Ong's Hat: The Beginning [Paperback]

Joseph Matheny (Author), Peter Moon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2002

Has the great world-mind of the telecommunication infrastructure begun to breed its own myths? The elusiveness of the Incunabula's original proponents, Emory Cranston (a pseudonym) and Joseph Matheny (his real name), has spawned wild speculation that the Ong's Hat legend is nothing but a media hoax. However there is a dark side to this story that has never been fully told, which may help explain their circumspection. What began as an heretical Islamic sect founded in the early 1900s by Black circus magician, Noble Drew Ali, evolved over the century into a techno-tantric commune whose members managed to escape this befouled world into a pristine, Edenic parallel universe, a New Jersey Pine Barrens devoid of inhabitants. This latter rag-tag group built the 'Egg' - a glistening Faberge-like device that enabled trans-dimensional travel into unpopulated mirror worlds (per the Everett-Wheeler-Graham model). A special quantum-tantric feature allowed passage for two occupants while they made love, irrespective of their race, age or gender. But wait, there's more! Add to this mix a benevolent race of humanoids descended from Javanese lemurs on a parallel Earth, capable of dimensional shift without machinery, who have been world tripping for thousands of years. You've got your chaos; sex magick; applied quantum physics; shadow conspiracy; and, crypto-palaeontology and enlightenment hopes all wrapped up in one neat package. What the Hell more do you want?

Editorial Reviews

Review

Few "conspiracy theories" are quite as bizarre as the legend of Ong's Hat. -- Technocult Spring 2001

The mythos is an historical and cultural curiosity... -- disinformation Summer 2000

This is a masterpiece... colorful, masterful. -- CNET Network October 1999

Product Details

• Paperback: 187 pages
• Publisher: Sky Books (NY) (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 096781622X
• ISBN-13: 978-0967816227
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,032,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Some may say that my career spans varied fields and that is true enough, however I would add that I have a multi-discipline approach that is necessary in the modern age. As Robert Heinlein once said, "Specialization is for insects".

Some of the things I have achieved as an inventor, creator, marketer, product manager, CEO, CTO, writer and artist include: Playing a role in establishing and evangelizing standards and practices such as CD ROM, PDF, DVD, XML, RSS, Podcasting, ARG and digital video. I am an inventor . I am a published author of screenplays, white papers, technology, sci-fi, marketing and gaming books. My pioneering work in Transmedia is chronicled in the University level textbook: Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong's Hat (University Press of Mississippi (May 17, 2011)
Specialties

I have also been the executive producer and originator of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival Podcast the first film festival to podcast from the event, the executive producer/director of the Los Angles Film Festival podcast and the ABA All Star Game podcast. I was one of the two founders/curators of the Greylodge Podcasting Company, a Independent film review site covered on MSNBC, Wall Street Journal and Boing-Boing, and the executive producer of Alterati, an on-line culture zine and a founder of Piltolite/Hukilau. I have beena podcast editor at TheNervousBreakdown.com. I have staged and orchestrated very successful, large scale, mass media Alternate Reality Game/Transmedia style projects since the mid-80s, utilizing print, phone, fax, email, Internet, advertising, video, film, audio, CD ROM, DVD, and on-demand media. My work has been featured on CBS Marketwatch, CNN, CNET TV, Kiplinger's, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NHK, MTV, PBS, LA Times, Clear Channel Radio, BBC, MSNBC, Boing-Boing, and many other weekly newspapers, trade magazines, local and regional radio, television and newspapers.

To view my professional resume (i.e. what I've done professionally in the software world) request a connection on LinkedIn

You may email me at jmatheny AT hush.nym.com

Here is some of my family background.

Artistic Statement

Joseph Matheny is a pseudonym used by a plethora of evolutionary intelligence agents throughout the galaxy. Like Monty Cantsin, Luther Blisset or Saint Germain, you never know when or where he's going to pop up. He is rumored to never sleep, moonlight as a technology consultant, daylight as a fireproof vampire, live by the motto: Non Serviam! and almost never fail to leave a ticking time bomb behind.

