Three Levels of Woo
March 11, 2010[A clip from here]
It seems entirely insufficient to understand woo simply by suggesting that the people who believe in it are mentally ill. That would be a bit like explaining someone’s political opinion by citing their anger. It may or may not be related to their beliefs, but it certainly doesn’t help you understand the specifics of what they believe. To understand their beliefs in all their particularity requires a more comprehensive view of their experience of the world.
The varieties of woo is astonishing, and people pick and choose the kinds of narratives they subscribe to. Take for instance the levels of personification of the Powers that Be. We’ve already seen Alex Jones at the relatively mundane level – the Powers that Be are simply sinister human beings, orchestrating our cultural and political lives. David Icke goes one step further, and posits shape-shifting Reptilian monsters behind those humans. David Wilcock takes it even one step further:
The clip above situates Wilcock in the first two, Jonesian and Ickian levels of personification of the Powers that Be. He refers to a conspiracy by the Illuminati political elite (Jonesian level) to keep secret the Alien presence on Earth (Ickian level). This is the ‘disclosure’ they’re talking about; UFO folks refer to their collective efforts as the Disclosure Movement. But for Wilcock, the Ickian level of the Powers that Be, the alien presence, shades into a third level, which will reveal itself to us around 2012.
It begins with upheaval at the Jonesian level with an economic collapse and thereby the dismantlement of the Federal Reserve system. In response, they will release advanced technologies like free energy. This will revolutionize our worldview (bringing us out of the mental conditioning of capitalism). This revolution in our worldview will allow Aliens to at long last make contact with us (they are beholden to their own kind of Prime Directive, in Wilcock’s words), which will bring about the Ascension. This is the third, Wilcockian level of personification.
Edgar Cayce(1877-1945) Psychic, Prophet, and pioneer of the New Age movement. One of the fathers of modern woo. Wilcock claims to be his reincarnation.
In the Ascension narrative, we will not just break out of our political shackles, but literally exit this reality. A popular way of talking about this is in terms of our 3-Dimensional or ‘third density’ giving way to fourth, fifth or sixth dimensions or densities. This is all according to the plan and subtle ministrations of beings in these higher densities, the true Powers that Be. Negative government, or even evil Aliens are simply the pawns of benevolent beings from a reality beyond ours.
These narratives, the Jonesian, Ickian and Wilcockian, shade into each other and come in all varieties of combinations. It seems to me that the reasons why people are gripped by these narratives are as distinct as the stories themselves. I’ve already described some of the reasons I think people may be moved by the Jonesian narrative, but the logic of the Ickian and Wilcockian lines remain to be explored. As a vague gesture towards this, I will simply say that I suspect that the kind of person who experiences the Ickian, and particularly the Wilcockian narratives as compelling may have a particular kind of subjective experience of the fabric of reality, in the same way that the Jonesian narrative was underwritten by an experience of cultural and political life.
