzman-catholic-church-met-gala.html

Schwarzman is worth an estimated $12.3 billion. And he's in his seventies. Me thinks that Archbishop Dolan has developed a fondness for whaling.

All that said, I still like what the Archbishop had to say about it (as quoted on the show):

“It’s because the church and the Catholic imagination are all about three things: truth, goodness and beauty. That’s why we have great schools and universities to teach the truth. That’s why we love to serve the poor to do good. And that’s why we’re into things such as art, poetry, music, liturgy and, yes, even fashion, to thank God for the gift of beauty.”

Source:
http://cardinaldolan.org/index.php/heavenly-bodies-fashion-and-the-catholic-imagination/

Which isn't entirely untrue. The Catholic church is responsible for some fine cathedrals, music, pageantry, etc.

Also, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has some interesting reading on the installations discussed in the podcast:
https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/now...ies-fashion-catholic-imagination-introduction

"... but on a deeper level, it expresses itself through the designers' reliance on narrative or storytelling, and specifically on the trope of metaphor, which, as argued by sociologist Father Andrew Greeley, lies at the core of this sensibility. In his book The Catholic Imagination, Greeley states: "The Catholic imagination in all its many manifestations . . . tends to emphasize the metaphorical nature of creation. . . . Everything in creation, from the exploding cosmos to the whirling, dancing, and utterly mysterious quantum particles, discloses something about God and, in so doing, brings God among us.""

On another note, the guest mentioned that he couldn't imagine where the ideas for the rooftop sculptures came from. Just in the interest of completeness, there's a lot of explanation online about the artist's intent, if you google "metropolitan museum of art we come in peace".

This link has a video interview with the artist. There's other interviews, too, that talk about what she was trying to do. Your mileage may vary.
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2018/huma-bhabha
 
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I've loved reading The Secret Sun for a long time. I don't need to believe or not believe in an objective reality where what Chris says is an objectively true narrative to enjoy his work. I just respect the hell out of the way his amazing brain functions and how it draws connections backwards and forwards through mythological and historical time and it gets me excited to see him getting excited. It's fun watching the universe play synchronicity dodge ball with him and the fact that he has such a wide audience also synching on what he writes (it's happened to me plenty) and also contributing to his revelations makes it the most global archetypal sync-fest experiment I've ever had the pleasure of watching. (There's also Goro Adachi's work, but from my experience of him on the Synchromysticism Forum and in the Secret Sun comments, he is so ill behaved on the internet and so litigious and thinks that his ideas are some sort of golden flax that no one else dare duplicate that I find him highly distasteful and have refused to even look at his material except when he comes and waves it around like a billy club because he thinks someone has pilfered some subscriber moneys out of him by leaking his content.)

Anyway, lately I haven't been reading SS. I was feeling low and the negativity and fear inherent in it all was wearing on me. I decided to err on the side of sweetness and light and started listening to ridiculous new age youtube videos about 'The Event' instead. I might be deluding myself either way, but at least I'm holding on to hope for a better tomorrow instead of seeing shadows in every corner. Of course there are shadows, that's what corners are for! It was good to hear/see Chris again though and I'm glad he's still at it. I still follow the facebook feed and there's something new every day. Maybe I'll dip back into secret sun land when my mood-armor restoreth.

I think this is the right way to encounter Knowles - as art and not reason. As art the blog is pretty decent. As a rational discourse it fails the test of coherence and intelligibility. So while Chris may have an insight that some folk get readily the rest of us stuck in our heads need to think poetry - or rather a word, rather than paint, based Jackson Pollock kind of verbal or literary assemblage. I can live with that.

I have been tackling Chris all wrong. I have done two blog posts taking him to task over inconsistencies, errors and irrationalities in the mistaken view that what he was producing on podcasts and on this blog were supposed to be taken as reasoned and informed arguments. I did the same thing again while listening to the show - and spoiled the fun by fact checking him. So I had to listen a second time, without taking notes (I failed) and taking to google (I succeeded).

If I think Dali and Picasso I can get into the flow. Picasso's Guernica is considered one of the great anti-war works of art of all time. But it is not a literalist or 'rational' depiction. So yeah, I can go along with Alex's passion that Chris is onto something, and I can try to be patient and revisit his "work" as art as see what the artist's intuition is expressing.
 
Alex,

So what was the video about, and who produced it? How does it connect with your guest?

David

The video was a Sydney Channel 7 News report, now quite a few years ago. I think Alex's point is that true believers do get offended by degrading representations of sacred images and symbols - and the Met Gala disporting with Catholic symbols is not dissimilarly offensive. The motive for these representations at the Gala is a valid question. Knowles had a POV. Personally I will now await better informed commentary with great interest.
 
true believers do get offended by degrading representations of sacred images and symbols
Not just True Believers.

