reviewed were stress management, biofeedback, accelerated learning, psychokinesis (PK), extra-sensory perception
(ESP) and dear old “remote viewing”.
On December 8, 1987 the NRC report, entitled Enhancing Human Performance, was released. It concluded that
most of the unconventional techniques were “scientifically unsupportable”, but that sleep-learning, guided
imagery, and “super learning” programs were viable.
Obviously this didn’t even slow “Project Star Gate”, which rolled merrily along taking the taxpayers on its $20
million “remote viewing” amusement park ride. For a final nail in the coffin of “remote viewing” we turn again to the
B&T series of experiments:
Tests on human sensitivity to low levels of EM radiation: Five subjects were seated in a room
with either a loop antenna or a horn antenna placed 50 cm from them. The source was in an adjoining room
to avoid visual or auditory cueing, conscious or unconscious. The sources used were a tunable RF source in
the 220-950 MHz range with a power output of 1 mW and a tunable MW source (both pulsed and CW) in
the 6-17 GHz range with a power level of 5 mW. The switching on or off of the source was randomized by
tossing a coin, the level of success according to chance thus being 0.5. The subject was then asked to sense
the source being on or off. The results were not significantly different from chance.
Telepathy/Distant Viewing: We only investigated integrated power levels, as enough power has to
be radiated before a signal can achieve its desired effect, whatever modulation the signal may have. We
investigated three subjects who claimed telepathic abilities and one who claimed distant-viewing
capabilities [in which a subject is supposed to be able to describe accurately a remote site without being
physically there]. No unusual EM signals were detected, nor were the subjects successful in telepathic
transmissions.
We have tried to detect EM signals emitted by people, and in particular the Fourier spectrum of such
signals, to test the reality of ESP phenomena. All experiments failed to yield any unusual EM radiation. It is
possible to conceive transmission of EM energy from one person to another, or of emission by one person in
a manner undetectable by the apparatus we have used. This would have been so if very brief pulses of EM
energy were used in such signalling with times less than the response time of the corresponding apparatus
at the frequency used. There are no known mechanisms in the body able to produce such signals
at the power levels required to produce the effects. We have also found that humans are
insensitive to low levels of EM. A possible mechanism for such signalling is therefore clearly
ruled out for telepathy and distant-viewing. The EM levels emitted to achieve metal-bending [in the
microwave range to achieve the desired focusing] are joules, and there is no known mechanism in the body
to achieve a peak power output of GW; it is difficult to suppose that this would be possible without severe
tissue damage.
Bottom line: By itself the human brain can neither send nor receive the stuff of which specific
thoughts are made - save through the media of the physical senses. Therefore extra-sensory perception
does not occur, nor do purely mental efforts to produce physical effects (psychokinesis/PK). “Successes” in these
fields are either coincidental, the results of non-mental physical phenomena (magnetic fields, gravity, etc.), or
deliberate deception by clever stage-magic trickery a la Uri Geller and Madame Zodiac.
The principle of resonance as discussed above is not invalidated, however. Even though EM waves may not be
detectable by human consciousness, they can still affect human brain-waves by inducing resonance at similar
cyclical rates. So the possibility of subconscious, resonance-triggered changes to one’s general mental state ( alpha,
beta, theta, or delta) remains.
Psychological Operations specialists know that it is the conscious mind which must be reached for opinion or
behavior modification, and that it is reached reliably and predictably through the normal communicative senses.
Similarly the mind expresses itself through these same senses, and through media technology we have developed a
multitude of ways to amplify and transmit such expressions. Communication between minds is no longer the
problem; it is the content of that communication and the ethics underlying it which challenge us, particularly as
old nation-state, ethnic, cultural, and social standards continue to mutate in this final decade of the 20th century.
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Update 2010
University of California, Irvine Press Release - August 13, 2008
Scientists to study synthetic telepathy
Researchers get grant to develop communication system based on thoughts, not speech
A team of UC Irvine scientists has been awarded a $4 million grant from the U.S. Army Research Office to study
the neuroscientific and signal-processing foundations of synthetic telepathy.
The research could lead to a communication system that would benefit soldiers on the battlefield and paralysis
and stroke patients, according to lead researcher Michael D’Zmura, chair of the UCI Department of Cognitive
Sciences.
“Thanks to this generous grant we can work with experts in automatic speech recognition and in brain imaging
at other universities to research a brain-computer interface with applications in military, medical and commercial
settings,” D’Zmura says.
The brain-computer interface would use a noninvasive brain imaging technology like electroencephalography to
let people communicate thoughts to each other. For example, a soldier would “think” a message to be transmitted
and a computer-based speech recognition system would decode the EEG signals. The decoded thoughts, in essence
translated brain waves, are transmitted using a system that points in the direction of the intended target.
