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The Lucid View: Investigations Into Occultism, Ufology and Paranoid Awareness

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Great cover! That's the first thing you notice. The content is a well researched romp through a choice selection of the more aberrant and outré aspects of 20th century human behaviour, from the JFK affair, through Charles Manson, alien abduction and Jonestown to the stranger spinoffs of the Twin Towers event......

All these subjects and many more are seen through the filter of the "paranoid cosmic viewpoint" though it's hard sometimes to tell whether Aeolus Kephas (Aeolus was the Greek god of wind) is expressing his own view, of `reality' or whether he is just amusing himself and his audience by viewing the universe through this particular glass, more or less darkly.

The various `magical worldviews' which were influential in the 20th century, (Hitler, Crowley, Gurdjieff and others) are examined in the context of the historical philosophy of Gnosticism, but the author divides his research into 8 areas, taking us through an examination of `archetypes', through what he calls `Illuminoids', and `Assassins' which is well researched on the Twin Towers and Charles Manson, to a reappraisal of history of the `alien encounter' literature.

There is a surprising amount of new material here, and it's written as if by a cross between the thinking mans Von Daniken, and a latter day Colin Wilson, (but with strong Gnostic leanings.)

Probably a future classic of the genre?

This book has a refreshing ability to refrain from judgment regarding its outlandish subject matter, being less interested in questioning (or proving) the veracity of occult/ufo/conspiracy beliefs than in whence they come and why, what they say about the collective consciousness of humanity in these current times of insecurity and paranoia. Perhaps this is why some readers are unable to appreciate this book? If they are looking for something to buoy up their flagging belief systems and support their flaccid "new age" worldviews, then this isn't it. Lucid View is the very antithesis of New Age fluff (though it does offer self-empowerment as the reward of paranoia): rather than downplay the darkness in order to provide comfort and solace in flimsy simulations of light, it is unafraid to plumb the depths of shadow, in order to test, prove, and fully engage that spark of light called "reason." Like Morning of the Magicians in its time, The Lucid View offers an overview that no other book I know of seems to offer at this time. A Masterpiece of creative research, and one of its kind.

The Lucid View: Investigations In Occultism, Ufology, And Paranoid Awareness (2004) by Aeolus Kephas is a highly interesting and readable exploration at the forces Kephas feels may be controlling, and thus manipulating, almost every aspect of human life and civilization.

Kephas, whose name is most likely a pseudonym reflecting his broadly implied magikal practices, makes the repeated error of failing to clearly distinguish between the terms "paranoid view," "lucid view," and "free-thinking view," which are often, but not always, used interchangeably. Thus, it is difficult for the reader to tell where Kephas draws certain lines within his thesis.

In the hands of another writer, the text of The Lucid View would most likely read like the anchorless ravings of a madman, but Kephas is an eloquent, highly intelligent, perceptive, discerning, and organized writer.

A brief accurate summary of the book's argument, which combines magik with history, physics, psychology, and technology, is nigh impossible, but goes something like this: a shadowy group of "Custodians," who may or may not be human (or may be an alliance of both humans and non-humans), have attempted (and largely failed) to control the human race literally since the time of Adam. Their ultimate, millennia-long goal is "the synthesis of the earthly with the cosmic code, the splicing of Matter with Spirit," and thus the birth of a 'New Man.'

However, in the process, mankind as we presently know it will be completely obliterated. We, as individuals, will be obliterated, and the day of our obliteration may come as soon as tomorrow. In the service of their goal, the uber-elite Custodians, who are incapable of any quality resembling human remorse (even if human themselves), are relentless, and will use every tool and trick imaginable to obtain their end.

Sometimes representing "the lucid view" and sometimes "the paranoid view" once-removed, Kephas knits together an enormous number of complex subjects.

A partial list includes a hollow moon and Richard Shaver's Hollow Earth, secret lunar military bases, Nazi 'flying discs,' Scientology, Charles Manson and his 'Family,' CIA mind control, The Knights Templar, Ira Levin's 1967 novel Rosemary's Baby, the Old Testament and the Book of Revelations, the social phenomenon of "alien abduction," the life and death of John Lennon, the 'Sirius Mystery,' the 1978 Jonestown Massacre, the work of Aleister Crowley and Carlos Castaneda, traditional faerylore, government-created implants, the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center, Jungian psychology, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, harmful additives in mass-produced foods, subliminal messages embedded in form of media, gross political subterfuge, and the internet as "the web of the Great Voodoo Spider Queen."

