cDc #400: Reptilian Imagery and Demonology

March 12, 2005 2:56 PM

Reptilian Imagery and Demonology: A well researched analysis of astral archetypes and modern/post-modern American culture. [via our friends at the cDc]
posted by kuatto (17 comments total)

"You can drive through the suburbs and see the relationship between Lockheed-Martin, Home Depot, McDonald's, and Internet porn."

A long read, but it's worth it.
posted by kuatto at 2:58 PM on March 12, 2005

the squirrel dances with the lizard, thus the betrayal of thetans impinges the honor of the spheres. ever has it been so.

*glows, hums, hovers*
posted by quonsar at 3:02 PM on March 12, 2005

For the folks not up on their terminology:

Last of all, let me state that my interest in this subject is personal. I had many encounters with "reptilian" entities during the innumerable "Vitamin K" trips that I was taking during 2001 and 2002.

"Vitamin K" is Ketamine.
posted by Bugbread at 3:06 PM on March 12, 2005

"What is time? The shadow on the dial, the striking of the clock, the
running of the sand day and night, summer and winter, months, years,
centuries - these are but arbitrary and outward signs, the measure of
Time, not Time itself. Time is the life of the soul."

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This article has some great quotes in it.
posted by kuatto at 3:08 PM on March 12, 2005

No matter how little hard evidence there continues to be for the lost continent of Atlantis, underground Nazi bases at the North Pole, Bigfoot, or alien encounters of all sorts, people continue to believe in these sorts of things no matter how much debunking has gone on. There is obviously something very strange going on in the collective unconscious...

Yeah. It's called "People Are Stupid."
posted by five fresh fish at 6:44 PM on March 12, 2005

that's what i said.
posted by quonsar at 7:01 PM on March 12, 2005

Thanks for this.

I've always been interested in the different archetypes of UFO culture and how it has evolved through the ages. I've heard of the reptilians mentioned casually before but this is the best well-reasoned summary I've seen so far.

I've read most of the books by Budd Hopkins (including Intruders which I'd recommend) not as a credulous reader but rather scanning for archetypes: the nightly visitation, the relation to light, to sex, to pregnancies, to a kind of frozen immobility and helplessness in the face of the unexplainable.

Another good source for masses of stories is from the artist Susan Hiller. In her work Witness, she assembled hundreds of testimonies of people who had been involved in abductions or strange visions and what stands out the most is the overall consistencies of the stories (one can argue this was the result of narrative contamination, I suppose) It comes with a CD too where you can hear peoples voices.

In 1998 I think, I met John Mack in New York City. He was there giving lectures on this kind of stuff and had already gained notoriety because of his association with Harvard (In fact, I met him in the lounge of the NYC Harvard club) He gave a small lecture that evening which because of the small size of the group (about 8 of us) turned into a group discussion. He had assembled videos of different people telling their tales, including a group of children from Africa who had all been abducted.

What struck me most then was that many of his "informants" (as he referred to them) seemed to be reciting a script as if they were performing. His reply to this statement of mine is that possibly this was because they had already told their story several times. True, but even so, I said, this would tend to turn a random set of jarring events into more of a traditional narrative structure. An unforseen bright light and strange-looking men can in the span of a short time expand to fill a storyline. Anyways, he wasn't impressed by my objections.

I still think that much of this is the equivalent of mental phosphenes and, as such, deserves more (reputable) study than its gotten so far. There is something more to all this but its a lot more subtle and engaging than throwing up mysterious phrases on a graph in an all-too-human classification system (as guys like Wilber have done) In fact, this urge to classify, to impose a gradation of levels and steps and achievements is still more about how human minds percieve the world than any authentic attempt to uncover something more fundamental about reality.
posted by vacapinta at 7:08 PM on March 12, 2005

quonsar, no person has ever claimed otherwise.

My brother's personal maxim: "people are stupid"

My maxim: "I'm drunk"


The question is, what do you think of the top down view of consciousness?
posted by kuatto at 9:29 PM on March 12, 2005

THE HOG SHALL LIE WITH THE PRAWN
posted by clockzero at 10:20 PM on March 12, 2005

If I may channel Lisa Simpson for a moment:

I *AM* the Lizard Queen!
posted by dejah420 at 12:09 AM on March 13, 2005

hmm
posted by kuatto at 12:20 AM on March 13, 2005

like sand through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives!

i think RAW had an entry on reptiles somewhere and isn't icke a proponent of hollow earth theory as well?

re: frozen immobility and helplessness

the harvard psychologist on the peter jennings'(!) special chalked it up to sleep paralysis (budd hopkins' response :)

cheers :D
posted by kliuless at 3:06 AM on March 13, 2005

nice article ... quonsar, the stupidity of people is not necessarily meaningless to those who are wise ...
posted by pyramid termite at 6:27 AM on March 13, 2005

blech, green on black monospaced with ASCII art :P
posted by Foosnark at 7:44 AM on March 13, 2005

quonsar, the stupidity of people is not necessarily meaningless to those who are wise

is this something i would need wisdom to understand? :-)
posted by quonsar at 10:02 AM on March 13, 2005

no, you could use a ouija board
posted by pyramid termite at 1:33 PM on March 13, 2005

Grrrrrrr....blocked by websense for "hacking." But I thought it was common knowledge that the Nazi underground bases were in Antarctica (Neuschwabenland), not the North Pole. (And long since obliterated by Admiral Byrd and his pocketful of nukes.)
posted by malocchio at 11:00 AM on March 14, 2005