I'm not even religious, but I get disgusted with the constant, disgusting attacks on sacred Christian symbols.

It's pervasive, intense, and maniacal in the mainstream media.

What bothers me the most is the Unfair Hypocrisy. Attacking the Christian Sacred is deemed hilarious, erotic, and celebrated.

Examples: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=+jesus+snl

Attacking the Sacred Cows of other faiths is not.

3cbs3Q.jpg
 
Not just True Believers.

I'm not even religious, but I get disgusted with the constant, disgusting attacks on sacred Christian symbols.

It's pervasive, intense, and maniacal in the mainstream media.

What bothers me the most is the Unfair Hypocrisy. Attacking the Christian Sacred is deemed hilarious, erotic, and celebrated.

Examples: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=+jesus+snl

Attacking the Sacred Cows of other faiths is not.

3cbs3Q.jpg

It is surprising that there is something we can agree on, Charlie - despite our radically different positions on many things. I, not being a Christian myself, also think that Christianity have an unfairly large share of hostility directed at it - and this hosility is encouraged and perpetuated by the mainstream, while similar attacks on other faiths will easily lead one to be branded as "hater" by it.

Christianity is far from being perfect - I myself can say a lot of critical things about it (especially its attitude to the sexuality). Yet its creation and rise one of the greatest spiritual, intellectual and moral revolutions in history of the West; very probably it was the greatest one. It brought the foundations of the modern humanistic Western culture into existence - the vision of humanism is Chrisitian in its roots, and modern Christianity-denouncing humanists are in fact attacking the very roots of their own wordview. It is not to say that a humanist must be a Christian; only that an intellectual and moral integrity require from humanists some respect - respect combined with criticism, yet respect still - to Christianity, rather than mere scorn that so many of them demonstrate. I can even say more - the "human" as it is understood in the modern Western culture (and defended by the modern Western society) is essentially a Chrisitan creation. And not only human - historicity and progressivity are born by Christianity as well. And, most importantly, our Western high evaluation of freedom - it also has its base in Christianity. And equality between people. And mercy, and forgiveness... And so on.

And Leftism, in all its various forms, is Chrisitian in its core, even if its adherents combine their crypto-Christian view of liberty, equality and fraternity, brought along with the historical progress, with atheism, Neo-Paganism, Buddhism, Taoism or anything else.
 
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It is surprising that there is something we can agree on, Charlie - despite our radically different positions on many things. I, not being a Christian myself, also think that Christianity have an unfairly large share of hostility directed at it - and this hosility is encouraged and perpetuated by the mainstream, while similar attacks on other faiths will easily lead one to be branded as "hater" by it.

Christianity is far from being perfect - I myself can say a lot of critical things about it (especially its attitude to the sexuality). Yet its creation and rise one of the greatest spiritual, intellectual and moral revolutions in history of the West; very probably it was the greatest one. It brought the foundations of the modern humanistic Western culture into existence - the vision of humanism is Chrisitian in its roots, and modern Christianity-denouncing humanists are in fact attacking the very roots of their own wordview. It is not to say that a humanist must be a Christian; only that an intellectual and moral integrity require from humanists some respect - respect combined with criticism, yet respect still - to Christianity, rather than mere scorn that so many of them demonstrate. I can even say more - the "human" as it is understood in the modern Western culture (and defended by the modern Western society) is essentially a Chrisitan creation. And not only human - historicity and progressivity are born by Christianity as well. And, most importantly, our Western high evaluation of freedom - it also has its base in Christianity. And equality between people. And mercy, and forgiveness... And so on.

And Leftism, in all its various forms, is Chrisitian in its core, even if its adherents combine their crypto-Christian view of liberty, equality and fraternity, brought along with the historical progress, with atheism, Neo-Paganism, Buddhism, Taoism or anything else.

We should ridicule all religions equally.
 
[Christianity] brought the foundations of the modern humanistic Western culture into existence

True. This is why eastern Orthodox Christianity parted ways with Western/Roman Christianity in The Great Schism of 1054.

Orthodox Intellectuals at that time predicted the course you describe ..."enlightenment", John Dee occultism, ecumenism, atheism, Robespierre, Progressivism, and eventual Marxist Apotheosis of the Übermensch New Soviet Man.

But that stuff is boring. I wanted Chris and Alex to kumite over Team Enki (Lucifer) vs. Team Enlil (Yahweh).

Chris is slowly switching over to the Light side of the Force, but Alex is still stuck in youthful rebellion.

OS7sHAH.jpg
 
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