Largely due to its magikal, and presumably spiritual and survivalist, underpinnings, The Lucid View takes the position that all of this, if accurate, vitally matters in the name of truth, knowledge, and what little genuine liberty and free will are left to us as individuals.

"Awareness (free from paranoia) creates a natural hierarchical structure in the Universe, according to which every apprentice must some day become a master, every paranoid lucid. Awareness is the currency, then, and unto those that have it, shall be given, and from those that have it not, shall be taken even the little they have...freedom is the freedom of the aware, finally, and awareness of freedom leads ever on to more of the same."

However, if Biblical fallen angels are in league with cosmic forces so vast as to be completely beyond our ability to presently conceptualize them, and the CIA and the Scientologists additionally, clearly no human being or group of human beings has a chance of combating, much less overthrowing, this intergalactic, trans-dimensional cabal.

While 'the average man' does need to awaken to the vast, deceptive smokescreen of engineered disasters, fostered events, and empty social causes perpetrated by the "military-industrial complex" and the media (the never-ending Middle East War; 'Global Warming' and 'Climate Change'; the Cult of the Victim; mass illegal immigration into the United States; the gross over-prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors; 'gay marriage'; 'Oprah Fever'; even the recent Clinton-Obama contretemps and "the emerging economic recession," etc.) to keep him distracted, submissive, and fearful, The Lucid View, with its alien kidnappers, mind-controlled assassins, and harrowing secret societies, is unlikely to have any practical value for him.

However Forteans, many of whom are capable of accepting that our entire universe may be no more than a drifting grain of pollen in a far vaster reality existing around us, will have a field day with it.

But if the entire universe we know is in fact, however improbably, only a random grain of flotsam, such a fact would ultimately flummox even the lofty Custodians and their most nefarious schemes.

Readers may also want to consider another lucid, and more probable book, Albert Budden's UFOs: Psychic Close Encounters (1995), which posits that most 'paranormal' experiences are the spontaneous result of natural and artificial electromagnetic waves interacting with man's psyche, especially his unconscious. Interestingly, Kephas recommends Budden's work in the Further Reading list which closes the book.

Lucid View shows how consensus reality is coming apart before our eyes and the various ways in which ufos, occult phenomena, and conspiracy theories (paranoid awareness) both reflect and accelerate this inevitable, inexorable process. The author argues not for the actual reality of these things as physical facts, but rather as harbingers of a greater (only partially physical) reality, which he terms the Imaginal, the realm of the archetypes, or more atavistically speaking, the gods.

The book may not appeal to hard core nuts n bolts thinkers who believe in actual reptilian conspiracies, since it challenges their assumptions as much as it does the rationalists and religious fanatics, all with their collective heads in the sand of personal delusion.

Lucid View not only describes but evokes, imagines, a reality beyond the consensus in which miracle and sorcery are part of the natural order of things. As such it is a romantic work and stands head and shoulders above most other books on the subject.

For at least a thousand years our culture has been dominated first by Religious and then Scientific authority. The emphasis has been on Truth - either revealed Truth or discovered Truth - and we are now glutted. Truth screams at us from the media, we can download it by the gigabyte. What has been lost is Meaning.

People in their ignorance turn to Religion for Meaning and all they find is yet more Truth. This is because Magic has been banished from our culture. When the New Ager takes a crystal and consecrates it as a `power object' that is Magic because it imbues the crystal with personal meaning - eg its transparency becomes a symbol of clarity of purpose, its shape a symbol of directed will, or whatever. (Art also invokes meaning, but it is more universal than personal meaning.) Science, in response presents a Truth that `it is only a piece of quartz', while Religion presents its own Truth as a warning against idolatry. Both those Truths have some value, but nothing like the value of the Meaning that Magic or Art can instil in an object or pattern.

The Lucid View is a primer by example - an initiation into the processes whereby Meaning can be invoked to bring the world to life around us. UFOs, fairies, conspiracy theories, paranormal phenomena - the whole gamut of weird and wonderful myths, rumours and speculations - are covered and plentifully illustrated in this book. Are we meekly to banish these demonic forces via Religious exorcism of the analytical scalpels of Scientific investigation? Or are we to brave the magical path of paranoid awareness and become our own co-creators of Meaning?

