We Are Toten Herzen

by C Harrison

1 - People's Temple, Jonestown, Guyana - November 18th 1978 (909 victims)

  2 - Order of the Solar Temple, Switzerland - October 1994 and March 23rd 1997 (74 victims)

  3 - Heaven's Gate, California - March 26th and 30th, May 1997 and February 1998 (42 victims)

  4 - Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, Uganda - March 17th 2000 (718 victims)

  You will notice how all these suicide cults chose Spring and Autumn to carry out their ritualistic acts. By using numerological convention to analyse the dates we reach the following:

  1 - 10/18/1978

  1+0+1+8+1+9+7+8 = 35

  3+5 = 8

  2 - 10/1994 and 3/23/1997

  1+0+1+9+9+4+3+2+3+1+9+9+7 = 58

  5+8 = 13

  1+3 = 4

  3 -3/26/1997 and 3/30/1997 and 5/1997 and 2/1998

  3+2+6+1+9+9+7+3+3+0+1+9+9+7+5+1+9+9+7+2+1+9+9+8 = 129

  1+2+9 = 12

  1+2 = 3

  4 -3/17/2000

  3+1+7+2+0+0+0 = 13

  1+3 = 4

  That leaves us the number 8434, which doesn't immediately mean anything until you add the figures and arrive at 1 (8+4+3+4 = 19, 1+9 = 10, 1+0 = 1), and when the musical group's own sacrifices are added to the data:

  Ritual murder - March 21st 1977, Manager's sacrifice April 1977, Walpurgisnacht sacrifices April 15th 2013 and April 19th 2013, Summer sacrifices, July and August 2013 you get the following:

  1 - 3/21/1977

  3+2+1+1+9+7+7 = 30

  3+0 = 3

  2 -4/1977

  4+1+9+7+7 = 28

  2+8 = 10

  1+0 = 1

  3 - 4/15/2013

  4+1+5+2+0+1+3 = 16

  1+6 = 7

  4 - 4/19/2013

  4+1+9+2+0+1+3 = 20

  2+0 = 2

  5 - 6/8/2013

  6+8+2+0+1+3 = 20

  2+0 = 2

  6 - 6/14/2013

  6+1+4+2+0+1+3 = 17

  1+7 = 8

  That leaves the number 317228, which equals 23, which continues to equal 5 (3+1+7+2+2+8 = 23, 2+3 = 5)

  Together we arrive at 1 and 5. Could that be the 1st May? Walpurgisnacht?

  With those numbers in mind it is easy to see now why the killings have stopped and the new announcement has been released. Toten Herzen have fulfilled some unwritten preparation begun back in March 1977 and continued by other groups to reach today's apocalyptic conclusion. Next year, May 1st 2014, Walpurgisnacht, could be the date on which Toten Herzen release their message and attempt to leave in a spaceship, just as numerous suicide cults before them have believed.

  Research carried out by Professor Yzumi Kanotawa at the University of Yokohama, has shown that the simple use of certain musical chords and key changes, whose resonating frequencies are known to affect alpha brain waves, can initiate a form of induced hypnosis and trance at certain levels of volume. With this technique the musical group will be able to take control of the minds of their followers quite easily.

  Keep a note of that date: May 1st 2014. If Toten Herzen announce their reunion concert for that night, we will see the apocalypse.

  The Daily Mail

  Cult leader says Toten Herzen will escape by spaceship

  Rock band crank says thousands will die when shock rockers leave planet earth

  An online blogger with a string of unpublished books has predicted that the seventies rock band Toten Herzen will leave by spaceship after inspiring their fans to commit suicide during a reunion concert. Terence Pearl, a retired schoolteacher from Suffolk, has become a well known figure on the fringes of Toten Herzen's following. His writings on the band have brought ridicule and support in equal measure. In a typical gesture by the BBC Pearl's mad rantings were given airtime in a late night programme hosted by the Beeb's art correspondent Mark Lawson.

