| Blair Witch at last forces into national consciousness the reality that the primary threat to America was NOT from Satan, the Priapic Male Principle demonized in The Exorcist, but from an Occidentalized Hajar al-Aswad, the hidden omphalos of the Wicked Witch of the West � the Empowered Woman, rapt in self-service, self-love, and self-advancement at any cost. Blair Witch neatly summarizes the effects of four decades of feminism, swallowed whole, by a nation psychically pre-conditioned to accept its every demand, tenet, revisionism, and lie. Like 1999�s other anti-feminist blockbuster, Fight Club, the dynamo driving Blair Witch�s psycho-social suckerpunch was precisely the level of cultural denial at large in American matriarchy. With every other major cultural outlet and institution � religion, government, media, law, corporations, academia � dominated by feminism and political correctness, silence concerning our regression to matriarchy, like the foul Witch herself, ruled the land. And in terms of speaking overt truth, these two movies were no exception � neither film so much as mentions the word �feminism.� But, of course, with the culture so fully invested in WomanChurch, that is how the Gorgon must be fought � indirectly, by way of mirrors, through reflection of its evil. Any truth-speaking about �feminism� would have triggered the �off-switch� carefully conditioned into our collective Dreaming Mind, squelching the films� entire content and impact. Thus, both Blair Witch and Fight Club SHOWED the effects on American masculinity of the Gorgon, both in its overt (Fight Club) and hidden (Blair Witch) manifestations. Blair Witch cleverly demonstrated both the breadth and the deadly gravity of the national disease; Fight Club, in mythic terms, illustrated the hidden, growing violence and disaffection of emasculated American men � and even prophesied a resolution for our (s)mothered revolution, aborted by gun, baton, and skullduggery in the Sixties.. Blair Witch, like The Exorcist, is a disturbingly accurate (if unintended) excursion into the collective unconscious of America, typically represented in literature, mythology, art, and iconography as the woods, sea, or underworld. Released in the millennium�s dying year, Blair Witch�s central protagonist is Heather, the inexperienced, solipsistic feminist who now calls the shots, and who pilots the leaderless boys into magickal nightmare amidst the Maryland woods. Heather, a New Empowered Woman, is naively confident in her power and completely unaware that witches -- negative feminine powers -- are very old and very, very real elements of human history and pre-history. Her recognition of that fact, like her apology quoted above, comes too late � already the explorers, standing for the culture-at-large, have been skillfully guided into the Witch�s lair, and nothing remains to them but to scream, and roll the credits. Witchcraft is, in fact, the manipulation of natural phenomena and energies at the root of matriarchal pre-history, and the selfish and retributive use of witchcraft -- and other forms of chthonic, magickal power -- may have been the primary motivation for the break by the male collectivity into consciousness, fatherhood, religious/spiritual brotherhoods, and incipient �patriarchy.� That is, far in the Paleolithic mists, men spellbound by the Great Goddess finally realized � hey, we'd best invent egoic, individual consciousness � or remain forever enthralled. Thus individuation, paternity, �patriarchy,� and �religion� were born. �The Practice� boomed in the last three decades of the twentieth century, and its techniques are in wide use in the West today, overwhelmingly by dilettantes understanding neither its bases nor effects. In this, many Practitioners share the naivete of Heather, envisioning witchcraft as a completely innocuous, loving system restoring sacredness and health to Earth and -- oh, gee, how conveniently! -- empowering females to boot! In Western cultures, the figure I call the Empowered Witch is the embodiment of all feminine motivations not yet risen to exposure and consciousness. But the most negative, vengeful, power-driven aspects of witchcraft, as Blair Witch graphically hints, are almost never seen. They are hatched and executed in the darkness of full deniability, typically with a frosting of unassailable moral righteousness and the mysterium of sex. Modern America now teems with witches of varying intent and stripe, typically single, middle-aged-to-elderly females at odds with all male energy, seeking that modern grail and bane, �personal empowerment.� I have met many witches in America; some proudly wear the title, others practice in secret. Blair Witch is far more than an innovative blip on the cultural radar, a quick horror fix. The film is a warning shot fired over the bow of Western culture, and an archangelic laser, lighting the lies cast occultly into our Dreaming Mind, and infesting our society. Like the student protagonists, who upon entering the unconsciousness of the woods were transfixed by the rock upon which a pentangle of men were chained -- and who later are terrorized everywhere by the Hag�s Cross, made of piled stones -- Western culture is now lost and trapped in the Candy House of the Empowered Witch, a materialistic, unconscious abode seeming sweet to the tooth, but deadly to body, soul and spirit. The taboo against skepticism or criticism of female motivations and actions which permeates our culture -- the premature elevation of the feminine to divinity and the assumption of privileged status, both recapitulations of matriarchy -- have led us to collective torture, imprisonment, and degradation of everything masculine. The Candy House in the middle of the forest has sweet paint, but it also has a hidden basement, and when we return there without the totem of strong masculine consciousness, we do not again emerge. All to the good of the enervated, foul old Toxic King, whose only concern is clinging to the Throne. All to the benefit of his mate, our Empowered Witch. The reason that the Wicked Witch of the East does not threaten the inhabitants of Oz is because in the �real world�s� East, negative aspects of the feminine collectivity are displayed openly, and made explicit and conscious through use of mythology and iconography. Kali is perhaps the best example of the awareness in the East of the existence of both positive and negative poles in the feminine. Tarot places her as penultimate trump, just prior to the complete reconciliation of opposites in the final trump of the Major Arcana (�World,� the unus mundus of alchemy). Kali is Feminine Justice, the Dark Goddess who brings final dissolution and revelation -- which in the Western tradition, is apocalypse. |
| The Witch-King and America's Dreaming Mind |
| Part four of nine |