Inside the Invisible Circus

the sinister aspect of carnivals is subject matter of much literature, film, etc., and seemingly passe and overdone . . .

but let's peek behind Oz' curtain -- maybe there's a few Munchkins yet unaccounted for

little dynamo was thinking of the next generation of America's sons, and gazing at the Beach Boys' first album cover, at those faces of hope, determination, and trust as they faced west for their "sea safari" back to Mother


















the top illustration is the Diggers' flyer for 1967's "Invisible Circus" -- a bacchanal, prehistoric rite, desecration, and demonstration of practical sorcery held in Glide Memorial Methodist Church in San Francisco, supposedly by "naive hippie kids"

who, what force of mind, really was behind the Curtain of postwar America -- especially the neopagan, chthonic "revolution" of the Sixties?

how did the enthusiasm, righteousness, and incipient spiritual revolution of the late Fifties/early Sixties turn into . . .

well, into What We Got Now? -- a benumbed, benighted Homeland, lying low in the southern waters and listing steep a-starboard

how can we return America not to psychotic, self-devouring ouroborism -- to matriarchy -- but instead to a healthy, righteous course, and right the ship?

a circus is a contained space -- a ritual space, really -- in which one agrees (indeed, hopes!) to be not merely entertained, but entranced . . . changed at a deep psychological, and thus molecular, level

"circus" at most malevolent suggests the Sumero-Chaldeo-Masonic ouroboros . . . a marriage between witch Circe and US?

let's start there, then toss up sum bulbs and orbs: music and sonic power, ritual theatre/magick, mass manipulation, intelligence ops, the Beach Boys (esp Wilson Brothers), Crowleyite Kenneth Anger, Bay Area occult topography, Zodiac, sex magic, drugs, Lennon and Ono (esp. Ono's long interest in Egpytian artifacts), Vegas/Organized Crime, Arthur Lee and his Sixties band "Love," homosexuality, Emmett Grogan, the ecstasy/madness of young female rock fans (Presley, Beatles etc.), and former S.F. residents Chuckles Manson and pal Bobby Beausoleil ("Beautiful Sun/Son")

so, leil . . . what IS the Invisible Circus?




"A Concert in the Panhandle, Golden Gate Park, 1967"

[photos and captions: Lisa Law]







Circus Grounds Navigation

the Invisible Circus is everywhere, in every age . . . but manifests overtly and dramatically in certain spacetime hotspots, like the 1960s Western world

for example:

head south from San Francisco's haunted Presidio, then down Masonic Avenue until you hit the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park

then tightwalk down the spine of Saint Andreas' Fault (pore Andrew! only human tsk tsk . . . don't slip now!)



















. . . dawdle 'mongst the Coast Range redwoods and verdant, rollycoaster hills, the Pacific roar in your ears . . . the path angles gently down gently

switchback turn on Old Musuem Road (first right after Neil's Ranch -- sorry Neil, not picking on you . . . not yet anyway :O)


I hear some people been
talkin' me down
Bring up my name
pass it round
They don't mention the
happy times . . .


"Walk On" by (K)Neeeeeeeeel


ok enuf phun

here we goez . . .


just about when this blog came back "on" (no thanks to me actually), the announcement of the Beatles/Cirque du Soleil show "Love" hit that curious electroracle aka YahooNews


Wed Apr 19, 4:17 PM ET

LAS VEGAS - Tickets are on sale for the much-anticipated theater pairing that features the legendary music of The Beatles and the acrobatic spectacle of Cirque du Soleil.

"Love" premieres June 30 with an international cast of 60 performers at The Mirage hotel-casino.

It is the first major theatrical partnership for The Beatles' record label, Apple Corps Ltd., which has carefully guarded the British band's groundbreaking collection of songs for decades. Sir George Martin, The Beatles' original producer, and his son Giles Martin have accessed the entire archive of Beatles recordings to assemble the musical score for the show.

But its creators aren't releasing a song list because the show will feature whole songs and song fragments, said Cirque spokeswoman Jennifer Dunne.

"Fans will have fun trying to figure out which are partial songs," she said. "We won't give out the song list and we probably never will."
Apple plans to release an album of the show's songs through EMI Music later this year.

For The Mirage, the show replaces the legendary Siegfried & Roy act that closed after illusionist Roy Horn was nearly killed Oct. 3, 2003, by one of his tigers. Since the mauling, The Mirage has been without its signature act.

A theater with 360-degree seating and high-definition video was specially built for the Beatles-Cirque show and took two years to build.