  Pearl has already subjected the band to bogus anthropological studies and said they are related to a Germanic sect of Cathars who were executed in the Middle Ages. His latest wacky offering is that the band's first concert will be performed on Walpurgisnacht (a popular festival for witches in some parts of Europe) using a mixture of mind controlling chords and key changes designed to cause mass suicide. They themselves will then escape by spaceship in order to avoid arrest.

  A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police told the Mail: "We have not received any complaints about the online article and we have no evidence of the band's activities described in it. We don't even know if the concert in question will be performed in Britain, in which case it's not part of our jurisdiction." When asked about the investigations into the murders of Mike Gannon and four other music critics, mentioned in Pearl's article, the spokesman declined to comment other than to say the investigation was still ongoing and leads were being followed.

  The article reminds people that suicide cults, far from being a mad fantasy are a reality. In November 1978, 909 people committed suicide after being instructed by Jim Jones, the leader of the Guyana based People's Temple. Up to 75 people associated with the Order of the Solar Temple killed themselves in the late 1990s. 39 followers of Heaven's Gate committed suicide in 1997. Both they and the Solar Temple members believed that they would be transported away in spaceships.

  Terence Pearl told the Mail "My writings are based on careful study, accurate analysis and reasoned conclusions. Of course everyone is entitled to interpret what I publish any way they see fit, but I'm confident events will speak for themselves. There's no doubt the Toten Herzen reunion concert will make headlines."

  The band's publicist, Rob Wallet, refused to be drawn on the subject of Pearl's articles, but did issue a statement saying 'the forthcoming concert is not a reunion because the band has never split up. It's a comeback.'

  GUARDIAN COMMENT - Alistair Macillroy

  Cult leaders are only as extreme as their followers

  It may be stretching credibility to compare Susan Bekker, Dee Vincent, Elaine Daley and Rene van Voors to Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Zedong, but that is what Terence Pearl would like you to believe. Up there with the maddest mass murderers in history, the four piece rock band from Rotterdam and Lincoln by way of Suffolk, have been planning an apocalyptic publicity stunt since 1977. A stunt so far out that it will dwarf anything previously seen in the annals of rock music.

  The stunt, that has so far involved such dangerous lieutenants as milkman Lenny Harper, scrap metal dealer Micky Redwall and music journalist Rob Wallet, has only touched the surface, but will apparently explode in an orgy of mind controlled musical mayhem on Walpurgisnacht 2014. The band, satisfied that it has fulfilled its destiny, will then leave in a spaceship along with any number of its fans willing or otherwise who have made the appropriate sacrifice.

  If the modern music industry is anything to go by many of these fans will have already made a huge sacrifice in order to buy an extortionately priced ticket and then bled dry by further merchandising extravagance. Over the moon with the commercial free for all, if anyone will be leaving in a spaceship it'll be the hordes of parasitic hangers-on who feed off the enthusiasm and desperation of fans wanting to see their heroes.

  To describe Toten Herzen as extremists is to condemn their followers with the same epithet. That is the usual pattern. Without their legions of like-minded psychopaths no one is able to carry out alone the kind of atrocities achieved by the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Pot and Zedong. Instead they were able to pass on their warped and twisted dogma to any number of willing accomplices who were prepared to put to one side morality and decency. Had he wanted to, Hitler may well have been able to kill a significant number of European Jews on his own, but with thousands of willing maniacs at his disposal he was able to multiply his crimes beyond all imagination. Likewise for Stalin in the Soviet Union, Pol Pot in the Killing Fields of Cambodia and Mao in Communist China, the figureheads had enough sympathetic labour to carry out murder on an industrial scale.

  No one in the music industry has yet to achieve the controlled barbarity of Hitler et al,
but in their own environment, pop and rock stars have a responsibility to instruct their fans to behave. This may be very un-rock and roll and no one wants to see music sanitised to the level of children's television or Radio 4 mid-morning comedy. In the case of Toten Herzen it's not known how much of their fan base from the 1970s is still around and still willing to fork out on an over-sixties reunion tour, but with all the recent publicity, (of which some of it raises serious questions about the band's behaviour) there should be enough to fill arenas across Europe.