“Such a system would require extensive training for anyone using it to send and receive messages,” D’Zmura
says. Initially, communication would be based on a limited set of words or phrases that are recognized by the
system; it would involve more complex language and speech as the technology is developed further.”
D’Zmura will collaborate with UCI cognitive science professors Ramesh Srinivasan, Gregory Hickok and
Kourosh Saberi. Joining the team are researchers Richard Stern and Vijayakumar Bhagavatula from Carnegie
Mellon University and David Poeppel from the University of Maryland.
The grant comes from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative
program, which supports research involving more than one science and engineering discipline. Its goal is to develop
applications for military and commercial uses.
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A60: Dark Deco
- by Michael A. Aquino VI°, GM.Tr.
Runes #II-4, July 1984
Order of the Trapezoid
[ This article was later reprinted in The Sophisticate , Journal of the Art Deco Society of California,
Autumn 1984; and then in the Los Angeles magazine Antique & Collectibles , October 1984.]
The current interest in Art Deco often tends to be explained as an offshoot of the general fascination with 20th-
century nostalgia-art. The style’s characteristic features have been explained by Bevis Hiller (in The World of Art
Deco) as influences from Egyptian and pre-Columbian architecture;
an emphasis on straight lines, tight curves, and
sharp angles; and a fascination with speed and streamlining associated with the dawning machine age.
What is not so clear is why this particular type of art should exercise the allure that it does. Art Deco is never
regarded with ambivalence; people are either obsessed with it or repelled by it. Since the reasons for its powerful
effect are obscure, Art Deco always has something of the mysterious about it. It suggests that there are geometric
and curvilinear forces at work which humans cannot quite understand, but which somehow have been captured and
frozen in a particular piece of sculpture, furniture, or architecture. As with gravity or magnetism, the viewer cannot
see the thing itself; he must be content with a glimpse of its “trail” in the material world. Hence one’s interest in
collecting Art Deco derives at least in part from a desire to assert mastery over the unknown. If it cannot be
explained, then at least it can be controlled or possessed.
It is perhaps not surprising that Art Deco came into being during the heyday of Expressionism, another
“mysterious” art form. If the most shocking Expressionist statements came from Weimar Germany, the difference
between them and the more subtle impact of Art Deco might be explained by the greater French and American
cultural influence in the latter. Yet both shared a common theme: the reduction of objects, shapes, and features to
an “expression” of their essence - what Plato referred to as a “Form” or “First Principle”. Expressionist art and Art
Deco are thus æsthetically satisfying because they appear to lay bare the controlling forces beneath and behind
superficial images; they show the thing as it “really is”, not as it appears to be after being laden with peripheral
decorations.
Art, goes the old cliché, is in the eyes of the beholder. One might amend this to suggest that a work of art has no
significance in itself; its power lies rather in the emotions, sensations, and revelations it evokes in the consciousness
of each observer. Thus art is a trigger, a stimulus to the soul. It affirms something not about itself or even its
ostensible subject, but rather about the psyche of the artist - and the observer.
Hence the Art Deco enthusiast, like the devotee of Expressionism, is by that interest making a statement about
the nature of his or her soul. He or she is impatient with surface images, bored with frippery, and drawn by the
weird and the outré. Art Deco portrays the human being as one secretly wishes to be: a kind of Metropolis robot[rix]
with a dispassionate, cool, and cruel disposition. Art Deco is never warm, cozy, reassuring; it is glacial and
impersonal. Those fearful of, dissatisfied with, or contemptuous of human emotions seek in Art Deco a mirror which
will show them - and reinforce in them - only the non-human aspects of their souls.
Consider by way of illustration two well-known works of cinema art: Edgar Ulmer’s The Black Cat (1934) and
Robert Fuest’s two Dr. Phibes films (1971 & 1972).
Ulmer, who had won his director’s spurs as an assistant to the great Expressionist director F.W. Murnau
( Nosferatu and Faust), created a story of sexual obsession and Satanism in which only the two key antagonists -
Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff) and Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi) - truly comprehend the nature both of one
another and of the the conflict between them. The young hero and heroine - a conspicuously naive American couple
- are able to sense only that Poelzig is bad news and should be escaped from. Despite Werdegast’s efforts to help
them, they mistrust him too - since he seems only slightly less menacing than Poelzig.
Of particular interest is the emphatic and overwhelming Art Deco atmosphere of Poelzig’s home. Built atop the
ruins of Fortress Marmoros, site of World War I slaughter and “the greatest graveyard in the world”, it exudes a
sterile chill of modernity, accented by the Deco’s seeming mockery of the steel and concrete catacombs of the
underlying fortress. Hidden within those ruins are the bodies of many beautiful women, suspended in Deco glass
capsules by Poelzig; and deeper still lies his secret Satanic chapel. Therein eventually occurs one of the most graphic
Black Masses ever portrayed on the screen [regrettably edited in most of the versions shown on television]. Again
Art Deco dominates the chamber, with an abstract double-cross surrounded by four stark, burnished-metal obelisks
and an altar-sculpture consisting of a starburst of metal triangles. Upon the chapel’s floor is a giant five-pointed
star, whose shocking contrasts of black and white inspire the same terror in the viewer as do the Expressionist shafts
of light in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’s famous prison-cell scene.
