Book Review #1: Occult Memetics: Reality Manipulation

I recently wrote about my favorite YouTuber, who goes under the rather awkward username of Styxhexenhammer666. His real name is Tarl Warwick and I concluded my piece by briefly mentioning Tarl’s other sideline, which was writing and publishing books on the occult.

Now, I’m not someone who is greatly excited by the topic of occult rituals, as such, but I do find it interesting in terms of its history; people’s belief in it and the connections they see between it and the events around them, so when I browsed through Tarl’s long list of books, one particular book jumped out at me.

The book was titled Occult Memetics: Reality Manipulation and what fascinated me about this work was that it discussed how we communicate over the Internet from an occult perspective. I decided to give the book a try and what follows is my review.

Occult Memetics: Reality Manipulation

The central thesis of this very short 35 page book is that living spiritual forms can be created to transfer propaganda to manipulate reality and in doing so change the points of view of others. The best example of this was last year when the meme of Pepe the Frog went viral over the Internet during the US presidential election. This simple cartoon image, which included no wording, portrayed a frog with an expression of smug satisfaction and it was used effectively when applied to people’s political ideology that at the time was gaining dominance.

The meme of Pepe the Frog followed the discovery on 4Chan of a hieroglyph representing an Egyptian deity called Kek. This deity strongly resembled a man sitting at a computer with a DNA strand emerging from it. The ancient Egyptians also portrayed Kek as a frog – and so entered Pepe the Frog, much to the displeasure of his comic book creator Matt Furie.

Tarl explains how a certain amount of synchronicity must also take place for this to fully work and he does so by discussing an Italian band of the early 80’s also called P.E.P.E, whose only record contained an image on the cover of a frog with a magic wand. Tarl then goes on to explain links to this and the length of a particular song of theirs and how it relates to occult workings and what happened during the election.

Tarl’s brief discussion on the connection of these events through synchronicity was fairly similar, but more restrained, to those of American conspiracy theorist James Shelby Downard. He would often explore in depth the use of freemason symbolism, twilight language and events, such as the Kennedy assassination, as being part of an occult ritual to influence the masses.

Unlike using a single static event to influence people – which at times in the past have not been so subtle – Tarl’s assertion is that a meme can literally become its own lifeform which grows, morphs, and multiples as it spreads across the internet, much like a virus does, and in doing so, purposely manipulate people’s thoughts in a certain direction.

Tarl then looks back over the last 5,000 years and breaks down the eight epochs in mankind’s history where there was a sudden expansion in its ability to communicate. This begins with the first epoch, which was the advent of written language in 3,000BC, and reaches the final epoch today, which is the availability of social media over the Internet and its decentralization. As Tarl suggests, this final epoch has given both you and I the ability to sit at home on our computers and possibly trigger a change in public consciousness through a meme of our own creation.

Now on to what I didn’t like so much about the book...

The books describes itself as brief hand guide to constructing and using propaganda in spiritual forms, and to a certain degree it does, but it is so brief that it really can’t be described as a guide of any sort. This has rattled some of those who had purchased the book from what I have read in the reviews section on Amazon. I would suggest not approaching this book as a DIY guide, but instead as a thought provoking essay on the powers of using memes today.

Another part of the book which disappointed me was Tarl’s chapter on how he had fallen out with those running ICQ Chat and how he subsequently went on to influence other members of the site into destroying it. At times it felt like he was boasting about his actions and it came across as being rather puerile, even though he might have rightly felt grieved for whatever it was that had been done to him. The benefit of discussing this incident was ultimately wasted because Tarl never goes on to elaborate in detail how he was actually able to influence these other members. Because of this, it would be difficult to replicate this process.

My closing thoughts…

Putting aside my two complaints about the book, I did find it an interesting read and there were a few times where I had to put the book down to absorb something Tarl had said that I found especially profound or enlightening. That’s always a sign of an interesting writer. It would be up to you to decide whether you believe in the power of memes from the occult angle, but there definitely could be something to be said for the ability of Pepe the Frog and other memes to manipulate people into a certain way of thinking. I’m sure if Edward Bernays, who was the master of propaganda and public relations, was alive today, then he would have taken a keen interest in the concept of memes as a tool of persuasion. This idea of persuasion, as well as the occult angle in terms of synchronicity, I found to be extremely interesting and I hope Tarl will one day return to this subject in more detail and hopefully address the shortcomings of the book.

There does seem to be big changes taking place within our communication and media landscape, and so further exploration of this topic would be interesting and timely – no matter how way-out that could be.