"Love" is the fifth production on the Strip by Cirque du Soleil — French for circus of the sun. The troupes of international performers combine classic circus performances, lighting effects, and a surreal atmosphere with dance, humor and audience participation in "Mystere," "O," "Zumanity" and "KA."

It's also the latest big production to hit the Las Vegas Strip. The Broadway hit "Hairspray" recently followed "Avenue Q" to Las Vegas, where it will soon be joined by productions of "The Phantom of the Opera," "The Producers" and "Monty Python's Spamalot."



obviously "cirque" and "soleil" jump out -- and strangely suggest the name "Cinque" (alleged kidnapper of Patty Hearst, leader of the S.L.A., possible intelligence op)

less obviously, "Love" -- the name of the Cirque/Beatles show in Vegas -- was also the name of a severely underestimated Sixites band that haunted the L.A. and S.F. scenes, and once inhabited Bela Lugosi's old "mansion"

the Beatles have many "circus" connections, of course, including St. Pepper's, the song "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite," and Magical Mystery Tour (album and film)

as for Love . . . brilliant, mercurial, Memphis-born Arthur Lee headed that influential Sixties band, reportedly named by Lee for guitarist Bobby (Cupid) Beausoleil --founding bandmember, inmate, magickian, con-man, and convicted torture-murderer

in 1967 Beausoleil and gay chaos magickian/film-maker Kenneth Anger ("Lucifer Rising") were living together in San Francisco, busy deconstructing civilization, very likely as they'd Been Told

Beausoleil was born in hippety-hoppin' Santa Barbara, atop the titanic bump-and-grind potency of the San Andreas Faultline, 800 miles of thrusting, raw lizzurd mojo, zigzagging deep below, sometimes crackling to surface

Arthur Lee formed and gigged Love in L.A., then replaced Cupid Beausoleil -- exchanging Energizer Bunnies! -- with a new whiteboy babemagnet: cherubic, charismatic Scotsman Bryan MacLean . . . a puer aeternus like Beausoleil -- thus necessary for artistic, popular, commercial, and most importantly, magickal purposes

Beausoleil then absconded to S.F. to form the Orkustra, who gigged primarily in the Panhandle

also in '67,the "Summer of Love," Emmett Grogan, Peter Berg, and the Diggers -- along with Anger, Beausoleil, Anton LaVey, and other unindicteds -- planned and organized "The Invisible Circus," a three-day possession of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church

former Digger Berg reminisces: "We wanted to liberate the city in every way possible"

yah, all that innocence, beauty and liberation

draws flies

on a February 1967 Friday evening, thousands of people crowded around and in Glide Memorial for the "Invisible Circus"

Cupid Beausoleil and his Orkustra cranked out an "Egyptian-tinged jam," and folks basically partied -- drugs, nudity, etc. -- in the pews, down the aisles, on the altar

the church's reverend, Cecil Williams, reportedly arrived at the melee horrified, and succeeded in shifting the fest outside, and eventually to Baker Beach . . . but the damage, as in all virginities, was done did

still, a remnant perhaps was salvaged: the Circus, planned for 72 hours, was abridged

72 in a numeral of power, crucial in Egyptian sorcery -- in the central Egyptian cosmological "myth," the god Set and 72 co-conspirators trick the god Osiris into a coffin/tree, then seal up the container and throw Osiris into a body of water -- a fertilization of the Land likewise reflected in the "dispersion of language" instigated by erection of the Tower of Babylon (a djedic ziggurat with sonic, resurrective capacities or pretensions)

Osiris was (is) the Egptian god of the dead, the prototypical, primordial dying/resurrecting vegetation/harvest god (think parks and autumnal rites), whose Transformatrix was Isis (the Queen of the Dead, i.e., Kore, Persephone, etc.)

Osiris was killed/sacrificed by his brother Set, the madhi whirlwind: god of the desert, protector of gazelles, monarchist . . . and Set's 72 "co-conspirators" were eventually broad-cast, seeded throughout the Bay Area, America, and the planet -- the "myth" updated in 1970 and beamed live into our earbones and souls:

Seventy-three men sailed up
from the San Francisco Bay
Rolled off their ship and here's
what they had to say . . .

Ride, Captain ride
upon your mystery ship!
Be amazed at the friends
you have there on your trip!