The Art Deco element in The Black Cat, therefore, is a deliberate device to generate fear - to shatter any
reassurance the audience might derive from familiar surroundings. Unlike the totally fantastic and distorted sets of
Caligari and Der Golem, the world of The Black Cat lies within the realm of the believable because its Deco
atmosphere could in fact exist. The film’s artistic strength derives substantially from its statement that Art Deco
- 364 -
inspires and enhances much the same sort of audience disorientation as did the earlier Expressionist sets. Karloff
and Lugosi are the icing on a cake that is already very sinister indeed.
In The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again Robert Fuest surrounded his outrageously artistic
villain (Vincent Price) with a phantasmagoria of Art Deco interiors and artifacts, to include a dance-band of full-size
clockwork robots.* Phibes’ succession of gruesome murders is accompanied by period music as well - “Charmaine”,
“Darktown Strutters Ball”, “Over the Rainbow” - and the mad doctor makes his dramatic entrances and exits on an
elevating concert organ (with Deco pipes of illuminated crimson glass) to the tune of Mendelssohn’s “War March of
the Priests”.
In the Phibes films, as in The Black Cat, one is stunned by how singularly supportive the Art Deco is to the
desired climate of horror and the supernatural. Price is inevitably a more tongue-in-cheek rogue than Karloff or
Lugosi, but the Deco is just as effective in Phibes’ London mansion and Egyptian tomb-lair as it is at Marmoros.
Poelzig’s necrophilia is echoed by Phibes, who safeguards the body of his dead wife against a time when she may be
revived. Until then Victoria Phibes enjoys a succession of Deco sarcophagi, including a mirrored vault beneath a
sundial, a neon-lit juke box, and an Art Nouveau canopy of glass shaped like a Rolls-Royce radiator and topped with
two RR flying-lady ornaments.
All this is hardly to suggest that Art Deco enthusiasts are frustrated murderers, sadists, or necrophiliacs. The
style has its uplifting aspects as well. But perhaps out brief venture into the darker side of Deco has provided food
for thought concerning lesser-known elements of its unique - and elusive - psychology.
___________________________________________
Part II: Dark Deco II: House on Haunted Hill
First published: Runes #III-6
October XX/1985
Without knowing what futurism is like, Johansen achieved something very close to it when he spoke of
the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, that was built in measureless aeons behind history by the loathsome
shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. Instead of describing any definite structure or building, he
&n
bsp; dwells only on the broad impressions of vast angles and stone surfaces - surfaces too great to belong to
anything right or proper for this Earth, and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphs ... Twisted
menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock where a second glance
showed concavity after the first showed convexity.
- H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Searchers after Dark Deco need not travel to R’lyeh (actually located on the Micronesian isle of Ponape and
referred to as Nan Madol on conventional maps) to sample the Cyclopean architecture of the Great Old Ones. As you
drive through the fashionable Los Feliz area of Hollywood, a glance up towards Griffith Park reveals - perched
starkly on an isolated crag - what appears to be an ancient Mayan temple. A second glance belies this; its shape is
too irregular and its atmosphere too sybaritic for any ordinary religious shrine. Although its dramatic presence
dominates the hills and surrounding valley, few of the local residents can - or will - say much about it. One must
prowl the pleasantly sordid little bookstores along Hollywood Boulevard in order to locate a faded Necronomicon
setting forth the history of the structure; even then one receives suspicious looks from the furtive booksellers, clearly
implying that no respectable antiquarian would presume to concern himself with such outre matters.
The edifice at 2655 Glendower Avenue, one learns, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1924 as a residence
for Mr. & Mrs. Charles Ennis.
“Wright had been putting the finishing touches on it,” commented Anton LaVey in X/1975, “when his houseboy
went berserk at Taliesen and killed seven people. It was said the house was cursed. He built it for a shoe magnate,
and the man lost everything in the Depression. The next owner’s wife jumped off the parapet.”
After 44 years and 6 owners, the house was acquired by a Mr. G. Oliver Brown. In 1980 he donated it to the
Trust for Preservation of Cultural Heritage, which has undertaken its preservation and restoration. Since the
publication of “Dark Deco” in its Sophisticate, the Art Deco Society of California has been after me for more of the
same. This seemed as good a reason as any for an archaeological expedition to HHH this past September.
The Temple of Set II Page 90