Talking the Not-So-New Age Blues (Once Again!)

An epic freestyle poem by Antares

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"What's truly funny is that something momentous is happening, and it's so real that the media can't see it. Here it is, the biggest story of all time, and it goes unreported. If you're continually focused on this and that media event, the latest celebrity scandal, the scattered wars of duality, the deceitful maneuverings of selfish politicians, and the shifting state of a false world economy, you just might miss the greater story. And this greater story is why we are here and what gives our lives meaning."
- Solara, How to Live Large on a Small Planet, 1996

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Here are a few questions you could ask
(If you haven't already done so ages ago):
How old is the New Age?
Is it really NEW?
Huh? WHAT New Age?
Isn't it always "A New Age" every time a century turns?
How about a stiff shot of HISTORY (while it lasts)?
Because serious rumor in the mystery circles says
History ends when we break through the Veil of Time
And find ourselves (our True Selves, I mean)
Beyond Euclidean Space.


TWENTY TWELVE, the Daykeeper nods, consulting his cosmic
Calendar, the Mayan Tzolk'in. (Turn the world around and you'll
See Linear Time's expiry date: 21 DECEMBER 2012.)
And then what? GALACTIC SYNCHRONIZATION!
We reconnect to the core of the Milky Way,
Though what that means I cannot say.

"Excuse me, Sir, I am begging to differ," declares Mr Thambyvelloo,
"Actually our Tathu Year will be TWENTY FOURTY-THREE."
But Mr Gopala Das interjects: "Nonsense! MY calendar says 5113!"
"FOURTEEN THIRTY-THREE is how WE put it,"
smiles Professor Haji Abuhasbin.
"Nevertheless we conduct business by the International Calendar."
"In other words," Pope Gregory grins, "you mean 2012 A.D."

Doesn't matter WHEN, it's happening NOW!
Though it may not be happening to everybody
At the same time.
Or in the same way.
But as the Beatles say:
"Having been some days in preparation
A splendid time is guaranteed for all."

[A QUICK SCROLL DOWN THE SCREEN
TO SEE HOW LONG IT'S BEEN...]


A New Age might have been in sight
When Pharaoh Akhenaton ruled Egypt,
Thirty-three hundred and seventy-nine years ago
(If historians are correct) in 1370 B.C.
But alas it was not to be,
For the King was poisoned in his palace
By ruthless generals and greedy priests
Before his mission was complete.
Akhenaton's task was to prepare the world
For the arrival of Lord Sananda,
The Cosmic Christ foretold.


And so, fourteen centuries down the line,
Another attempt was made in another land
To restore Love as Law and the Path of Light
Upon this Earth: Palestine under Roman rule,
Where corruption and hypocrisy reigned supreme.
Some middle-class Jews were put to shame
When the Messiah came and castigated
The merchants in the temple.
"Oy vay, don't rock the boat!" they pleaded,
And as their pious petitions went unheeded,
They charged him with subversion and
Crucified him with unholy haste.
And once again all hope of a Golden Age
Was brutally laid waste
(Even if, as some aver, the Crucifiction was
Just a Catholic joke in very poor taste).


However, the Christ Seed had been planted
In the human gene pool - though it must have felt unwanted.

Rewind the tape of time five centuries or so
To ancient China, where "Old Boy" Lao-tze
(Archetypal wild sage of the mountains)
Successfully summed up reality in 81 verses
Called the Tao Te Ching.

While in Greece Pythagoras held the Beam
With his mathemagickal mystery school,
Using tools like the Golden Mean
And hypotenuse rules, even as he danced
To the Music of the Spheres.


In India Queen Maya bore a Prince:
Siddhartha was his name. Instead of fortune and fame
He sought enlightenment and freedom from the game
Of personal karma. As Buddha he taught us the dharma,
That this illusory world is just 4D melodrama.

Rather than beat an ignominious retreat
Sweet Socrates (that old pederast)
Took his hemlock neat (and his die was cast);
To his health we shall drink eternally.