"Ride, Captain, Ride" (Malcolm Jones)



. . . announcing an ancient ritual being conducted on a split-level stage

like Kenneth Anger and Bobby Beusoleil, Charles Manson and Zodiac are highly ritualistic, histrionic "characters," obsessed and/or programmed with re-enactment of a primal, blood-sacrificial occult circus: a Grand Theatre of the Night Sun, composed entirely of soundless music, invisible players, and black burning light

the Land doesn't need Science's permission to know, feel, and exert influence, and the Invisible Circus gathers and concretizes not only at New York's Five Points/Ground Zero, but elsewhere: especially loaded is S.F. Bay Area metatopography: Mt. Diablo, Mt. Tamalpais, the Napa Wine Country (Valley of the Kings West), the Vallejo-Benicia corridor, "Neptune's Trident" on the faultline of the lower S.F. Penisula, and other intra-city nexi of the black circus -- old Playland at the Beach, Mt. Sutro, the neomythic Parnassus "Heights" (home of UCSF and Langley-Porter Psychiatric Institute, ahem), the Haight-Ashbury (hate, buried ashes) District, Masonic Avenue (originating in the former Army Base, The Presidio, as Presidio Avenue, then becoming Masonic and bisecting the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park

the Panhandle abuts the Haight-Ashbury, of course, and many notorious characters dwelt thereabout, including Manson, Beausoleil, Emmett Grogan and the Diggers, the Grateful Dead, multitudinous Sixties artists and musicians, and of course your Humble aw thor

:O)













G.G. Park is invitingly green and deceptively narrow, an infolded labyrinth of magical mystery either terminating at -- or emerging from -- the realm of Typhon and his goddess Tiamat, the maternal sea

G.G. Park contains many crooks and nannies! er, well you know what i mean LOL . . .

lots of little surprise areas, mini-groves and swampettes . . . surpisingly easy to get turned around in!

to!

re-built Kezar (Kaiser, Caesar, key-Czar, key-Tsar) Stadium occupies the Park's SE corner

nearby, Parnassus Avenue descends from Mt. Sutro/Parnassus, morphing into Judah Street, and paralleling (guarding?) the Park's southern border

the Park is a type of refuge, yes, and a mini-lung . . . but it's also a kind of ampitheatre, and a field of battle, and a weapon

Golden Gate Park is also the precinct and prison of a god, a god both dead and living

gigantic axe, procrustian cleaver, Titanic bludgeon, the Park's Panhandle is a literal -- not metaphoric -- grip for wielding the wild, ancient, magnetic power of Pan

the Panhandle also looks a bit like Momma's Rock and Rolling Pin!

:O)

flipped around, the Park resembles a massive syringe, full of briny old smack, and aimed at the City ("poppies will put them to sleep")

the Panhandle is enveloped by Oak Street on the south, and Fell Street on the north (Oak is the drudic/sacrificial tree, as documented by Frazer and others, and "fell" suggests "chopping down," and in archaic usage, means "dire" or "deadly," usually applied to a personage)

"tree" is sometimes code for "angel" etc.

SLIGHT DETOUR (yes, another one. stop whining)

"syringe" comes from the Greek

Syrinx (interchangeable btw with Sphinx, an order of feminine power and guardianship)

Syrinx personifyies a nymph (female sexual power/virginity/youth) and connoting Pan and pan-pipes (music and sexuality as magickal tool and lure)

rising to the immediate south of dancing, boinking, grooving, stoned, neo-Dionysian Haight-Ashbury and G.G. Park -- at just under 1,000 feet -- is Mount Sutro, by far the highest metro peak, sprouting eucalyptus groves and comm towers (ahem)

the small mountain was named for Adolph Sutro, Nineteenth Century S.F. entrepreneur and builder of the Sutro Baths -- a massive, Augustinian villa of pools, overseen by a statue of Diana -- virgin-idol worship, basically

in the Sixties, the Sutro Baths were notorious for gay pairings and homosexual orgies, including sex-magick rites (Anton LaVey etc)

between Mt. Sutro -- now called Mt. Parnassus -- and G.G. Park/the Haight, about halfway up the hill, perches the UCSF Medical Center, including Langley-Porter Psychiatric Institute and Mt. Zion Hospital

in ancient Greece, Mt. Parnassus was home to the Delphic Oracle who -- much like "sister city" San Francisco -- supposedly mediated between the "decrees" of Parnassus and her priests (esp. musicians)

the Oracle's priests then "delivered the news" to supplicants and the general populace, much as the Haight's chief underground newspaper -- the San Francisco Oracle -- did from '66 to '68, under direction of Allen Cohen (in Judaism, a "cohen" (or kohen) is a priest of Aaron's lineage

starting to see a pattern here? how about a blueprint!

