Poppycock.

The framers were Masonic Deists. This belief system seeks knowledge of God through the application of reason and meditation on natural laws. God here is the Great Architect, not a “life coach in the sky.”

So the next time you hear someone like Michelle Bachmann or Rick Santorum prattling on about America being a Christian nation, keep the following quotes in mind.

John Adams
“This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.”

“The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.”

Adams also signed the Treaty of Tripoli. Article 11 states:
“The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

Thomas Jefferson
“I have examined all the known superstitions of the world and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.”

“Christianity…(has become) the most perverted system that ever shone on man… rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and imposters led by Paul, the first great corruptor of the teachings of Jesus.”

“The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulturated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves…these clergy in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ.”

“And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter.”

“Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”

Thomas Paine
“It is the duty of every true Deist to vindicate the moral justice of God against the evils of the Bible.”

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of… each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all… of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity.”

“The Christian church has set up a religion of pomp and revenue in pretend imitation of a person (Jesus) who lived a life of poverty.”

James Madison
“What influence in fact have Christian ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society? In many instances they have been upholding the thrones of political tyrrany. In no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty have found in the clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate liberty, does not need the clergy.”

“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”

Madison was also against tax exemption for churches.

Another fun fact: a mere 7 percent of dwellers in the original 13 colonies belonged to a church at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Separation of Church and State
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.” —Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Danbury (Conn.) Baptist Association, January 1, 1802

And here’s one last quote, but not from a framer:

“Hence today I believe I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.” —Adolph Hitler

Welcome to another edition of our sometime-series, The Contrarian’s Old-Time Conspiracy Hour! Today, we’re going to look at a pair of subjects closer to the truth than your average intrigue: The Great Pirates and the Gross Universal Cash Heist (GRUNCH). These two concepts were originally put forth by intellectual rapscallion R. Buckminster Fuller, a man whose genius knew few bounds.

Devised decades ago, Bucky’s hypotheses have never been more timely, what with the Occupy Wall Street protests and a tottering global economy. Great Pirates and GRUNCH are best taken as informed allegory, not hard fact. This is why they often get slapped with the “conspiracy” label. But unlike, say, reptilian shapeshifters who secretly run the world, the Great Pirates and GRUNCH are based on actual dynamics in trade, information and governance.

Let’s start with GRUNCH. Basically, this is the overarching strategy of the Great Pirates (more on them in a second). The theory posits that the nations of the world are actually “sponsored entities” of a few select financial networks. World governments (and their subjects) are kept in place through debts, which is why politicians are always going to raise taxes, no matter what they promise — they have to contain rising interest. Of course, even in politics, you have to pay to play. In 1980, Bucky estimated that it cost $100 million to run for president, $30 million to run for Senate and $10 million for the House of representatives. Obviously, the price tag is much higher now, but the story is the same: politicians are “sponsored” by the financial networks and their overlords, who invest in campaigns. The Supreme Court supports this arrangement, as demonstrated by the Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission ruling.

Now, Bucky didn’t think that there was any single gang of Great Pirates running the show; he believed that there were likely a number of them, often tugging in different directions. As an engineer, he found such shoddy staging inefficient, and therefore unacceptable.

So who are these Great Pirates? The late, great, Robert Anton Wilson has a typically elegant summation:

The Great Pirates signify those men combining elements of what ethologists call the alpha male, historians call the despot and sociologists call the sociopath… our primitive ancestors, Fuller says, were conquered by wave after wave of these despotic-sociopathic Great Pirates, until all humans became accustomed to being ruled by Great Pirates, since the only other choice was to be murdered by them.

The Great Pirates then discovered that other people were working at science, and hired the scientists to produce gadgets to suit their own needs. Therefore, Bucky says, science knows more about weaponry than about “livingry.” Fuller’s experimental geometry and housing were attempts to contribute to the livingry he felt science had largely ignored.

If you to accept the basic outline here — and I do, to a fair degree — you’ll quickly recognize where the far right and far left get it wrong. The right sees government as invasive and liberty-depriving, but they fail to grok that the majority of today’s governments are merely puppets of a corporate behemoth that seeks only increased profits. Today’s left views government as the only entity that can tame the corporate beast, completely missing that policymakers are already ensnared by the financial/corporate apparatus.