All these heroic individuals have been named
As Keepers of the Sacred Flame
That came through the Sun
From beyond the stars: they were
Beacons of truth and harbingers
Of an approaching New Aeon.

Bold troubadours in post-Arthurian tales
Sang to us about the Quest for the Grail:
How the valiant Knights of the Table Round
Sought the greatest treasure to be found -
That pot of gold at the Rainbow's End -
The descent of the Dove
And the Rule of Love,
As enemies turn to friends.


The most fleeting glimpse was all we were shown
As we drew the sword of intelligence from the stone;
And then the vision of the Holy Grail
Vanished behind a misty veil
Of nightmarish mayhem and massacre.
Rival factions plunged the world into bloody war,
Screaming, "Dominion over others by fang and claw!"

Meanwhile in the Middle East the stage was set
For yet another crusade on this poor planet.
The portals of belief saw heavy traffic.
As images of love turned pornographic.
The Spanish Inquisition was thrown in purely for luck,
To ensure that the status quo didn't come unstuck.
"Nine Hells have arrived," Aztec priests cried,
"Exactly as Quetzalcoatl prophesied."

Came the Renaissance, a brilliant flash
Of inspiration, giving rise to a dream
Of a world reborn through Alchemy, Science and Art.
The Word now passed from ear to eye
As scriptures were read instead of heard.
The past age of spiritual darkness and doubt
Gave way to Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo -
Who advocated logic, reason and laboratory testing
As the most reliable method of finding out
What Life on Earth was all about.


Angels and demons filled the atmosphere,
And spoke to Michel Nostradamus the famous seer.
They told him of the long dark night
Of humanity's soul in its headlong flight
Towards the final Apocalypse.

Mountebanks and sorcerers, mystery men and mages,
Took their turn upon the stage of history:
Cagliostro and Saint-Germain,
Eliphaz Levi, Messrs Kelly and Dee
Held sway in the courts of Europe,
Hinting of a New Jerusalem and the
Rebuilding of Solomon's Temple.

Christian Rosenkreutz published the Rosicrucian Manifesto,
Heralding the advent of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality;
While in 1776 Adam Weishaupt of Ingolstadt
Founded the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria -
Whose illustrious members, apparently,
Included the likes of George Washington, Tom Jefferson,
And Ben Franklin - progenitors of the American Dream
Of Novus Ordo Seclorum - a New World Order, no less:
A New World for a New Age -
Governed by a global Freemasonry!


Another page turns in the Book of Changes:
America the Dream goes to Hollywood,
Gets hijacked and featured in National Geographic,
Serialized in Reader's Digest;
And now the movie rights are owned by Walt Disney,
While the Bill of Rights waits at the Gates
of Heaven.

In Persia the Bab was born: and in May 1844 proclaimed
The imminent approach of the Imam Mahdi,
Ultimate prophet of God - but the Shah had him shot
For disrespect towards Worldly Authority.
Then his followers established the Baha'i movement,
Which advocates world government on a Unified Earth,
And a new age of Universal Justice.

Newton, Darwin, and Faraday were an ad agency for
Progress through Science: understand how the universe works
And a New Industrial Age begins.
It all started with a Big Bang and everything since
Has been winding down like a clockspring.


At the height of our collective infatuation
With Machines and Automation,
Blavatsky, Leadbeater, and Olcott - NOT your typical firm of
Chartered Accountants - went to India and Tibet where they met
Ascended Masters of the Trans-Himalayan Brotherhood,
And were assigned the task of introducing
Ancient wisdom to the modern world.
Proclaim the advent of a New Aeon, they were told,
And groom Jiddhu Krishnamurti for the role
Of planetary savior.


Their Theosophical Society was inaugurated
In 1875 and found an eager following in the West,
While in the East the Sun still rose
And shone upon the sleeping millions.

Secret Societies sprouted like mushrooms
In the moldy moral ground of Victorian times, and
Ritual magic enjoyed a fairly brisk trade.
Messages from the Spirit World
And all varieties of psychic phenomena
Caught the fancy of bored housewives and
Wayward intellectuals.


