Prometheus and Atlas

514 Pages·2016·2.32 MB·English

by  Jason Reza Jorjani

JASON REZA JORJANI
PROMETHEUS AND ATLAS
OFFICIAL FACEBOOK PAGE
LONDON
ARKTOS
2016
COPYRIGHT © 2016 BY ARKTOS MEDIA LTD. AND JASON REZA JORJANI.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by
any means (whether electronic or mechanical), including photocopying, recording or by
any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publisher.
ISBN 978-1-910524-61-9 (Softcover)
ISBN 978-1-910524-67-1 (Hardback)
ISBN 978-1-910524-69-5 (Ebook)
EDITOR
John B. Morgan
COVER DESIGN
Andreas Nilsson
LAYOUT
Tor Westman
ARKTOS MEDIA LTD.
www.arktos.com
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This book is dedicated to
Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove
Who thought aloud with the most brilliant minds at the end of history
And whose Socratic dialogues allowed their thinking to nurture
The souls of the coming guardians, who will learn to hurl lightning-bolts.
May we all be as ethical and good-humored as this gadfly.
“I’m playing into your hand, and with your own cards… I’m exploiting the
impossible. Or, more accurately, it’s a question of making the impossible possible…
something that would bring about the one real revolution in this world of ours, if
people would only take it in.”
— ALBERT CAMUS, Caligula
CONTENTS
Introduction
The Spectral Revolution
Fringe Science
Reason and Terror
Storming Heaven
The Titanic Total Artwork
The Occultation of Supernature
Worlds at War over Earth
The Postmodern Prometheus
Atlas of the New Atlantis
Kill a Buddha on the Way
Being Bound for Freedom
Mercurial Hermeneutics
Bibliography
“Jason Jorjani’s Prometheus & Atlas is what profound philosophical writing used to be
but has long refused to be: visionary in its method and content, sweeping in its scope,
literally mythical, and, above all, positive. That is a gross understatement, though. His
notions of the paranormal as normal, of a coming spectral revolution, of a future
spectral technology, and of a still unrealized but very real superhuman potential come
together to form a coherent but still emerging worldview that is neither modern nor
postmodern but something other and more.”
— JEFFREY J. KRIPAL, Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought and former
Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University, author of Authors of
the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred
“Prometheus & Atlas is the most brilliant treatise relating to parapsychological
material that I have ever encountered… it is also a very serious exploration of depth
psychology and mythology. Jorjani’s emphasis on what he terms ‘the spectral’ affords
us an opportunity to expand some of our existing models concerning psi. …Jorjani has
written the definitive book regarding the proper place of psi phenomena in the history
of philosophical ideas… However, Prometheus & Atlas takes the argument much
further and demonstrates that parapsychology and psi phenomena can be viewed, not
only within the history of philosophy, but in the larger context of cultural history itself.
Jorjani examines the mechanistic worldview [that] dominates science and has led to
the marginalization of parapsychology (as well as many other cultural imbalances).
The range of scholarship required to make this argument is, in my estimation, nothing
short of awesome. …I don’t think any other writer comes even close to tying things
together the way Jorjani has done. The experience of reading it is rather like gazing
out at a brilliant starry sky, with many interrelated constellations, stars, and planets.
Each is beautiful and unique and, together, one senses a whole cosmos.”
— JEFFREY MISHLOVE, Ph.D. (UC Berkley), Host of Thinking Allowed, author of The
Roots of Consciousness, and Dean of Programs in Transformational Psychology at
the University of Philosophical Research
Introduction
There is something curious about the fraternal statues of Prometheus and
Atlas at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Instead of simply bearing a
celestial globe on his shoulders, Atlas is supporting several interlocking rings
that outline the shape of a hollow sphere. These bear astrological markings
which suggest the precession of the equinoxes through the rise and fall of
world ages. The very same zodiacal symbols are also impressed upon a ring
through which Prometheus is triumphantly emerging. An inscription from the
Greek tragedian Aeschylus reminds us that the torch of craftily stolen fire that
he holds stands for techne, the essence of Technology: “Prometheus, teacher
in every art, brought the fire that hath proved for mortals a means to mighty
ends.” We find yet another hint to the meaning of this symbolism in a bolder
inscription beneath a depiction of Zeus holding a compass over the central
doorway of the main building that is visible immediately behind Prometheus,