Until a critical mass of people realize the nexus of criminality here, we are likely to remain in bondage. So listen up, lefties and Tea Partiers: you can yell about freedom or the corporatocracy until you’re blue in the face — the fact of the matter is, you are only dividing yourselves. And guess who benefits from that? Why do you think “wedge issues” exist? Because the people running the campaigns don’t want you to pay attention to the real issues.

Is Occupy Wall Street the commencement of a new understanding? I have no idea, but the cynic in me highly doubts it. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong.

If you want to learn more about the Great Pirates and GRUNCH, I recommend you check out Bucky’s book GRUNCH of Giants — available free at the Buckminster Fuller Institute.

Conspiracies are fun. Everybody has one, or at least the inclination to maybe-kinda-possibly entertain one. For example, I used to be partial to the John F. Kennedy assassination. Some folks are into alien cover-ups, others believe that our current president was born in Africa. The world of conspiracies is vast and often interconnected — pick up a thread here, and you never know exactly where you’ll end up.

Which brings us to The Contrarian’s Old-Time Conspiracy Hour. Consider this another idea for a recurring feature that we’re unlikely to follow-through with. But we’ll have some fun with this entry, at least.

One area that naturally lends itself to conspiracy theories is intelligence work. From US-sanctioned “wet teams” to CIA‘s notorious MK-ULTRA program, covert ops make for wild stories. The interesting thing about the spy game is that it’s really tough to separate fact from fiction. Today’s post deals with the former — namely, CIA’s alleged control of the media. Or are these “facts” yet another misdirection? Welcome to the house of mirrors.

“The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” — Former CIA chief William Colby, who died under rather mysterious circumstances.

Our little conspiracy is largely informed by a Carl Bernstein story which originally appeared in a 1977 edition of Rolling Stone. Bernstein, you surely recall, is the journalist who, along with Bob Woodward, helped break the Watergate scandal. His subsequent investigation, which resulted in the article “The CIA & The Media,” laid the cornerstone of a durable, if lately neglected conspiracy: the manipulation of the American press by shadowy government entities.

Perhaps this conspiracy died down because the US government became more audacious in its manipulation of the media. The George W. Bush administration was hardly subtle in this regard. Still, the information in Bernstein’s story, dated though it may be, paints a disturbing picture of clandestine control of the “fourth estate.”

The directive under which CIA conducted its media operations was called MOCKINGBIRD. The extent of its reach, and indeed, whether it existed at all, is a matter of debate. The working theory holds that Frank Wisner, CIA Director, Office of Special Projects (OSP) managed to cajole high-ranking media officials into running CIA reports in their respective press outlets. By the 1950s, the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, CBS and more had been folded into the operation.

Bernstein’s article focuses on one Joseph Alsop, a reporter who penned countless foreign affairs stories in more than 300 newspapers. He didn’t work alone. Even Ben Bradlee — the storied Washington Post editor who presided over both The Pentagon Papers and Bernstein’s own Watergate reporting — was thought to have been with MOCKINGBIRD. And the list by no means stops there. According to Bernstein:

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.

And placing stories was apparently not all the agency called upon its press agents to do. Bernstein:

Appropriately, the CIA uses the term ‘reporting’ to describe much of what cooperating journalists did for the Agency. “We would ask them, ‘Will you do us a favor?’” said a senior CIA official. “‘We understand you’re going to be in Yugoslavia. Have they paved all the streets? Where did you see planes? Were there any signs of military presence? How many Soviets did you see? If you happen to meet a Soviet, get his name and spell it right…. can you set up a meeting for us? Or arrange a message?’” Many CIA officials regarded these helpful journalists as operatives: the journalists tended to see themselves as trusted friends of the Agency who performed occasional favors — usually without pay — in the national interest.

Sometimes they did get paid. Charles Douglas Jackson of TIME supposedly split time running CIA’s Psychological Operations and being Vice-President in charge of his company’s media empire.