also noteworthy is that in Greek "myth," Apollo is dispatched by Father-god Zeus from Mt. Olympus, home of the Gods, to Mt. Parnassus, to slay the "great serpent Python" (the prehistoric, matriarchal serpent-cults)

the "myth" of Deucalion and Pyhrra also applies, and despite feminist revisionism in America's social sciences (and consciousness), under claim of eternal, universal oppression of females, it's curious that the vast socio-political power of females, via the Delphic Oracle, lasted at least a millennium . . . far longer than the putatively "patriarchal" Hellenism that -- so we are assured today -- oppressed it

:O)


part of the huge UCSF Medical Complex on Mt. Parnassus, Langley-Porter Psychiatric Institute (in whose basement Your Servant little dynamo labored for years) was founded in 1942, as the Brain Drain Exodus from warring Europe to South America and the U.S began in earnest

LPPI (Lippy) has a keen interest in "speech and learning disabled" kids -- especially in autism and autistic kids

to little dynamo's amazement, the Scottish Rite Masons share Langley-Porter's (and no doubt many others') attention to "otherly communicating" people, especially kids

the Scottish Rite -- and organization with rather overt occult interests and background -- operates 113 "centers and special programs for children and therapists located throughout the United States. Speech-language pathologists or other trained personnel staff each facility."

hmmm

do i really want the Scottish Rite Masons directing communications with -- and from -- my autistic kid? . . . a question American parents might consider asking themselves . . . along with whose best interests are served in all this: the child's, the Masons, the nations?

these are our BEST and BRIGHTEST KIDS, folks

think about it

the UCSF Complex and Langley-Porter Institute appear as a modern Delphic oracle, mediating between the decrees from Sutro-Parnassus-on-high (via the single/signal language of the radio and television waves, a neoBabylonian Tower), and the "village" below (most intensely, the Park and Haight, but broadly San Francisco and the Greater Bay Area, i.e., the transmission field -- the current running like juice up and down the faultline of Satan's Spine, from the Mojave to Cape Mendocino)

Leviathan-esque, the San Andreas Fault can leap to the surface or plunge ten miles down

about fifty miles south of San Francisco, near Neeeeeel's Rancho, the San Andreas splits into a three sections, a kind of trident-fault, and thence disperses into various mini-faults around the Greater Bay Area -- most of which are extremely active, and all of which, appearances notwithstanding, are connected geologically and elsewise

noted especially is the Rodger's Creek Fault (cuz l.d. has a personal attachment!) and the Greenville Fault (not far from Neeeeel's community of "Greendale" LOL!)

the Greendale Fault runs just east of Mt. Diablo, the East Bay's dominant landmark, and one of the nation's most notorious "powerpoint presentations"

to boot, directly beneath Devil's Mountain is the Mt. Diablo Thrust Fault, unusual in that unlike more-common "horizontal bop" faults, Mt. Diablo is a "blind thrust" fault -- the massive stone plates literally vie, and quakes result when one block thrusts itself above the other

a

hem

rock and roll indeed!

G.G. Park was the lifelong child of Scottish Lord John McLaren, 56 years Park planner, defender, nurturer, and superintendent . . . also known ( sometimes affectionately even!) as "Uncle John"

Well the First Days
are the hardest days
don't you worry anymore
'Cause when life looks like Easy Street
there is danger at your door.
Think this through with me
let me know your mind
Whoa-oh what I want to know
is are you kind?
. . .
Come hear Uncle John's Band
playing to the tide
Come on along or go alone
He's come to take his children home

"Uncle John's Band" (Hunter, Garcia)


the Grateful Dead's "Uncle John" also is imputed to muscian John Cohen, and the song, considered the Dead's "anthem," includes this verse:


Goddamn, well I declare
Have you seen the like?
Their walls are built of cannonballs
their motto is "Don't Tread on Me"
Come hear Uncle John's Band
by the riverside
Got some things to talk about
there beside the rising tide


Jerry Garcia was a San Francisco native, and served briefly in the army, at the norotious Presidio -- one of the (literally) spookiest places on the planet -- before a hasty discharge

conveniently, Garcia prompty thereafter met lyricist Robert Hunter, and became world-famous and a key player in the Sixties "cultural revolution" -- which, in hindsight, turned out to pretty revolting after all, with cheapened and commercialized sex, drug rampancy and drug wars, the normalization of dangerous occult/pagan practices and rites, and the clincher: full-scale regression to matriarchy, to the species' original serpent-cults of violence, vengeance, sorcery, illusion, drugs, and mass sacrifice

Garcia's early Dead, circa 1965, was a band called the Warlocks . . . ah hmm, sure be interesting to know what exactly went down in 1960 at the Presidio . . . Garcia's later dependance on opiates is very questionable in this light

