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Prometheus and Atlas PDF

514 Pages·2016·2.32 MB·English
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JASON REZA JORJANI PROMETHEUS AND ATLAS OFFICIAL FACEBOOK PAGE LONDON ARKTOS 2016 COPYRIGHT © 2016 BY ARKTOS MEDIA LTD. AND JASON REZA JORJANI. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means (whether electronic or mechanical), including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN 978-1-910524-61-9 (Softcover) ISBN 978-1-910524-67-1 (Hardback) ISBN 978-1-910524-69-5 (Ebook) EDITOR John B. Morgan COVER DESIGN Andreas Nilsson LAYOUT Tor Westman ARKTOS MEDIA LTD. www.arktos.com Facebook Twitter This book is dedicated to Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove Who thought aloud with the most brilliant minds at the end of history And whose Socratic dialogues allowed their thinking to nurture The souls of the coming guardians, who will learn to hurl lightning-bolts. May we all be as ethical and good-humored as this gadfly. “I’m playing into your hand, and with your own cards… I’m exploiting the impossible. Or, more accurately, it’s a question of making the impossible possible… something that would bring about the one real revolution in this world of ours, if people would only take it in.” — ALBERT CAMUS, Caligula CONTENTS Introduction The Spectral Revolution Fringe Science Reason and Terror Storming Heaven The Titanic Total Artwork The Occultation of Supernature Worlds at War over Earth The Postmodern Prometheus Atlas of the New Atlantis Kill a Buddha on the Way Being Bound for Freedom Mercurial Hermeneutics Bibliography “Jason Jorjani’s Prometheus & Atlas is what profound philosophical writing used to be but has long refused to be: visionary in its method and content, sweeping in its scope, literally mythical, and, above all, positive. That is a gross understatement, though. His notions of the paranormal as normal, of a coming spectral revolution, of a future spectral technology, and of a still unrealized but very real superhuman potential come together to form a coherent but still emerging worldview that is neither modern nor postmodern but something other and more.” — JEFFREY J. KRIPAL, Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought and former Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University, author of Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred “Prometheus & Atlas is the most brilliant treatise relating to parapsychological material that I have ever encountered… it is also a very serious exploration of depth psychology and mythology. Jorjani’s emphasis on what he terms ‘the spectral’ affords us an opportunity to expand some of our existing models concerning psi. …Jorjani has written the definitive book regarding the proper place of psi phenomena in the history of philosophical ideas… However, Prometheus & Atlas takes the argument much further and demonstrates that parapsychology and psi phenomena can be viewed, not only within the history of philosophy, but in the larger context of cultural history itself. Jorjani examines the mechanistic worldview [that] dominates science and has led to the marginalization of parapsychology (as well as many other cultural imbalances). The range of scholarship required to make this argument is, in my estimation, nothing short of awesome. …I don’t think any other writer comes even close to tying things together the way Jorjani has done. The experience of reading it is rather like gazing out at a brilliant starry sky, with many interrelated constellations, stars, and planets. Each is beautiful and unique and, together, one senses a whole cosmos.” — JEFFREY MISHLOVE, Ph.D. (UC Berkley), Host of Thinking Allowed, author of The Roots of Consciousness, and Dean of Programs in Transformational Psychology at the University of Philosophical Research Introduction There is something curious about the fraternal statues of Prometheus and Atlas at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Instead of simply bearing a celestial globe on his shoulders, Atlas is supporting several interlocking rings that outline the shape of a hollow sphere. These bear astrological markings which suggest the precession of the equinoxes through the rise and fall of world ages. The very same zodiacal symbols are also impressed upon a ring through which Prometheus is triumphantly emerging. An inscription from the Greek tragedian Aeschylus reminds us that the torch of craftily stolen fire that he holds stands for techne, the essence of Technology: “Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that hath proved for mortals a means to mighty ends.” We find yet another hint to the meaning of this symbolism in a bolder inscription beneath a depiction of Zeus holding a compass over the central doorway of the main building that is visible immediately behind Prometheus, which reads: “Wisdom and Knowledge shall be the stability of thy Times.” This is paradoxical. Discoveries fostering the advancement of knowledge would usually be taken to upset tradition and unleash instability, to demand changes that both the