Time was, flat Earth theory remained constrained to eccentric vicars with names like Charles W. W. Fothergill (FRGS) and dusty spinsters known as Ms. Emilia J. Jenkins—such people would make occasional propaganda raids on university towns armed with poorly photocopied leaflets that pierced the thin plastic on the cheap blue-and-white-striped shopping bags that contained them…“The Earth is round—REFUTED! Satellite reveals TRUTH!”.
“What do you make of that, Burt?” “Well, they always says the Earth is round but it’s always looked flat to me.” “Don’t be daft, Burt. I always says our Burt is daft, didn’t I? It’s because the doctor used the forceps on ’im when hee were born.” “Ah, get away—it looks flat to me…and you think thar same really.” Rustic.
Flat Earth theory had a resurgence about five years ago, mainly with basketball stars and rappers (with blacks, that is). At the time, I saw the slogan “the Earth is flat” scrawled across an out-of-town shopping centre—it had mass appeal, it was a meme. There’s something “black” about its contemporary usage—it’s not the province of eccentric English vicars anymore. It’s the sort of thing I’d expect Ye to say (if he ever gets back on Twitter), “Google flat earth, y’all—it REAL. Jews and NASA be hidin’ it. Much love, Ye” (“Your account is now suspended for a violation…”).
The reason it’s “black” is, I think, because the meme is a protest against the fact you live in “the white man’s magic” (as Derrida put it) and it doesn’t really make sense to you, doesn’t really feel right, and yet it totally surrounds you and you depend on it. The situation alienates Europeans and it is even more pronounced in a group like the American blacks that is very removed from it (more so than, for example, the Japanese—they have a grip on it, to an extent). Hence extravagant and, frankly, “African” (in the tribal sense) ideas appeal to American blacks to protest their situation (in a flamboyant big-hatted purple-zoot-suited pimpish way).
However, there is some broad appeal to the idea among people who dislike modernity in general and technology in particular—among Europeans alienated from techno-science who just want to say a “fuck you” to the whole thing, to the endless press releases about new gizmos and to “discoveries” and to the self-satisifed optimism found in Neil deGrasse Tyson. Hence, “flat Earth”—adopted in the way a notorious uncle might be known to tease his nieces and nephews with outlandish claims. “You can’t really mean that? You can’t believe it?” “Who says I can’t?”
However, flat Earth is real—it’s not just a whimsical protest against modernity (though that is what it is for most people who talk about it today). No, it’s real—although there is a certain caveat. If you want to build a nuclear bomb to flatten a city, you use Einsteinian physics; if you want to build a naval gun to bombard a town, you use Newtonian physics—and if you want to do religion you use flat Earth theory. Newtonian and Einsteinian physics work in a satisfactory way at different levels—and Einstein’s physics does not make Newton’s physics “untrue”, at least for certain purposes.
In the same way, NASA hasn’t forged photos of a round Earth (as Redditors who own the “We checked” NASA badge will be suitably smug to learn)—yet the Earth is still flat for religious purposes; and we can tell this is so because, just like naval guns and atom bombs, flat Earth theory works.
The reason people are confused about this situation is that the primordial religion has been forgotten. The primordial religion, as attested to by the Bedouin in Arabia and the ancient Egyptians, worshipped stars—not just the visible stars in the heavens but star entities that would manifest at certain points (and these star entities were, in fact, wise men who apotheosised themselves and became stars). The pyramids were vast ritual-rites designed to turn the pharaohs into stars (the Egyptians placed particular emphasis on “the Dog Star”, Sirius, as the most important star).
When Aleister Crowley went to the pyramids he had various revelations, among them “every man and woman a star”—and his technique is really a way to apotheosise yourself, to turn yourself into an immortal star (in fact, I think Crowley made me spill my cappuccino yesterday…he’s still about, the old devil). And Guénon, who viewed Crowley as Satanic, himself lived as a Sufi mystic within sight of the pyramids—and that was because he knew “the Tradition” stretched back to ancient Egypt and beyond.
I’ve encountered these star entities myself (at Hartsfell, as related). Today, they’re often taken to be “UFOs” but in actuality they are the gods, the angels, and the heroes (the ancient Greeks held the heroes turned into stars—there are different ways to apotheosise yourself, not just the passive saintly Christian way; you can do so in an active war-like way too—General Patton had a vague idea this was so).
