The Nine

Integrated Systems Improvement Services, LLC

The September 1999 issue of Fortean Times (FT:126) ran a cover story entitled, "Plan 9 from Outer Space."  PYRAMID SCHEME! reads the cover.  The title is a reference to the famously bad Ed Wood movie, but the article is about another "Nine:" 

The Nine is an organization founded by Andrija Puharich, aka Henry K. Pluharich.  Pluharich is best known publicly for having discovered Uri Geller.  Less well-known is the fact that Puharich was a CIA operative.

Lab Nine was established at Pluharich's Ossining, New York estate, and included European nobility, multi-millionaire businessmen, scientists, and figures close to the US President.  Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, was also involved -- he even produced a movie based on The Nine.

In 1973's Prelude to the Landing on Planet Earth (or Briefings for the Landing on Planet Earth), The Nine claimed they were actually the Ennead of the Heliopolis -- Egyptian gods including Isis and Horus, the Egyptian entity Aleister Crowley claims to have channeled in his Book of Law.  While Lab Nine disbanded in 1978 after Pluharich fled to Mexico, its tendrils run deep -- extending well into the highest echelons of government, business, and military sectors even today.

Pluharich was an Army doctor directly involved in the CIA's MKULTRA program with Dr. Gottleib in the 1950s.  Their experiments included drugs, hypnosis, and beaming radio signals into victims' brains.  The Round Table Foundation, where The Nine made their first appearance, was also founded by Pluharich in 1948 -- and was a Pentagon front for medical and parapsychological research.

The Nine continued well beyond Pluharich's involvement, which ended around 1980, following events at his Ossining estate (including arson) that sent him fleeing to Mexico, claiming the CIA was after him.  (Pluharich was working for US intelligence at the time.)  Phyllis Schlemmer, a Florida-based psychic healer and agent of The Nine since the 1970s, published her first book, The Only Planet of Choice, in 1992.  People involved in The Nine rose to power in many fields throughout this time, but specifically in the worlds of politics and the New Age movement.

The Nine's incredible influence over America continues to this day... and well beyond.  It currently operates under the name "IS," an acronym with numerous meanings.

© The Weirding, 2018

Crowleyisms

Sometimes, for no good reason, something sticks in my head and I just can't shake it. Like everyone else, it's usually a snippet of a song or some insipid commercial jingle, but from time to time, it is a quote, saying, or just some kind of random something I've seen, heard, or read.

This week, it's a famous Aleister Crowley quote: "Everybody is a star."

Now, Crowley was a famed Occultist who referred to himself as "The Beast" and was called "the wickedest man alive" in his day. But to his defense, Crowley was more than just your run-of-the-mill "Satanist" and he lived during the Victorian Age, so the fact that openly espoused hanging out with hookers, doing drugs, and being just generally amoral (if not downright immoral) went a long way toward helping how he was judged.

But his writings are fantastic. I mean, much of them are blasphemous ravings of what was surely a drug-addled mind and it is said he died insane (possibly from Syphilis), but Crowley had a way with words that has rarely been equalled. And Crowley practiced and developed a number of Magickal systems; he did not just get together with some friends, make a half-assed prayer to "The Devil," and then engage in drunken orgies (though let's be assured, this was probably a part of his regimen from time to time).

So while I do not know this quote in context, the thing I have always wondered about it is what, exactly, he meant by it. Crowley's works are infamous for their multiple meanings and this one in particular can be taken any number of ways.

But I have always thought that Crowley was alluding to the idea that, with extremities outstretched, every body is a five-pointed object.

Maybe it's just me and I have no idea why this quote has been in my head this week, but I wanted to jot it down and share because I have always thought that whenever I have mused on this particular saying.