Although it is pretty shocking to realize that our supposedly “free” press may not be entirely so, the relationship between CIA and reporters dates back to the early days of the agency. Director Allen Dulles, the man whose operational DNA is still very much a part of CIA, stocked the fledgling organization with Yale men, most of whom had a reportorial bent. That these Ivy Leaguers would in turn recruit more of their kind for strategic purposes makes perfect sense.

America has, since its inception, held its press as an example of freedom and integrity — particularly in comparison with countries where information is tightly controlled. Interesting then, that one of the pillars of our liberty has such a duplicitous past.

So they got him. After nearly a decade on the lam, Osama Bin Laden has been brought to justice, whatever that means. Here in DC, we saw spontaneous celebration in front of the White House at the news that America’s Most Wanted had been terminated. Cue the 24-hour cable news orgy.

Some, including myself, have reservations about glorifying the targeted assassination of another human being. Does that make me a pacifist? Not at all. It just seems perverse and indulgent. We did what we had to do, let’s move on. I am glad that Bin Laden no longer draws breath. But I find myself thinking about the political circumstances that created him. I suppose there’s a grim logic to it all: a mujahideen born of CIA meddling in Afghanistan, killed by the Joint Special Operations Command, of which CIA is a part.

What does this mean for al-Queda and international terrorist networks? Likely not much. Although Bin Laden was an important recruitment tool, he existed in the better half as the last decade mostly as a figurehead. The interesting thing about al-Queda has always been that it functions as a network, rather than a typical command-control structure. (For info on US military efforts to become more like al-Queda, read this piece by former General Stanley McChrystal.) Killing Bin Laden is a significant symbolic victory, but it will do little to disrupt the al-Queda franchise as it exists today.

Slate talks about how al-Queda can function in a post-Bin Laden world:

The bigger danger comes from al-Queda affiliates, such as the Yemen-based al-Queda of the Arabian Peninsula or al-Queda of the Islamic Maghreb. These organizations are linked to the al-Queda core, at times sharing personnel and resources and working toward a common goal. However, they also have a structure and identity independent of al-Queda.

With Bin Laden’s death, these affiliates retain their operational capacity. They will continue to try to undermine U.S. allies and some, such as AQAP, will attempt to strike U.S. targets beyond the region in which they operate. Bin Laden worked hard to try to knit these disparate organizations together. His success has made them all far more lethal, but keeping the ties strong depended heavily on Bin Laden’s charisma and his access to funds.

One thing’s for sure: President Obama has made it very difficult for his domestic opposition to say he’s “soft on terror.” It was Obama, not the previous cowboy in the Oval Office, who bagged the prize buck. 2012 will definitely be about “the economy, stupid,” but the prez will certainly benefit from having neutralized a long-cherished Republican talking point. Of course, they’ll still try. But they will fail, at least on that score.

Obama’s speech was strong. Coupled with US reaction to the Arab Spring (still very much a fluid phenomenon), it stands to make “consequentialist” policy the official Obama Doctrine: a combination of realism, opportunism and pro-democratic ideology, applied on a case-by-case basis.

We’ll see what happens next.

One word: propaganda.

This is why we can’t have nice policies. We don’t know how to sell them.

The good news is that the fix is pretty simple. All anyone has to to do to regiment the attitudes of the public is THREE THINGS, CONSISTENTLY. This has been borne out through history, from Ptolemy to John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush. And I’ve identified them, just for you!

1. Make your message resonate emotionally
2. Make it relevant to the individual
3. Make the opposition look tyrannical

That’s pretty easy, right? You’d think so. But the Left has tremendous difficulty applying all three of these principles in concert, and consistently. By contrast, the Right does it 24/7.

One caveat: different countries and global regions have different value sets, almost like cultural DNA. For example, Canada can and does respond to “greater good” arguments, so long as they are participatory. That’s a social democracy! Many in the East are less susceptible to self-interest motivators unless there is implied collective benefit. In America, INDIVIDUALISM IS IT. That’s the operating paradigm in which all effective messaging must occur. If you make your message fit with America’s Ur-folk narrative, then you can even sell collectivist policy. (Sorry libertarians; it’s true.)

Keep in mind that propaganda is outcome-neutral. Like other technologies, it can be used to cure or to kill. So before you start calling me Goebbels, check out this quote from the godfather of American PR, Edward Bernays:

Propaganda becomes vicious and reprehensive only when its authors consciously and deliberately disseminate that which they know to be lies, or when they aim at effects they know to be prejudicial to the common good.