Now, all this talk about stars might seem removed from the religions we are familiar with—removed from Christianity, perhaps even anti-Christian. After all, isn’t Christianity about faith in God and Jesus—about faith, hope, and charity—and if you follow these injunctions you will be rewarded in another place called “Heaven”? Isn’t all this star business something pagan—possibly Satanic?
Actually, no. The Bible says the faithful become angels in heaven and the angels are stars—and the Magi follow a star to find Jesus (not a physical star, but a star entity that guided them across deserts and so on). And Jesus himself refers to “the lilies of the field”—the meadows of flowers being taken in ancient lore to mean “the stars above”. So it’s there, but what has happened is that the old primordial religion has slipped into the background in Islam and Christianity as these faiths have decayed (in fact, both are lower iterations of the true religion—that is a heretical statement). As concepts like “God” and “Heaven” became more abstract, especially after the Reformation, the idea that the faithful “become stars in the heavens” receded—to say it now sounds too childish to be true, like an infant’s understanding of what religion is (yes, religion is retarded—when they say “in Heaven” it means the night sky, literally).
The “star tradition” did subsist alongside Christianity for a long time—it’s in Boethius, it’s in Dante, it’s in Shakespeare. It’s in Dante in particular; his Divine Comedy is the esoteric star tradition in Christian garb—as Guénon knew well. The ancient Egyptians used to say the gods are the same everywhere, but they appear in different forms for different peoples (and, I think, at different times)—so Dante cloaked them for the Christian era (today we explain them as UFOs because that is what makes sense to us).
So astrology and the stars rode side by side with Christianity—after all, the Magi came from a land, Persia, where the throne was covered in zodiacal symbols. Yet astrology had already become a shadow religion or para-religion—eventually, with Protestantism, it was extirpated as a “superstition” (one reason why Protestants are effectively atheists—they make religion into this very abstract activity and then eventually cannot believe God exists, to say the departed faithful are actual stars in the heavens becomes “idolatry”; it’s actual religious truth, you clots—it’s all literal, people need to be more autistic).
You get a faint remembrance sometimes, as when, for example, I had a chat with a Catholic priest and he said, “I always think the problem today is that people can’t see the stars.” However, he had no experience behind that statement; he said it as a pro-forma statement or cliché—it was “just something he said”, vaguely comforting, he didn’t know why he said it or even what its significance was (I could tell by the way he said it).
The same pertains to the statement “you should go into nature”—people make this statement, but the expectation is that you’ll achieve “mindfulness” and hear “the voice of God” (a metaphor for your internal monologue in the stillness). People don’t say “go into nature” in the expectation that you’ll see a supernatural star-like entity (again, it’s all “just a nice metaphor” really).
I would say that a downside to Christianity and Islam in particular is that both faiths have lost the stars, obscured them from the start—even though Moses, for example, learned all he knew from the Egyptian star religion he grew up in. The reality is that there are a great many gods in the heavens—many wise men and heroes and saints (and, of course, some negative people as well—be careful). The idea “it’s our way or the highway” just isn’t so—that’s an imported Semitic fanaticism found in Christianity and Islam. There are many stars—and perhaps even David Bowie is a star today (the “thin white duke” knew a thing or two about religion—these stars being celestial spheres in perfect musical harmony).
People react against religion because it moralises with no apparent result—especially Christianity and Islam. It is better looked upon as being like a Lego model. You can choose to build the Lego model or not—you can choose to disregard the enclosed instructions (results may vary, very substantially). “Damned! Damned because you didn’t build the model! Damned because you put the yellow brick in the wrong place because you misunderstood the diagram!”. I think that’s a load of bollocks.
The model is there, you can build it or not—if you need to be ascetic it’s not an end in itself, just the way you build the model. All the fulmination comes from people who don’t really know there’s another world but just hope there is and get off on making other people feel bad so they can feel good. In other words, religion is like when you build a pyramid—it’s a practical activity with demonstrable results, not some exercise in abstract theological tracts or a chance to terrify the children, in the widest sense of the word, with hellfire.
To access the stars, you need to think about the Earth as a flat plane with a dome over it—the sheltering sky that becomes a black velvet drape over a field in the night, a lazy plough buried in the overturned black soil after a day hard at work. It is with such a perspective that it becomes possible to access the gods and heroes again—perhaps to become one yourself.