Radio Tavistock – Broadcasting propaganda to the masses!

There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.

Aldous Huxley - Tavistock Group, California Medical School 1961.

How fucking true! And how fucking prophetic.

Of course, I wasn’t there so I have absolutely no way of knowing if he said it, or the context in which he meant it, if he said it, or, indeed, even if there is such a thing as the Tavistock Group of the California Medical School.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, it makes for a bloody good meme, an excellent conspiracy theory and is, as a sentiment, undoubtedly, true.

Radio Tavistock - Broadcasting propaganda to the masses

Okay, I doubt anyone, old Aldous included, saw that the pharmacological method would have involved a simple endorphin inducement strategy that revolved around posting shit on social-media sites and then constantly checking to see if your redundant virtue signalling has been met with universal approval. I expect the old boy was bent on a more psychedelic delivery method and bet his bollocks punting on shares in Sandoz Laboratories and their LSD production lines.

Nevertheless, who would of bet that the geeks would have taken over the asylum? Though, to be fair, we should have seen it coming when the peace-and-love generation started swapping their sandals for micro-chips, idealism for capitalism and weed for dough. Fucking hippies!

But, you see, my hippy-bashing, baby-boomer hate-filled spite is merely endemic of the wider issue and serves solely to prove the Hux right.

For he was right; we have now reached maximum divide and conquer.

As a brief diversionary tactic, my inspiration for the above term was filched outrageously from the old Who maxim ‘maximum R&B’, a term which, in turn, has transformed itself into something approximating a mix of blues, funk, hip hop and soul.

And it is soul which provides me with a tenuous, but propitious, link to the day of this article’s publication. Namely All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween) where all around the world children of all faiths will be, unknowingly, performing the art of ‘souling’ - the practice of going from door to door asking for ‘soul cakes’ and in return singing prayers for the souls of the givers and their friends. Essentially, it is a celebration of the dead, transformed, however, by the neoliberal gods of capitalism (the fucking hippy, baby-boomers again) into a candy-fest and sugar orgy sprinkled with child-friendly images of witchcraft and toppings of the occult whereby we unconsciously sell our soul to the corporate devil.

Which, you know, is kind of odd, given that the Halloween festival is most popular in the good old, god-fearing, US of A, where the stars and stripes fly proudly from every white picket-fenced household and where even the dogs have short back and sides. And yet, throughout October, these self-same, small-c conservative, households will also be adorned by carved out pumpkins in tribute to the decidedly mythic Jack O’ Lanterns or Will O’ The Wisps which are a reminder of an old Irish legend concerning Stingy Jack, a drunkard who bargains with Satan and is doomed to roam the Earth with only a hollowed turnip to light his way.

Huxley cookbook - Pumpkins of the Gods

It is a metaphor that should serve to remind Americans, bar those of an aboriginal heritage, that they are all immigrants.

But, ultimately, does it really matter that Halloween has become Wicca for beginners? I guess not, not if the kids have a good time.

But it does bring us back nicely to maximum divide and conquer. If it is that easy to misrepresent the origins of Halloween to serve the dark arts of the corporate whore mongers then the same principles can be applied to the masses and used to fuck us all over. It’s Huxley’s Brave New World of propaganda and brainwashing writ large.

Bogus Halloween bogeymen are cropping up all over the world. Be it Brexit in the UK, Trump in the US, evangelism in Brazil or Russian troll farms infecting our timelines, their purpose is still the same. To polarise us. To scare us. To divide us.

It doesn’t matter if you’re left, right or centre. It doesn’t matter if you’re Christian, Jew or Muslim, if we’re fighting each other we’re not fighting them and that’s exactly what they want.

We need to raise our sights above the petty online tribalisms and look beyond the phoney politics of polarisation.

It’s time to demand better because we are better. We need to put the planet first, its people second and relegate the 1% to the stocks so beloved of their forefathers, the medieval feudalists. It's time to pelt them with their own rotten tomatoes.

It is time turn off Radio Tavistock.

Humpty Dumpty fell off a Walrus

Aiwass done.

I was, honestly. Case closed, had enough and, quite frankly, I was beginning to bore myself shitless with all the old Pepper is a treasure map rhetoric.

It is though, and I think old Mac the knife may have added an additional wee layer of lacquer to an already overly polished turd thanks to his latest paean to all things Egypt, Egypt Station. Not an #Ad – though open to offers!

Shit pushing solitary Dor Beetle

Amidst a welter of symbolism upon his new album cover, including the obligatory solitary beetle – literally pushing shit, no less – we have a curious pyramid logo – or is it a train-track in a tunnel – emitting mysterious beams like a Tesla tower radiating the latest instructions from Radio Tavistock, a reverse Abbey Road procession, old-timey dancing couples – a la A Collection of Beatles Oldies - , curious stylised animals and the ultimate reference to all things Pepper, namely palm trees.

Anyone vaguely connected with this amateur collection of autistically rendered ramblings – and you’re here reading this, so you must be – will know that palm trees denote treasure and Sir Machiavellian does not let us down.

It occurred to me that possibly there was a link between all this Egypt gubbins and Aleister Crowley’s Cairo chat with his invisible friend Aiwass.

Accordingly, I have overlaid the Egypt Station cover over Pepper and whaddya know?

Okay, okay, I’ll grant you that the simple fact that the album title logo merely grazes the great baldie’s bonce is confirmation of very little, however, conspiracy fans, the overlay does create some tantalising ‘clues’.

Firstly, there is an interesting placement of one of the weird pyramid things right over the face of the waxwork Paul, the apex going right into his eye in fact. Secondly, is it pure coincidence that the name of Paul McCartney spreads out over the entire Beatles, almost as though there was really only one talented member? Solitary beetle again! Then there is the placement of another pyramid over the ‘S’ in Beatles, further elaborating the point above?