  Without fans Toten Herzen are nothing more than an echo, a background noise. With fans they become a potent force. How they use their influence to manipulate their fans' behaviour and whether their fans are prepared to become accomplices, will determine whether they are good or bad, not fatalistic calculations determined by the position of the sun. Crank numerology (and Pearl's conclusions are pure manipulated hogwash) diminishes a serious issue and is utterly disrespectful of victims of extremism everywhere.

  THE INDEPENDENT COMMENT - Sarah Lee

  The media's outrage is outrageous

  I'm angry. In fact, I'm bloody furious. Hopping mad, incandescent with rage. I feel like writing to my MP, as if that would do any good and that makes me angry too. And I don't want to write, it takes too long for a letter to arrive and by the time it does my anger has subsided a little bit. I don't want it to subside, I want it to endure. And that makes me howl with uncontrolled frothing rabid fury.

  Well, actually, if I admit it, just between you and me, dear reader, the real reason why I'm angry is because I get paid a lot of money to be angry. The higher I hop when I'm hopping mad, the bigger the fee. The more foam that comes out of my mouth when I'm incandescent, the more cash slides into my HSBC bank account. (The special high interest easy access saver's account initially set up for drug dealers where you had to pay in a minimum $250 000 a day to get all the benefits like travel insurance and free legal advice.) Banks make me angry.

  I'm not alone in the world of the professional mouth frother. I join a long list of illustrious angry men and women: Richard Littlejohn, Jeremy Clarkson, Melanie Phillips, Peter Hitchin to name four. All could have represented Britain at the Angry Olympics; all do very nicely out of being in a permanent state of rage, lashing out at whatever injustice is driving the UK onto the rocks. How do they cope with the stress? You can tell who is professional and who is just a bit upset. Where most people have a personal bete noir - letters arriving in the afternoon, blackfly, the ever rising price of fish - the professional can get worked up about anything - urban foxes, Barrack Obama, the moon, wholesale gas prices, Eurovision, cyclists, the Hungarian Prime Minister, triage nurses, pop up ads and bell ringing - at the drop of a hat, to a deadline and under so many thousand words.

  A wander through the British press, telly and radio on any day of the week and there they are. The thunderbolts of indignation in the Times, the pneumatic exclamations of one Sun correspondent after another, and rantings of such extremity in the Guardian there simply isn't time to spell check anything. Even the quiet ones succumb in the end. John Major, Sir Richard Attenborough, Bill Oddie, Leo Sayer. They can't just let it go, have to mouth off about something; the decline of blue tits, too much sea water, nazis on the backbenches.

  You'd think by now that everything that could have been said about poor confused Toten Herzen has been said. But no. The BBC had to have a late night gawp at the band to see if they're behind all the horsemeat in our beefburgers, or the acute shortage of music critics. They used to be more dangerous than the IRA (Toten Herzen, not the BBC, although Norman Tebbitt might quibble over the detail), but now that the IRA makes up a large part of the Irish Assembly we need to find another terrorist group to compare them with. Al-Qa’ida have gone off the boil a bit lately, so it's all those weirdo suicide cults that stand around waiting for spaceships like stranded passengers on one of Ryanair's flights.

  You see, I did it again. Did you notice that? A subtle dig at a crummy flight operator. That's why I get paid thousands for doing a few hours work a week and you don't. If that doesn't make you angry, why not? Is there something you're not telling me? Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

  30 (July)

  "Are you sure you know Rotterdam, Rob?" Tom Scavinio gripped the dashboard as Wallet turned the same corner for the third time.

  "I won't use satnav, Tom. I saw a picture once of an articulated lorry stuck up Hard Knott Pass in the Lake District."

  "Hard Knott Pass," said Scavinio, "sounds like a football move."

  "It's a one in four road with severe hairpin bends in the north of England."