FOX News is prejudicial to the common good. But ultimately, the technique for shaping public opinion is not partisan. It’s just that one side has figured out how to wield this technology, and the other side… not so much. Speaking of technology, consider the digital space. Each time a new tool emerges that can be used for political organization, the Left thinks they’ve just discovered Penicillin. Twitter is a perfect example. Progressives reveled in its ability to deliver 140-character bullets of outrage, never considering that the opposition was figuring out how to use it even more effectively. What do progressives do next? Complain loudly that conservatives have taken it over.

Let’s go back those three principles. I work in media reform (well, partly, anyway), a movement that has been notoriously difficult to message. I think it could be made easier by checking our advocacy against these three principles.

To set an appropriate frame for messaging on media reform, I’d start with FREEDOM (an uniquely American political synonym for individualism):

Freedom is meaningless where its expression is controlled by powerful groups like major media conglomerates. Freedom must be insured. Your God-given rights depend on it.

In the first sentence, I showed you the tyranny of the opposition. In the second — without using the word government or policy — I told you how the goal is accomplished (government and policy!). In the last, I made an emotional appeal to the individual within the context of American cultural tradition.

The next step would be to identify “key persons” and persuade them that it is in THEIR self-interest to broadly disseminate your core message. Church is an excellent place to start. Hell, you might even snag a few powerful figures from those “media conglomerates” if you use proper persuasion. (Here’s where it helps to have authentic and charismatic communicators on hand. They’re basically product pitchmen, but instead of vacuum cleaners or soap, they sell “values.”)

I could go on and on and on about the how’s and where’s of effectively applied propaganda. But the bottom line is that if there is to be a successful and sustainable progressive movement in the United States, it must employ consistently these three principles of communication.

I’m here to help.

Look, kid. Maybe I was born yesterday, but I’m no fucking rube. Who the fuck do you think you are? Are you shitting me? What is this “I-have-no-gift-to-bring” crap? Do you have any fucking idea who I am? Look around. Lemme ask you something: does this look like any other birth to you? See how everyone’s glowing here, like actually glowing real light? What part of this halo do you not understand? And oh yeah, here’s a clue: there’s a fucking CHOIR OF ANGELS in the sky. Try and tell me you missed that on your way in the door.

Hey. HEY! Shut the fuck up. [sighs] Give me a second here — I’m just trying to understand how it got into your sick, twisted brain that banging on a fucking drum is some kind of tribute to me, the SAVIOR OF ALL MANKIND. That’s right, you hear that? Feel stupid now? You ain’t seen shit. And come on, I’m a baby. A newborn fucking baby. Do you think I want some brat around me banging on a drum? Well as it happens, I’ve just arrived from a rather taxing voyage, what with having been astrally projected into this lady’s womb and then squeezed out over the course of some pretty gut-wrenching hours. You ever seen a birth before? Holy shit. I’m guessing the phrase “miracle of birth” was thought up by some absentee baby daddy who was off smoking a cigar when it was go time.  I tell you what hombre, that shit is grueling. So you’ll excuse me if I’m not in the mood for your rum-pa-pum-pum bullshit.

Don’t you look away from me asshole, I’m talking to you. Look — see those three over there? Kings, I shit you not. Fucking KINGS. Not one king, with a box of chocolates or some shit. Three. Fucking. Kings. This classy little combo just swooped in, slick as shit, each with a different present for me. That is style, my friend. Do you have any idea how hard it is to coordinate scheduling and get that kind of logistical shit together in these times? Never mind these guys are fucking legit kings, with regal business to do back home. All the same, look what they did 1.) they somehow got together on this plan, don’t ask me how. 2.) they worked out some pretty sophisticated astronomical directions — also, totally in the dark on that one, and 3.) they traveled across the fucking DESERT on camels for DAYS. Can you imagine how much sand they’ve got jammed up their nooks and crannies? I mean, look at them: that’s some haggard motherfuckers right there.  And between you and me: honestly, their gifts don’t really do much for me. But you know what? They tried. But hold the phone! Here comes some dumpy kid, with a weak-ass story about how poor he is and hang on, there’s drums involved. Well, shiver me fucking timbers. I hope you’ll understand if I don’t break into spontaneous applause.