"Uncle John's Band" ultimately invokes John the Baptist, the song functioning as a plea for America to undergo a baptismal rebirth "by the riverside" (as opposed to the Masonic/Charlestonian America, whose "house is built of cannonballs/their motto is "Don't Tread on Me"

"Don't Tread on Me" appeared on many early American flags containing a rattlesnake emblem -- most prominently, the "Gadsden flag"












yellow is the color of sickness, plague, and poison -- and although the rattlesnake is peculiar to America, the snake is associated with the primal, matriarchal serpent-cults, and with the East in general (Masonic organizational units in the West are called "Orients")

obviously, the serpent was and is central to Sumero-Babylonian "mysticism" and ritual, and the formation of America under such aegis suggests a predetermined regression to primal, pagan matriarchy -- a regression that, perhaps, took 200 years to, in large part, achieve

according to the text "Twelve Flags of the American Revolution," issued to honor the Bicentennial:

"THE GADSDEN FLAG: In January 1776 Col. Christopher Gadsden left Philadelphia,where he had served as a delegate to the Continental Congress and a member ofthe Marine Committee, to return to South Carolina. He brought with him to Charleston the flag he had designed for use by the commander in chief of the American Navy, whose vessels were assembled in the frozen Delaware River. His presentation of this flag to the Provincial Congress of South Carolina on February 9, 1776, is recorded in the congressional journals:

Col. Gadsden presented to the Congress an elegant standard, such as is to be used by the commander in chief of the American navy; being a yellow field, with a lively representation of a rattle-snake in the middle, in the attitude of going to strike, and these words underneath, "Don't Tread on Me!"

this page picks up the story -- note the central role that South Carolina and the city of Charleston, home of American masonry, plays: the segmented snake, or divided colonies, of Ben Franklin had South Carolina as the "serpent's tail" . . . note also the illustration showing England as a "dragon," much resembling a cockatrice or basilisk

(S. Carolina, Charleston, and the proto-American Navy are discussed elsewhere on this blog)

Franklin's imprecation "Join or Die" predated the Revolutionary War by twenty years, and was supposedly an appear for unity during the French and Indian Wars

but Ben was also Grand Master Mason of the Philadelphia Lodge -- he published the first Masonic book in America, and his paternal grandfather was a blacksmith

the most important wars leading to the formation of America were spiritual wars, often contentions between or amongst (mostly) occult fraternities as to the character and direction of the emerging nation (and yes, people like Ben Franklin, even in 1754, KNEW there would one day be a nation)

so . . . Masonic Street/Haight Ashbury at the eastern gate, the Panhandle

ocean and Great Highway at extreme West, with Martin Luther King, Jr. (dead king) Drive and John F. Kennedy (need we repeat? apparently so) Drive the principal passages, winding ouroboric beneath the park's newly old Greenwood

it's theatre, me droogies -- extraordinarily ancient, intricate and powerful theatre, yes . . . but retaining, ultimately, some limitations of drama and artifice

an underbelly?

illusory is not necessarily illusion, and certainly not necessarily unreal . . . lotsa blood to prove that. . .

Golden Gate Park begs more scrutiny (e.g., the Park's bison-pen, in use since the 19th Century) but, alas, onward



Everybody listen to me
And return me my ship
I'm your captain, I'm your captain
though I'm feeling mighty sick


I've been lost now, days uncounted
And it's months since I've seen home
Can you hear me, can you hear me
Or am I all alone?

If you return me to my home port
I will kiss you mother earth
Take me back now, take me back now
To the port of my birth

Am I in my cabin dreaming
or are you really scheming
To take my ship away from me?
You'd better think about it
I just can't live without it
So, please don't take my ship from me.

I can feel the hand of a stranger
And it's tightening around my throat
Heaven help me, Heaven help me
Take this stranger from my boat

I'm your captain I'm your captain
though I'm feeling mighty sick
Everybody listen to me
And return me my ship.

. . . I'm getting closer to my home

(Mark Farner)

[Mark's birthdate is Sept. 29, 1948 . . . nice landing, Mark!]







Paul Krassner (center), editor of the underground publication The Realist, and Harvey Kornspan (far right), a member of the Diggers, the Panhandle, San Francisco, 1967




upshot of all this is that the extreme regression, and great internal danger, that America is now experiencing, was very possibly unavoidable -- a growth attempt, a pass/no pass gate, a crucible the nation was doomed to endure and overcome if it wished to act as future beacon of the world

perhaps America is now being tested of its faith, for worthiness to host, or participate in, our Father's Kingdom -- that misunderstood, misrepresented,and still-untried idea that incites so much fear, jealousy, and violence amongst certain interests in this world, millennium to millennium