  "Hardly the satnav's fault if the driver is so stupid he thinks he can get his truck up a road like that. What was it, foggy?"

  "Hang on, what's this . . . oh, bollocks, pull over." Wallet parked the car on the kerb and looked again at a hand drawn map of the route.

  "That's just an analogue satnav, Rob, admit it."

  "Elaine's nuts about Chris Squire," Wallet said cross referencing his drawing with a Rotterdam road atlas. "Toten Herzen's mad bass player influenced by a prog rock guitarist."

  "He's one of the best in the business. You can talk about John Paul Jones and John Entwistle all day, Chris Squire's a very underrated bassist."

  "A15, that's the one I want." Wallet set off again along the road to Europort and the warehouse with the big surprise. "Still prog rock though."

  Scavinio had to allow himself another chuckle. "Still can't believe they never told you about any of this."

  "Did they tell you about any of this?" Touché. "In fact, did you even know they only went to the US on a pretext of finding and poaching a manager?"

  "To replace you." Touché. Again.

  "So we've both been cooked. I just hope this is the last surprise they've got for us." The road Wallet was on was a direct route to the west, to the coast, the open pounding heart of Rotterdam's port where all the trade in the world appeared to enter Europe. Every commodity on earth squeezing through one narrow doorway and everyone concerned and preoccupied with loading, unloading, checking and inspecting, monitoring and examining the tiniest computer components to the largest aerospace parts. And all the time, in one warehouse, lay a secret world; a secret world of light and sound waiting to be woken by magic words and supernatural orders. A secret world of music and theatre. The secret world of Toten Herzen.

  "Didn't you ever suspect something was wrong?" said Scavinio.

  "No. The only thing I've ever been certain of is that they can run rings round me. I mean, they're nearly twenty years older than me," (Scavinio raised both eyebrows), "they know this business inside out. Know it better than me."

  "How can you be a music journalist and know so little about how it all works?"

  Wallet wanted to find an excuse, but all he had was justification, or an acknowledgement of his shortcomings. "I suppose I've only ever written about what's already been written. I wrote about press releases, press statements; you know, you keep your ear to the ground and then write about what you pick up."

  "You never did reviews of albums, concerts?"

  "Did once. Slated an album by the Stereophonics; record label never sent me anything else by any of their artists. If you say the wrong thing, Tom you get cut out of the publicity rounds. You're left to opinion pieces and managing your own time." So many oil terminals. The smell of hydrocarbons was getting stronger. The smell of energy was increasing. "It was getting harder and harder. Things to write about were becoming more abstract and esoteric. Another two years and I would have been appearing on Graham Norton claiming to be the son of god."

  "Sounds like we did a good job then," said Scavinio. "You journalists are a pain in the ass."

  "Thanks."

  "Just kidding. You still know where you're going?"

  "Shouldn't be long now. Railway line narrows, big junction, right turn, right turn, left turn."

  "What will probably happen is you'll end up on this Graham
Norton guy's show claiming to be a vampire like the rest of the band."

  The car drifted to the outside lane of the road before Wallet corrected it. He was going to react to the comment, but thought again. Maybe not. Not sure what he means by that. Scavinio had this habit of saying vague indirect sentences that sounded like one thing, but probably meant something entirely different. Always fishing for answers without appearing to ask a question. "Have you come to terms with them being a bit different?"

  "Oh, I guess so. Stranger things in heaven and earth," he said.

  "Really?"

  "Oh yes." Scavinio looked convinced.

  "Fucked if I know what they are." Wallet found his junction and followed his own directions. The warehouse was the last one before the hinterland of oil storage tanks and silos. The evening light made the drama all the more urgent; a vast theatre set of some modernist production with flares and beacons breathing fire and fumes. The area around the warehouse was deserted, in contrast to the frenetic neverending coming and going of cars and trucks of every size and shape, coloured up in their international liveries, busying to and fro along the roads and railway tracks. Both men stood nervously one last time before daring to enter the warehouse.