which reads: “Wisdom and Knowledge shall be the stability of thy Times.”
This is paradoxical. Discoveries fostering the advancement of knowledge
would usually be taken to upset tradition and unleash instability, to demand
changes that both the masses and established interests fear. What kind of
society could have its stability grounded not in tradition, but in the
persistence of the quest for Wisdom and Knowledge at all costs? It would
have to be a civilization led by those rare individuals who have the titanic
psychical constitution to endure uncertainty, and even to thrive in its midst. It
is no accident that King Atlas, ruling over the Atlantean world empire
through Time, stands opposed to the Cathedral of St. Patrick, the Serpent-
slayer, and that his head is turned aside in such a way that his gaze spurns the
Lord’s altar. Taking a position behind Atlas, the significance of this defiant
posture should be as clear to any mindful observer as it must have been to the
devious planners of this Temple of Man. It is amusingly ironic that every
year Gotham lights up its “Christmas” tree behind Lucifer.
One does not have to look too far to see that there is something of the
mercurial Joker in this spectacular arrangement. Whoever had Hermes
sculpted into the facade of the Grand Central train station in the greatest city
in the New World knew exactly what he was doing. Hermes is the god of
aliens, merchants, thieves, and liars. He is akin to the confidence artist.
Confidence men, especially the great ones like P. T. Barnum, after whom the
famous circus is named, are in the business of creating beliefs, but that does
not mean that everything they produce for the wonderment of the public are
fakes. They are not consummate charlatans. Unless there is some truth mixed
with the deceit, it would all be totally unbelievable. Barnum was so
successful because hardly anyone could tell the difference between which of
his freakish curiosities were genuine and which were cons. Certain attributes
of Prometheus are even perversely reflected in the persona of Hermes, as if in
a distorting funhouse mirror.
Hesiod refers to titans such as Prometheus and Atlas as the most primordial
gods. My work takes its departure from Martin Heidegger’s prophecy of a
return of the gods as the future of a poetic reflection on the sciences from
beyond the end of Philosophy. Heidegger’s technological interpretation of
Science is rooted in his understanding of human existence. The practice of
scientific research is only one of the modalities of our existence, and it does
not secondarily yield technology, but is grounded by the use of tools and
made possible by certain technical developments. All science is always
already Technoscience. Science does not apprehend the elementary
constituents or laws of an objective world prior to our existential engagement
in technological development and scientific research. Heidegger goes so far
as to try to demonstrate the way in which our scientific world-pictures cannot
be extricated from political history and the spiritual values of our community
— for which the arts, as led by dichtung, are determinative. This is a bold
claim and Heidegger only obliquely, or at best esoterically, addressed that
feature of human experience which has the greatest potential to light up the
deep structure of scientific practice, to literally comprehend it, from out of
what currently lies at its fringe: the spectral.
The thesis of this work involves three inextricable propositions. The first
proposition is that the basic concepts and methodological constraints
employed by the sciences are the expression of personal agencies that are
spectral and that act on the world through demonic possession. The second is
that life forms psychically battle one another to abide within the horizon of
worlds structured by what is of vital concern to them, and Nature is not
objectively there to inhabit prior to, or outside of, this historical struggle. The
third proposition, which presupposes the first two, is that although there is no
objective standpoint outside of worldview warfare, the form of life spectrally
structured by the essence of Technology has a unique power to assimilate all
others.
Bear in mind these three interlocked elements of the core thesis as I turn to
an overview of my arguments across the twelve chapters of this work. The
opening chapter sets up the problem of the spectral with respect to scientific
research. Every culture is built on binary oppositions and marginalizing
exclusions attendant to totemic taboos that knot its social fabric together.
Spectral phenomena radically compromise such constructions that are
intended to guard a given society against the terrifying abyss of the
incomprehensible in Nature. In a sense that can only become clear throughout
the course of this text, the unique power of such phenomena to do so lies in
the way that they manifest an irreducible spectrum and haunt everything