masses and established interests fear. What kind of society could have its stability grounded not in tradition, but in the persistence of the quest for Wisdom and Knowledge at all costs? It would have to be a civilization led by those rare individuals who have the titanic psychical constitution to endure uncertainty, and even to thrive in its midst. It is no accident that King Atlas, ruling over the Atlantean world empire through Time, stands opposed to the Cathedral of St. Patrick, the Serpent- slayer, and that his head is turned aside in such a way that his gaze spurns the Lord’s altar. Taking a position behind Atlas, the significance of this defiant posture should be as clear to any mindful observer as it must have been to the devious planners of this Temple of Man. It is amusingly ironic that every year Gotham lights up its “Christmas” tree behind Lucifer. One does not have to look too far to see that there is something of the mercurial Joker in this spectacular arrangement. Whoever had Hermes sculpted into the facade of the Grand Central train station in the greatest city in the New World knew exactly what he was doing. Hermes is the god of aliens, merchants, thieves, and liars. He is akin to the confidence artist. Confidence men, especially the great ones like P. T. Barnum, after whom the famous circus is named, are in the business of creating beliefs, but that does not mean that everything they produce for the wonderment of the public are fakes. They are not consummate charlatans. Unless there is some truth mixed with the deceit, it would all be totally unbelievable. Barnum was so successful because hardly anyone could tell the difference between which of his freakish curiosities were genuine and which were cons. Certain attributes of Prometheus are even perversely reflected in the persona of Hermes, as if in a distorting funhouse mirror. Hesiod refers to titans such as Prometheus and Atlas as the most primordial gods. My work takes its departure from Martin Heidegger’s prophecy of a return of the gods as the future of a poetic reflection on the sciences from beyond the end of Philosophy. Heidegger’s technological interpretation of Science is rooted in his understanding of human existence. The practice of scientific research is only one of the modalities of our existence, and it does not secondarily yield technology, but is grounded by the use of tools and made possible by certain technical developments. All science is always already Technoscience. Science does not apprehend the elementary constituents or laws of an objective world prior to our existential engagement in technological development and scientific research. Heidegger goes so far as to try to demonstrate the way in which our scientific world-pictures cannot be extricated from political history and the spiritual values of our community — for which the arts, as led by dichtung, are determinative. This is a bold claim and Heidegger only obliquely, or at best esoterically, addressed that feature of human experience which has the greatest potential to light up the deep structure of scientific practice, to literally comprehend it, from out of what currently lies at its fringe: the spectral. The thesis of this work involves three inextricable propositions. The first proposition is that the basic concepts and methodological constraints employed by the sciences are the expression of personal agencies that are spectral and that act on the world through demonic possession. The second is that life forms psychically battle one another to abide within the horizon of worlds structured by what is of vital concern to them, and Nature is not objectively there to inhabit prior to, or outside of, this historical struggle. The third proposition, which presupposes the first two, is that although there is no objective standpoint outside of worldview warfare, the form of life spectrally structured by the essence of Technology has a unique power to assimilate all others. Bear in mind these three interlocked elements of the core thesis as I turn to an overview of my arguments across the twelve chapters of this work. The opening chapter sets up the problem of the spectral with respect to scientific research. Every culture is built on binary oppositions and marginalizing exclusions attendant to totemic taboos that knot its social fabric together. Spectral phenomena radically compromise such constructions that are intended to guard a given society against the terrifying abyss of the incomprehensible in Nature. In a sense that can only become clear throughout the course of this text, the unique power of such phenomena to do so lies in the way that they manifest an irreducible spectrum and haunt everything

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In Prometheus & Atlas, Dr. Jorjani endeavors to deconstruct the nihilistic materialism and rootless rationalism of the modern West by showing how it was grounded on a dishonest suppression of the spectral and why it has a parasitic relationship with Abrahamic religious fundamentalism. Rejecting the
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