Joseph is a "Hypermedium" who believes that Occam's Razor is not a disposable. Joseph Matheny is a Curator, Contributor and Producer of seditious sites like Greylodge and Alterati. Joseph seems to be a verb. Joseph Matheny is an Internet litterbug, leaving flotsam and jetsam all over, like Ong's Hat, to hopefully act like a message in a bottle. If you read it, you will be infected. If you are infected you will be InFicted. If you are InFicted, you will get UnFucted. Meanwhile, Joseph is holding himself hostage until all his demands are met.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ong's Hat, New Jersey: Revisiting the Mystery, March 19, 2003

By 

William Courson "William Courson" (Montclair, New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ong's Hat: The Beginning (Paperback)

Since before the continents assumed their present shape, countless ages before intelligent proto-hominids walked erect and began using sticks to scratch signs in the mud, immeasurable aeons before alphabets and settled agriculture were new-fangled, Ong's Hat - a now deserted (?) village in southernmost New Jersey - was fated to become the most important locale in humankind's history, a critical juncture in time and space, and the nexus of a vast, uncountable quanta of probability matrices joining at the confluence of those temporal streams called past, present and future.

Since the event referred to as the "Opening of the Gate" occurred at Ong's Hat some thirty-three years ago on a spring equinox, much of the paltry amount of writing on that cosmic shifting of gears has been of an intendedly "disinformational" character for reasons apparent to all serious students of alternative history in general and OH in particular. The time has arrived when the truth can be told, neat and naked, complete and uncensored. And that story is, to put it mildly, a circuitous one.

In brief, a black Sufi cult founded in Newark, New Jersey in the 1920s by a circus magician has (with the help of a small group of Columbia University students, jazz musicians, beatniks, homosexuals and LSD experimenters) evolved by the late 1960's into a techno-tantric Moorish Orthodox commune and physics research institute centered in Ong's Hat, New Jersey, whose members managed to escape from this addled dirt-ball into a parallel universe through the intermediary of the "Egg" - a mechanism that enabled trans-dimensional travel into other worlds in other dimensions.

Add to the story a benevolent race of red-necked humanoids descended from Javanese lemurs on a parallel Earth, chaos magick, alternative sexualities, applied quantum physics, conspiracies galore, and heretical Eastern Orthodox bishops and you have an epistemological smorgasbord fit for a king.

This is a delightful piece of writing that leaves its reader hungry for more (and we are assured there will be more), that deserves to be read and read again, believed or disbelieved, shared with someone you love, and maybe even memorized!

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars And off we go on a rollercoaster ride., October 13, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Ong's Hat: The Beginning (Paperback)

The delightful legend of the Ong's Hat travel cult has been posted in the form of the Incunabula Papers since the earliest days of BBS and Internet communications. The mythos is an historical and cultural curiosity for that reason alone.

Has the great world-mind of the telecommunication infrastructure begun to breed its own myths? The elusiveness of the Incunabula's original proponents, Emory Cranston (a pseudonym) and Joseph Matheny (his real name), has spawned wild speculation that the Ong's Hat legend is nothing but a media hoax. However there is a dark side to this story that has never been fully told, which may help explain their circumspection.

What began as an heretical Islamic sect founded in the early 1900s by Black circus magician, Noble Drew Ali, evolved over the century into a techno-tantric commune whose members managed to escape this befouled world into a pristine, Edenic parallel universe, a New Jersey Pine Barrens devoid of inhabitants. This latter rag-tag group built the "Egg" - a glistening Faberge-like device that enabled trans-dimensional travel into unpopulated mirror worlds (per the Everett-Wheeler-Graham model). A special quantum-tantric feature allowed passage for two occupants while they made love, irrespective of their race, age or gender.

But wait, there's more! Add to this mix a benevolent race of humanoids descended from Javanese lemurs on a parallel Earth, capable of dimensional shift without machinery, who have been world tripping for thousands of years. You've got your chaos; sex magick; applied quantum physics; shadow conspiracy; crypto-palaeontology and enlightenment hopes all wrapped up in one neat package. What the [heck] more do you want

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars It's nice to have a dead-tree edition, but it's nothing new., June 15, 2004

By 

Bryce A. Lynch - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ong's Hat: The Beginning (Paperback)

Some of the editorial text of this book is new, but most of the content you'll be able to find all across the Net (in the form of the original Incunabula papers) for free. The text of those documents makes up most of this particular book. There's nothing that says that you can't print those out if you've a mind to, if only to save some money. Unless you're a hardcore researcher of the Ong's Hat mystery or a collector of unusual books, you're probably better off printing them out to make your own edition. You won't be missing too much.