When the world was a fearful, unregulated place humanity needed the palliative comforts of Religion and Science to keep chaos at bay. Not so now: in a world where even a packet of peanuts bears a warning message that it "may contain nuts", where children may not leave their homes lest any misadventure befall them, in such a world we need Art and Magic more than Science and Religion. We need dangerous ideas and wild theories to bring back the colour to existence. Aeolus Kephas points the way with his Lucid View.

if you do so, it is because probably you'll get hookedup with this amazing book, smartly written, completely paranoid, to the extreme of beig well researched in every aspect to satisfy a starving curiosity of the author and our own.

If you ever felt paranoid this is a must read, if you did not, get ready, chances are you will be.

Aeolus Kephas has a very inviting ,and easy to understand writing prose reminicent of the great authors of psycology or philosphy Jung,Freud and Nietzche,very good book,a must read for those interested in the occult and paranormal.

RRM

The Lucid View is a book that will draw you in to it's knowing, but only if you are prepared for what that knowing is.

Some find it fascinating. Some find it fascinating that they can't believe anything being written about and yet the author is so intelligent and eloquent in his writing that they find themselves unable to agree with themselves :lol:

Other's exclaim it's the largest most un-substanciated load of codswallow they've ever come across.

The book is special to me, not so much for it's literal content, but because it was the beginning and the end for me. It marked a time in my life when I had already decided to pursue what I felt in my mind were thoughts worth pursuing even if everyone else in my life considered it silly, unintelligent, crazy or fruitless.

It marked the beginning of my own path. Standing up on my own two feet and reaching for the sun.

Through The Lucid View I finally had a knowing that perhaps I wasn't as stupid or crazy or misguided as everyone had led me to believe. I began to become okay with who I was.

I've only shared The Lucid View with one other person. He and I agreed that as well written and as thoughtful the book was that it was the footnotes and the myriad of other books referenced on the pages within that made it a worthy item to have in ones collection.

After finishing The Lucid View I went online with a list of other books I had written down that were pulled straight out of The Lucid View.

I ordered Carlos Castaneda, William Lyne, William Bramley, Jim Keith, Graham Hancock, Nick Redfern and William S. Burroughs.

So many books I didn't know what to do with and to this day I haven't finished all of them.

Because it acted as my personal doorway to knowledge it will always hold significance for me.

I highly recommend this book for those on the path. Especially for those just setting out on the path. This book is a wonderful tool and stepping stone to graduate oneself from the likes of Icke and Jones.

The author has a newly released book entitled Homo Serpiens as well that is well worth checking out in my opinion. However, it is not for the apprentice just setting out on his journey.

The Lucid View: Investigations In Occultism, Ufology, And Paranoid Awareness

which deals with popular memes of the alternative history/conspiracy prone kind like the Anunnaki-Elohim-Nephilim-Custodians thread; myth-making; mystery schools; mind control; social engineering; suppressed archetypal forces of the collective un-/subconscious influencing the fate of humanity, and how they are related to the Faerie lore and the UFO/abduction phenomenon (cf. Jacques Vallee, John Keel); gematric and synchromystic musings (especially in the footnotes). Throughout the book, the author seems to be governed by the principle 'the more extreme/bizarre a given event/explanation appears to be, the better.' Therefore don't be surprised to see the following persons cited as if they were some sort of ultimate authority: Whitley Strieber, Carlos Castaneda, whose 'fieldwork' was largely pursued in the library of UCLA (see psychologist Richard de Mille's 2 books entitled "Castaneda's Journey," 1976, and "The Don Juan Papers," 1980), and the dubious Valdamar Valerian, aka Capt. John Grace, formerly at the USAF counterintelligence desk, who authored the obvious cointelpro stunt referred to as "The Krill Report" together w/ John "9-11 No Planer/CIA" Lear. In fact, the impression is that Mr. Kephas is not so much an ace of the conspiracy factfinder mould (vs. coincidence theorists) than a confounder rather, in that he doesn't name names and quite often has not dug deep enough; hence there are bound to be several erroneous data. Such as:

+ Nazi moon bases; that JFK willingly sacrificed himself (for some greater cause?) which is somewhat connected to the cowardly murdered Bill Cooper's long-debunked theory that bodyguard/chauffeur William Greer shot JFK (pp. 59-61; Michael Collins Piper's "The Final Judgement" and Salvador Astucia's (pseudonym) "Opium Lords: Israel, the Golden Triangle, and the Kennedy Assassination" should be high on the reading list of anyone seriously interested in the subject); apostle Paul/Saul, if he is rooted in historical reality at all, was a Gentile not a Hebrew (p. 98); the so-called Illuminati, albeit in complementary distribution with the fossilized, "religious school of 'passive' worship" typical of the judeo-masonic hierarchy, have mankind's best interest at their hearts (not unlike Le Prieuré de Sion of Pierre Plantard, Jean Cocteau, et al.) via the "creative evolution of the individual" through artistic means/movements. Hmm...