Then we have the sun shining directly over Marlene Dietrich’s head, pointing us back to the ‘key’ to the temple door. Again.

Now, whilst many of the more rational of you will be saying that this is just mere coincidence, I will attempt to demonstrate why so many Beatle ‘clues’ point back to Sgt. Pepper and its oft overlooked Alice in Wonderland references.

I shan’t bore you by repeating the references here – they’re covered in other posts – however I shall attempt to further establish these links by positing a potential explanation to the age-old riddle of the Savile Row door photo that appeared on Ringo Starr’s Rotogravure album.

If you’re anything like me then this mystery will have been keeping you up at night!

As you can see, the second-best drummer in the Beatles is snapped for the front cover peering through a magnifying glass, or, in other words, literally looking through a looking glass. Is this yet another ocular occult Beatley reference? A pretentious all-seeing eye allusion or, yet another, aspersion to Lewis Carroll and his all-pervading Alice tomes? Sir Ring-Piece and Love explained it thusly:

Question: There is a photo of the front door of Apple on the back of the cover, where did you get it?

Ringo: Neil Aspinall took it and sent us one each and I thought, “I’m gonna put it on the back of the album.” It’s a front door, but it’s a back door too. It’s got all these names scrawled on it from Finland. That’s why you’re getting a magnifying glass with the album, so you can read it all. And I thought it would be a nice bit of fun, especially for those who actually wrote on it. It used to be so smart, with a doorman and a pretty letterbox, and now it’s just…yeah!

Which, as topics for blog posts go, is pretty dull. Except, it was Neil Aspinall who sent him the photo, the same Neil Aspinall for whom nothing is a coincidence and the same Neil Aspinall who was rumoured to have been the fun-loving forum lurker Apollo C. Vermouth.

The same Apollo C. Vermouth who authored this curious little nugget of conspiratorial gold.

Keep searching the clues on the door.

One in particular is all you need.

Apollo

And…

As stated earlier in another thread, the original release included a magnifying glass so one could decipher the writings on the door.

Obviously, there remains an important clue that he wished you all would find.

The hunt begins…

You’re on the right path.

Apollo

To the best of my knowledge that clue, such as it is, has not been uncovered.

Until now.

Possibly.

I will freely admit that I have spent some of my precious, sweet time pouring over the inane scribblings of many and varied Apple scruffs trying to uncover the vital titbit that the little drummer boy wished us to find. All to no avail.

Perhaps, therefore, it is not a graffiti-based clue but a song title one that we should seek?

Indeed, one track on the album, ‘Pure Gold’ was written by the first knight of Beatledom, Beatle Paul.

If we look back to the Pepper cover who is pure gold? Why it’s the heavenly Diana Dors herself, a front door, a back door and, furthermore, a key to the temple door. And, to further labour a point, who was it that was to be sacrificed in a temple back in the Help! movie? Why ‘twas our erstwhile ring-clad drummer.

So fucking what, I sense you’re mouthing now, big fucking deal. And, too be fair, you’d have a point.

But whomsoforth* was it that led us to the fabled Walrus keyhole in the first place, for it was not I?

No, it was Mr Vermouth, of course.

Hidden on the Pepper cover is a WALRUS.

Using your trusty mirror, place it vertically touching Diana Dors left elbow.

See him?

Apollo

Walrus keyhole

A point confirmed in the video for ‘A Day in the Life’.

And just who is the movement upon the shoulder of the divine Miss Dors, the enigmatic Buffalo? Why it is a distinctly Crowleyesque vision replete with an Egyptian fez.

Which brings us back to Egypt Station.

Where we see a strange, bald man stood next to a horned ram or goat type beast.

The great beast and the strange beast also reappear on this ingeniously cryptic homage to a departed Chuckle Brother and Gary Glitter**.

Whatever the identity of the said strange beast, it’s all a bit Baphomet like.

Horny goat weed crescent moon man

As you can see the horny goat god gives us a hand signal reminiscent of the ‘as above, so below’ tarot card of the magician and so beloved of Sir Ring a ding ding from the Help! movie where, as previously mentioned, he needs to be rescued from a temple because a magician who looks like a dead ringer for Crowley is chasing him. Sync after sync after sync.

Clang / Crowley in his fez from Help!

Of course, the Walrus symbology emanates from the book Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There where we also find Humpty Dumpty. 

Humpty Crowley

Aleister Crowley has a peculiarly Humpty Dumpty like look about him – what with his great big bald head ‘n all – and Crowley claimed that Humpty Dumpty’s fall from the wall symbolised the descent of spirit into matter – whatever that means.

Indeed, the great pompous prick said this:

This is so simple as hardly to require explanation. Humpty Dumpty is of course the Egg of Spirit, and the wall is the Abyss--his "fall" is therefore the descent of spirit into matter; and it is only too painfully familiar to us that all the king's horses and all his men cannot restore us to the height.

Only the King Himself can do that!

But one can hardly comment upon a theme which has been so fruitfully treated by Ludovicus Carolus, that most holy illuminated man of God. His masterly treatment of the identity of the three reciprocating paths of Daleth, Teth, and Pe, is one of the most wonderful passages in the Holy Qabalah. His resolution of what we take to be the bond of slavery into very love, the embroidered neckband of honour bestowed upon us by the King himself, is one of the most sublime passages in this class of literature.

So there you go, consider yourselves illuminated.

It’s been fun being back. Can I go now?

*Newly invented word © Me.

**For non-UK residents, Google it.

Reverse Abbey Road procession with added crescent moon

olDIES merge: note car driving out of Macca’s head

Full Egypt

Radio Tavistock