It’s not like my birth was a surprise either. Ever heard of the Old Testament, more commonly known in these times as THE TESTAMENT? It’s late-breaking news, jimbo. John the Baptist? Ring a bell? Don’t look at me like you haven’t heard that name before. We’re talking signs, symbols, prophesy, all that jazz. I know news doesn’t exactly travel fast, but I think it’s safe to say by now there’s a bit of a buzz about the CHRIST CHILD, KING OF THE JEWS. In fact I do believe that a fellow you may know by the name of King Herod is out there at this very minute, killing every newborn in town trying to get to me. I’d say that’s a public profile.

Aw fuck, now you’re crying. Alright, come over here. Come on now, right up to the cradle, I can’t sit up yet. Listen: you seem like a good kid. You got a dumb idea in your head, you’re probably drunk, I know how it goes. Just learn from this, okay? I’m gonna let you in on something: a lot of heavy shit is about to go down. You’re gonna probably want to clear out of town for a while. And while you’re at it, practice that drum, okay? And please: way off where no one can hear, cause I’ll tell you right now, you’re pretty terrible. But practice makes perfect. Not Jesus perfect, but you know… listenable. There you go, wipe those tears away. You’re gonna be fine. Alright. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get some sleep. First though, lemme give you some advice: register the copyright to that song. It’s catchy, I’m not gonna lie. Get someone with a nice voice to sing it, I’m talking a nice voice — and another drummer, preferably — and it could keep your family in serious shekels for a long time. Okay? You hear me? Good kid. And just cause I’m a nice guy, I’m gonna grant you everlasting life and wash your soul clean of sin. You’ll thank me later. Now go on, get outta here, you. Help yourself to a mint on your way out.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqY6mXULzpw

Billy Joel was angry at this live concert taping in the former Soviet Union due to the fact that the lighting crew kept shining on the audience. This made the kids stop dancing, because they were nervous the secret police would see their faces on video and harass them later. The Piano Man simply wanted them to have a good time at his show, and who can blame him?

The dude can certainly rage with the best of them, though. Reminds me of Trent Reznor at Lollapalooza ’91, minus the dorky braids and mid-afternoon strobe light.

My head would hang over these books for hours, taking in fantastic tales of the macabre. I studied intently grainy black and white photos of odd buildings, castles and churches in far off lands, each marked by supernatural phenomenon that chilled my youthful bones.

For the most part, these tales were well scrubbed of actual terror, designed to spark interest in reading rather than drive 6-year old Chris to scream for his mother with every headlight that bounced into his nighttime bedroom.

But there is one story I remember that was truly scary. So much so that I wonder how it was ever deemed suitable for a kid’s book. Maybe it was the fault of some bitter editor who saw himself writing the Great American Novel instead of proofreading “The Ghostly Hand of Fartmiser Castle!” for a second-rate publishing company. Because “The Terror of 50 Berkeley Square, London” could soil the britches of children well past their diaper years. Just thinking about it still sends shivers down my spine to this day.

The house on Berkeley Square is a residence built in the Georgian style popular in the 1700s — a time when London was divided by class lines too broad to bridge. The building stood as a testament to the privileged, while only a few blocks away, London’s poor dwelt in filth, crime and starvation. Occupying one of the city’s chic districts, it has been home to Prime Ministers, socialites and high-ranking military officials. Yet for many decades, the house remained abandoned.

The Berkeley Square story transcends your typical ghost yarn — no white phantoms stalk the hallways, nothing goes bump in the night. Instead, the building houses a terrifying, Lovecraftian presence bent on corrupting all those who live there, dubbed “the Beast.” In the 1800s, a young man dared to spend the night in a bedroom the entity was said to occupy, a challenge he laughed off with blustery confidence. Late in the evening, his associates heard him screaming. Rushing into the bedroom, they found him standing upright, eyes bulging from his head and sweating in panic. The man went into a delirious shock and died shortly thereafter.

Following this incident the house went unoccupied for decades. Empty, maybe, but hardly quiet: some wandering passersby reported screams of lunacy emanating through the thick walls of the vacant estate.

