THE PANTHEIST MANIFESTO (Revisited)
Annunciation - Mati Klarwein - 1961 - 128 x 88 cm
I CLEARLY REMEMBER that life was a great deal simpler a few decades ago... especially in the 1960s when I was a curious-minded adolescent interested in just about everything, especially the Mysteries. In those days, it was so exciting to read about Egyptian, Andean and Trans-Himalayan Mystery Schools, ascended masters, alchemists, wizards, spiritual hierarchies, Sufi networks, Templar secrets, and whatnot! 
Names like St. Germain, Djwhal Khul, Koot Hoomi, Rakoczi, and Morya fired my imagination. When I was 15 or 16 I hungrily devoured books by Lobsang Rampa, Dion Fortune and Dennis Wheatley. Pauwels & Bergier's Morning of the Magicians was a sort of bible to me. Richard Kieninger, writing as Eklal Kueshana, described his stellar initiations in The Ultimate Frontier and invited readers to join his Stelle Community based outside Chicago. I actually wrote to them and they sent me a membership form (which I never filled).
Jane Roberts came out with her Seth books and corroborated many private notions. I longed to be tapped on the shoulder by a beggar on the street who, with a merry twinkle in his eye, would reveal that he was an emissary of some Invisible Brotherhood that had been in existence for thousands of years as Keepers of the Sacred Flame... you know, the sort of Dr Strange comicbook stuff that folks like Drunvalo Melchizedek and Jimmy Twyman report. In short, the 'New Age' was NEVER all that "new" to me - esoteric knowledge was something I grew up on.
Hollywood celebrities like Shirley Maclaine came out of the closet with mystical books (Out on a Limb); box-office stars like John Travolta declared their faith in Scientology; and even country-&-western singers like John Denver got involved with dadfangled new therapies like EST, just as John & Yoko had popularized Arthur Janov's Primal Scream.
And we mustn't forget how the Beatles (and Mia Farrow) had promoted Transcendental Meditation with their visits to the Maharishi's ashram. More recently, author-teachers like James Redfield (The Celestine Prophecy) and Neale Donald Walsch (Conversations With God) broke into the mainstream with their best-selling books and infected millions with a newfound optimism and holographic perception.
Many of us will recall the excitement of discovering that there may be a great deal more to existence than meets the egocentric "I" - that angels, cherubim and seraphim, space brothers and sisters, Venusian bombshells and Arcturian crystal healers might ACTUALLY exist.
And when did I first come across that evocative word, "Pleiades"? I never felt 100% comfortable with the idea of "Sirius" - for some strange reason.
Then there was the widespread buzz over the Zeta Reticulan Greys and John A. Keel's famous Mothmen. In 1991 a muse goddess loaned me a book by Solara and I was introduced to the mysterious Og-Min (which spawned a small collection of Og-Min jokes, e.g., Bog-Minster Fuller of the Intergalactic Og-Ministration :-)... Nibiru and the Anunnaki was a fairly new discovery... perhaps within the last 10 years, after I got plugged in on the WorldWideWeb and had access to more information in a week than I used to have in years.
My point is this: were all my "peak experiences" - times when I felt fully reconnected to Source and at-one with All That Is - simply the synergetic result of my years of reading, thinking, and arcane research? 
Do Catholic girls have visions of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary simply because they were raised on this specific pantheon? Does a Hindu carrying the kavadi at Thaipusam inevitably receive messages of healing and succor from Lord Murugan - or might Kwan Yin, Kryon, or Amaterasu come to him instead? Did Mother Teresa model herself after Amaterasu?
And how do Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Blair, Queen E, MJ-12, MI6, Mossad, MK-Ultra, the Mafia and the Reptilians fit into this dense and elaborate scenario? Are we still playing Cozmik Cowboys 'n' Injuns? Where is Inspector John Lee of the Nova Police when we need him? Has anyone heard from Uranium Willy and the Heavy Metal Kid of late?
Believe me, I've had FAR-OUT experiences since the age of 19. Once, in 1972, Jimi Hendrix materialized briefly in my garden looking like a Mayan galactic navigator (or was it just a side-effect of the psilocybin mushrooms?) I used to have extended telepathic conversations with Frank Zappa, whom I perceived as Intelligence Incarnate. Lest anyone think I only traffic with the Rich 'n' Famous, I occasionally hobnob with garbage bins and lampposts, even toilet brushes - not to mention trees, grasshoppers, and garden shrubs. Does this make me a candidate for the Cuckoo's Nest? Or am I simply way too eclectic in my scientific pantheism?
I've explored tantric yoga and vegetarianism, Rosicrucianism, Enochian magick, Crowley, Gurdjieff, Wilhelm Reich, Tim Leary, John Lilly, Terence McKenna, the Kabbala, sacred geometry, and the Flower of Life. 
And now Asha Deane is saying that the Alpha-Omega Melchizedek Order (of which Drunvalo claims membership) is behind a nasty plot to get people to activate their Merkabas in reverse, so that Fallen Angelic Hierarchies can take over their souls! Jim Hurtak is really an Illuminati agent channeling the naughty Jehovian Elohim via his Keys of Enoch. However, Enoch himself is cool and doing his darndest to remain neutral in the Final Conflict between Light and Dark.... Hmmmm.
In truth, I am utterly bewildered by all this metaphysical shit flying around. Some say we must transcend to ascend. Others insist we must get involved on the social and political levels - or lose our genetic inheritance to evil extradimensional parasites. However, I do have a mathematical constant to which I can refer when feeling disoriented: my innermost core is none other than Source Itself!
All that peripheral detail is just an entertaining spin-off from allowing a random factor into the permutation process that makes manifestation possible. No matter what belief system I take a temporary fancy to - or to use a more organic analogy, no matter which philosophical Playboy Playmate I pick as my flavor-of-the-month - I know that what I'm all about is LOVE. Even in my grouchiest state on the worst bad-hair day, I am centered in Universal Love, Compassion, and the Unending Quest for Pure Meaning and Perfect Harmony.
And that is ultimately all anyone needs to be. The rest is just subscription TV with an infinite choice of channels (pun fully intended :-).
[Written 10 May 2003 & published in Magick River's lunatic fringe e-zine, The Moon]
