Once Born

I was born under a bad star, as were we all. But my family did not know the signs: there must have been birds and other omens—I suspect every birth is so attended, if one knows how to look—but they were not recorded. I was not marked out for my destiny, and so I was thrown into the Factory with all the others: I was dedicated to the Illuminati at birth. They looked between my infant legs and called what they saw a “penis”, then mutilated it to fit their Platonic ideal. They wrote “male” on my birth certificate, and gave me a name which would be recognized as such. They put me in front of a television, and told me in countless little ways that it was my task in life to learn and uphold the Rules.

Unrecognized, I had no one to name for me the craving for knowledge I felt, no one to explain the shadows and voices and intercieses which (I thought) only I could perceive. I heard rumors of such things, of course, but the sources were … less than credible. I knew better than to trust them, yet I could not help but believe. So people called me gullible, a “moony” child, doomed to amount to nothing, perhaps a career in the arts. Perhaps they were right.

They made a mistake, though, in permitting me unrestricted access to books stores and libraries and the Internet. Or perhaps it was not a mistake. Perhaps it was the only true rebellion that my parents could dare to make. So I read voraciously: stories of love and independence, stories of epic quests for identity and community, stories which undermined popular narratives of strength and herd-minded “individualism”, stories of magic and heroism. I could not always avoid the mainstream narratives—I had no way of knowing that I ought!—and so the stories were mixed in my brain and I still sometimes struggle to sort them out.

There were a few children who were more like me than the others. They showed me books I would not have found, otherwise, and shared my fascination with the hidden things in the outside world. But they also craved acceptance from the larger world—as, to be fair, did I at the time—and they were willing to go to any lengths to achieve it: displaying their burgeoning masculinity by tormenting and brutalizing the one person they thought they could. Me. And then mocked me when, put in a positions where I might do the same to others in turn, I refused.

Cruelty is the first and last tool of the Illuminati, of the Archons and the Black Brotherhoods and all their slaves. Violence is the second. It is by these tools that the structures of power most faithfully reproduce themselves. The world can be a terrible place, and there are times when cruelty and violence cannot be avoided, but they are few and far between, and to take pleasure in them is always an only a service to the Powers that enslave the world. I knew this in my heart without being taught, from the earliest days of my memory, but the knowledge brought me such torment that I almost forgot, and even now struggle to hold onto it. We must resist, of course: complacency only serves their interests. But in resisting, we provide them an opportunity to mobilize: the police, the media, the counter-protests by those who worship the Archons. This dilemma must be confronted at every turn. It cannot be overcome entirely.