There is a subsequent tale of two sailors taking advantage of England’s “squatter’s law, through which an unoccupied building can be temporarily used as housing by anyone who gained entrance. Shrugging off the paranormal “nonsense” of 50 Berkeley Square, the seamen broke in to spend a night on shore-leave.  That same night, one of them was found cowering in a nearby alleyway. He spoke, almost incoherently, of an “oozing” creature that entered the room through a closet door. His last recollection was of the entity “filling the room” as his colleague stood frozen in terror. When the sailor and a  local constable returned to the home, they found the other man forcibly impaled on the iron gates below a broken window.

Theories have emerged to debunk this supernatural history: tales of “afflicted” relatives, banished from status-conscious London, returning in confusion to the place of their original confinement. Shunned family members haunt Berkeley Square as much as ghosts: symbols of genetic imperfections in a high society that refused to tolerate any flaws, whether organic or social.

There are other stories of those whose sanity imploded when met with the Berkeley Square Beast — the formless monster that enters unseen and pulls you out of your world and into something much darker and more sinister. Perhaps these tales were invented to keep the vagabonds and Cockneys, and squatters out of Berkeley Square’s general vicinity. Perhaps the Beast of Berkeley Square is the manifestation of the fears of the upper echelon: that the undesirables living mere blocks away could invade their pampered lives and force them to contemplate a truly terrifying world of pain, disease and death.

Those who currently occupy the building (now as an office complex) still speak of strange occurrences: smells, screams and strange mists that fill rooms. Whatever haunts the halls, rooms and minds of 50 Berkeley Square remains a tale of madness and mystery for all ages.

News Flash: rock ‘n’ roll music — that hip-gyrating, innocence-robbing, beat-driven racket that ate the world — is really an ecstatic heathen ritual.

Tell us something we don’t know.

Author Christopher Knowles aims to do just that in his new book, The Secret History of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which investigates the historic correlation between the pantheistic priests of yore and the gender-blurring, mutilation-prone avatars of rock. Everyone knows that Jim Morrison was the Lizard King and David Bowie the Starman, but were you aware that the Greek god of debauchery Dionysus “was also closely identified with various groups of long-haired, armored priests, whose thrashing musical performances were the headline act of Mystery rituals from Phrygia to Samothrace, from Eleusis to the Vatican Hill”?

OK, maybe some of you did.

And there’s even more to this ancient analog of glam and metal. Knowles has some persuasive evidence that tight trousers, trashy makeup and high decibels are hardly new under the sun (which you may or may not worship). From the author’s recent blog post at The Daily Grail:

The Kouretes — who the historian Nonnus described as being “sane in their madness” — derived their name from their androgynous hair and clothing, much like any number of early heavy metal bands from the late 60s and early 70s. Greek historian Strabo:

‘(T)he Kouretes of Aitolia got this name because, like ‘girls’ (kourai), they wore women’s clothes, for, they add, there was a fashion of this kind among the Greeks, and the Ionians were called ‘tunic-trailing,’ and the soldiers of Leonidas were ‘dressing their hair’ when they were to go forth to battle.’

As with Little Richard in the 50s and the glam rockers of the early 1970s, it seems that crossing gender boundaries unleashed something primal in these performers. And just like the metal bands of the late ’70s, the Kouretes evolved from a violent androgyny to a hypermasculine image and pose.

Strabo wrote that “the war-dance was first introduced by (the) Kouretes, and that this dance afforded a pretext to those also who were more warlike than the rest and spent their life under arms, so that they too came to be called by the same name.”

The Korybantes dressed in full hoplite leather armor for their performances, a few dozen centuries before Kiss and Judas Priest. Strabo described their act in terms that could just as easily describe Slayer or Iron Maiden: “(one) fills full the fingered melody, the call that brings on frenzy…stringed instruments raise their shrill cry, and frightful mimickers from some place unseen bellow like bulls, and the semblance of drums, as of subterranean thunder, rolls along, a terrifying sound.”

Here I was thinking that Manowar were just an over-the-top metal act. Now I see that they’re astute students of history.

The Secret History of Rock ‘n’ Roll is available now.