+ "The global conspiracy...is finally seen as...centering not around society, or even the human race, but around a single, microcosmic organism called DNA. The final stage...is the synthesis of the earthly with the cosmic code, the splicing of Matter with Spirit." So far so good, but..."Paranoid awareness [read A. Kephas] makes an unprecedented leap here, by positing that th[e] mutation process is underway, and has (in part) been falsely called A.I.D.S" (p. 150). What?! Don't exclude the possibility of the pathogen for the said disease having been bioengineered.

+ Quoting oddball William Lyne (pp. 174-5), "The SS Bönpas [sic; correctly Bönpos] worshipped 'Kali Ma'...This cult founded the ancient Thugee cult of India, and was the basis for the Society of Assassins; the concept of this weird religion related to the mass extermination of people...and is the basis for all the 20th century totalitarian movements." Utter bunkum.

Bön religion in its present form (for the last 8-9 hundred years) is not much different from various Vajraya(a)na Buddhist schools (especially that of the Nyingma creed) in Tibet; with a terminology covering similar psycho-mystical yogic experiences on the path to liberation/enlightenment. Many of their teachings are said to have originated from the enigmatic Zhang-zhung kingdom (with its centre being located in Ti-se/Kailash region of the Western Himalayas) that was incorporated into the fledgling Tibetan empire by 653/662 CE. (If interested, for more info check out native researchers/practitioners and Western Tibetologists like Samten G. Karmay, Namkhai Norbu, Tendzin Namdak, Per Kvaerne and John Vincent Bellezza.)

The hereditary profession of stealthy murderers known as the Thuggees, whose Hindu members were indeed worshippers of Bhowani/Kali, is traced back to Persian territories. They had been active in India from the Mughal era (15-16th century) well into the 1840s, when they were finally suppressed by the local British administration. The word 'thug' is thus derived from the Sanskrit 'sthag' (meaning 'to conceal'), which refers perhaps to their favourite method of befriending and winning confidence of prospective victims, such as merchants and other itinerant folks, before strangling them to death with a special strip of cloth called 'ruhmal' (Source: Col. James L. Sleeman's "Thug or a Million Murders," first published around 1933.)

Lots of illustrations enrich the well-written text, with those of William Blake, Gustave Doré, and a contemporary artist named John Coulthart among them. Yet, there are a few whose provenance is more than suspect. To wit: the one on page 25, representing a child's sketch of an astronaut in spacesuit and a flying saucer in ascent, plus a composite figure of the SF kind holding a disc, is definitely not a 4,000-year-old cave painting from an unspecified location on the Russian [SU]-Chinese border but is the work of a graphic designer for a 1967 issue of the Soviet "Sputnik" magazine. Or, the picture at the bottom of pg. 145, showing a flying saucer in the company of a grey alien, is known as the 'Lolladoff Plate,' which first appeared in Karyl Robin-Evans' (pen name) 1978 book titled "Sungods in Exile: Secret of the Dzopa of Tibet." The author's real name is David Gamon, who later admitted both the story and the picture in the book had been hoaxed. The first photo from the right in the upper row on pg. 146 is from the puppet show taken from the so-called "Alien Interrogation" footage, probably courtesy of AFOSI.

The writer's advice as to the way out from humanity's predicament: "The Devil is the door that bars the way, and if heaven is the goal, the going is hell (p. 21). By the same token, quoting C. Jung, 'The gods have become diseases.' In which case...our diseases are our way back to the gods" (p. 176). With all that being said, it's still worthwhile to take a stroll in the strange place that Aeolus's mind is.

This book has become one of my favorites. It came out of nowhere and just grabbed me. Very very fascinating material and frankly, I wish Aeolus Kephas would write another book.