What writers like Umberto Eco and Thomas Pynchon warn about, and what David Lynch has deep concerns with, is what happens when concepts and stories begin to imitate life and art, interweaving real and fictional universes. These worlds are dream-like, but structured like allegorical nightmares. The protagonists, like the Lovecraftian hero are doomed by their own obsessions, driven by compulsions yet baffled.

By constructing a game that deploys twilight-zone metaphysics, even with a formally rigorous and well-defined thematic structure, could Anim-X be placing gamers at the risk of parallel identity crises? Most magical practitioners know that what occurs in the ritual chamber (a descent into subjectivity) should not be taken outside it (the objective universe), or casually talked about, so what happens when a game morphs the real world into its own design for destiny?

Play Or Be Played: Why Everything You Know Is Wrong

The connection between computer games and fringe subcultures is not new: Erik Davis revealed in his book Techgnosis: Myth, Magic + Mysticism in the Age of Information (San Francisco: Harmony Books, 1999) that games from the early Zork adventures to Riven, Myst3 and Ultima Online tapped role-playing games and Tolkien-esque imagery. But never before has a project been undertaken on such a scale, using both the latest interactive technology and permission from the targeted subculture itself.

Conspiriologists are already feeling the effects as their research "blends" with the game's assimilative narrative, and are contending that this approach will create ethical difficulties. They are coming from a position of Perfect Fear (Lovecraft again). Hey, if there are a few "front companies" involved, why can't the entire Internet be an alien conspiracy? This paradigm leaves us self-divided and powerless to Act.

But there is another paradigm that could reframe our perceptions and the situation (Web?) that Majestic places us all in. Yezidi researcher Brian Hodges drew my attention to how Dune series author Frank Herbert exalted Perfect Love over Perfect Fear (which drives the debate about original Web content dying).

We have been handed one of the best tools ever invented to scan mass society and re-script its deep memetic codes. This happened (at least) once before: the CIA + LSD = 1960s Counterculture memeplex explored in Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain's riveting book Acid Dreams: The CIA, The '60s and Beyond (New York: Grove Press, 1986). Key memes and metapatterns, that function and are observable at all individual/group lifecycle stages, have already been identified. All that is needed is for competently trained people to apply this knowledge with ethics, foresight and precision.

A Chaos Magick spell? A Conspiracy of Hope? Get working on effecting change in the world.

Coda: Jim Keith Knew The Big Secret

Like many other unworthies who couldn't string together a grammatical sentence for love nor money, yet somehow happened into the awful truth about the alien invasion, Icke has found the key to churning out the wildest conspiracy mongering this side of Richard Shaver. That is: Believe every goddamn weird thing anybody, anywhere ever said. It's a sure-fire formula for sales.
~~ Jim Keith, "The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World"

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