The Who's Who of arcane knowledge and esoteric lore
Included names like W.B. Yeats and Claude Debussy,
Victor Hugo and Conan Doyle, Bulwer-Lytton and Liddell Mathers,
Aleister Crowley, the Marquis de Sade, and many more.
"Practitioners of Evil, Satanists, Lucifer's Friends, and
The Antichrist" were epithets flung at some of these pioneers.
But the tide of evolution was rising fast:
It spawned the glamorous Order of the Golden Dawn
And magickal offshoots like the O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis) and
Argenteum Astrum (the Silver Star).


Some followed Rudolf Steiner into Anthroposophy,
And joined the tug-of-war between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman.
Others were captivated by G.I. Gurdjieff and his school
Of Modified Sufi Dance, but found themselves bewildered
By his Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson: a rambunctious and
Somewhat Rabelaisian dissection of the human experiment
Seen through the extraterrestrial eyes of a former
Colonial Administrator of Earth.


Adolf Hitler and Company had their ill-fated Third Reich:
Hoping to govern the world by high-tech voodoo and
A fanatic belief in Aryan supremacy.
But the Fourth Reich (propounded by Wilhelm,
Psychoanalyst and discoverer of Orgone energy
Who authored Function of the Orgasm)
Might have been a lot more fun
If Dr Reich hadn't been hounded out of Europe
By his erstwhile colleagues in the psychiatric profession,
And finally assassinated in a US prison by
What he called the HIGs - Hoodlums In Government.


(We're not talking ancient history here:
This happened in the 1950s!)

Anyhow Reich tried to alert the US Air Force
To the suspicious activity of UFOs - only to be subjected
To intense harassment by the FBI and the MIB
Who, for some reason, wanted to see Reich discredited or dead.
In retrospect, it appears that Reich was perceived
As a threat to the Military-Industrial Complex's covert program
Of "scientific collaboration" with the Zeta Reticulan Greys -
A technically advanced but spiritually retarded race,
Desperately seeking a cure for terminal infertility
Before their species became extinct.


Which brings us to the era of Star Trek, Star Wars,
Close Encounters, ET, X-Files and Virtual Reality.
Also crystal gazing, holistic healing,
Wheeling and dealing gurus,
Group meditations, Earth activations,
Celestine Prophecies and TM levitation,
Swift mutations and transmutation...
Hey, are there any experts left with reputations?
When there are more Channels than TV sets,
You find more confusion than the United Nations.
What you believe is what you get;
Anything goes these days.. who knows?
Anything can happen yet!


"Oh, the Sirians will save us!" some Brethren shout.
"No, only Jesus Christ can!" the Born-Again spout.
Others laugh: "It's the Pleiadian Plan - a total rout!"
"Save our streams before there are no more trout!"
The angelic anglers scream.
So is the New Age just a dream
From which Old Age awakens
With a terrible hangover?

Wait and see, nothing will change -
That's what the so-called Realist thinks.
Life will always be unfair,
You gotta be quick and grab a chair
(Let the rest drop dead, it's their affair!)
Money, not love, makes the world go round -
Excuse me, can I convert my ringgit to pounds? -
Gotta ride that crazy merry-go-round
Till you're six feet underground.
Let me ask you: is there any proof at hand
That God can also be a Man?
You say every woman is the Goddess,
But all I care about is the size of her bodice.
And I wanna know just how many Harmonica Virgins
Blew their minds at Harmonic Convergence!


Don't talk to me about Tectonic Plates,
Electromagnetic Grids, Pole Shifts, Zionist Plots,
Precessioning Equinoxes, Photon Belts, and
Why your paternal grandma was a Celt.
Do you wanna know when I last cried?
It was the day my pet canary died.

Well, well, well, what have we here?
Keep your mind and heart open
And have no fear.
The worst that could happen is...
NOTHING.


What the New Age really means is a Quantum Leap -
From Global Village to Local Galaxy at the sound of a beep.
Better get ready or go back to sleep...
Carry on, Mr Accountant,
Count your sheep.

[Written in June 1996. First posted 2 August 2009, reposted 1 July 2014  & 15 October 2017]