Occult Evidence In Satya Yuga Fire [Updates]

[Update 12/15/16 1:49pm]
[Update 12/14/16 4:04pm]
[Update 12/14/16]

It seems my earlier post Resident of Oakland Firetrap Blames Burning Man Crowd has stirred up a lot of controversy on Facebook today. Some suggested that these people were not even Burners; see below for my response on that. We had trolls threatening violence and all kinds of SJW outrage because I dared to post something from breitbart.com – who wrote the headline about Burning Man.

The people have spoken, Trump is the President. Get used to it. Fake news is a psyop, it’s not working any more. Only a fool would automatically believe anything on CNN, and automatically disbelieve anything on Breitbart or Infowars. Everyone else has the Internet, 90% realize the media is lying to them. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but we’re still there – Obama just sent even more troops. What, is Iraq threatening us? Or maybe it’s still full of oil. People on both the left and the right have outrageous opinions, that’s part of it. Fact check everything for yourself. Click the links here to go to original sources for all the information, and please do us the courtesy of reading our posts before you comment on them.

I have tried to provide the most comprehensive coverage on the Web of this terrible tragedy since I found out about it less than 8 hours after it happened. If anyone has done better, please let us know and we’ll link to it. We have brought you the facts from mainstream media outlets around the world and directly from eyewitnesses. Terry Gotham has shared his analysis and opinion, and so have I; we don’t have exactly the same opinions, but we are both bringing you the truth as best we can.

I have no idea what caused this fire, whose fault it was, if it was an accident or if it was something else. It seems like the place was not permitted for residents or all night music events.

One thing I do know a lot about is the occult, and I see many, many indicators of it here. We have eyewitnesses talking about “dark energy”, we have photographs of half-naked teenagers and children living in a temple to the god of destruction where they throw all-night dance parties. We have the builder of this temple talking about his family legacy of “Santaria and Palo Monte and killing” – and now 36 people are dead. Palo is “the world’s most powerful and feared form of black magic”, they are into grave robbing and using the remains of the dead in ceremonies.

Don’t take my word for it, read his posts and see for yourself. Much of the most relevant information has now been taken down from the Internet, but I managed to capture some of the black magick elements. I really think this needs to be fully investigated. I know the police are busy, I hope someone is looking into all aspects of this. I share the evidence I collected in case it might help.

Here’s the latest from the New York Times (today):

Investigators have not figured out how the fire erupted, but no evidence has suggested arson, they say. Scrutiny has centered on a possible electrical source. On Friday, officials ruled out an appliance that had seemed a likely culprit: a faulty refrigerator.

Jake Jacobitz, who did electrical work at the warehouse, told East Bay Times that all of the structure’s power came from a single line threaded through a wall. Electrical breakers blew out frequently, he said.

The authorities have warned we may never know for certain what caused the Dec. 2 blaze.

The owner: Chor Nar Siu Ng, the warehouse owner since 1988, has not been heard from.

Examining city records, The Times’s Julie Turkewitz learned that Ms. Ng owns a number of properties in Oakland and has been fined in the past for “nuisance or substandard or hazardous or injurious” conditions.

Several people who have stayed at the Ghost Ship said Ms. Ng had visited the warehouse, which was not permitted for residents. But it was unclear if she knew what was going on inside.

The master tenants: Derick Ion Almena and his wife, Micah Allison, who ran the Ghost Ship, have also avoided the public eye. Friends, associates and former tenants speaking in the news media have variously depicted the couple as misunderstood or manipulative.

In an anguished interview on “Today” last week, Mr. Almena was asked whether he should be held accountable. “Should I be held accountable?” he said. “I can barely stand here right now.”

[Source]

They also have analysis of how the layout of the “maze” was so deadly.

There is some discussion that this whole event was another crisis actor synthetic event. I don’t believe that to be the case, but I haven’t looked into it yet. I will, and if I find anything credible I will comment further. I have confirmation that people are really dead from channels other than the mainstream media (aka state-sponsored propaganda Fake News).

Here is video of an occult fire ritual going on inside the premises. The theme is Viva Muerta – “Living Dead”.

Below are screenshots I took on my phone as I was looking through the Facebook pages of Derick Ion, Micah Allison, and Satya Yuga collective. I wish I had saved more, I kept only the seriously creepy stuff. They are in no particular order.

This evidence needs to be considered.

They talk about the Phoenix, initiation into circles, his family legacy of Santaria and killing (black magick involving blood sacrifice), Shiva the God of Destruction, what people should write to the Child Protective Services agent about them, Burning Man, drugs…all kinds of stuff. If you have a bunch of Facebook friends who have a lot of this type of content on their wall, GFTO is my advice, FWIW.

2016-12-03-19-07-23

2016-12-03-19-24-06

2016-12-03-19-24-42

This kid is 17. Not sure if he is one of the minors who perished in the fire.

2016-12-03-19-30-03

“poisoning our community of witches”…”generations steeped in…Santaria and killing”

2016-12-03-19-38-12_derick-ion 2016-12-03-19-36-03 2016-12-03-19-35-36 2016-12-03-19-31-20 2016-12-03-19-30-34 2016-12-03-19-29-44 2016-12-03-19-29-35 2016-12-03-19-28-15 2016-12-03-19-27-12 2016-12-03-19-26-00 2016-12-03-19-25-24 2016-12-03-19-25-19

 

2016-12-03-19-24-26 2016-12-03-19-24-20 2016-12-03-19-24-16 2016-12-03-19-24-11  2016-12-03-19-23-58 2016-12-03-19-21-34   2016-12-03-19-19-53 2016-12-03-19-19-33 2016-12-03-19-18-47 2016-12-03-19-18-33 2016-12-03-19-18-17 2016-12-03-19-18-10 2016-12-03-19-17-21 2016-12-03-19-15-56  2016-12-03-19-14-12 2016-12-03-19-14-46 2016-12-03-19-13-03 2016-12-03-19-12-37 2016-12-03-19-11-34 2016-12-03-19-11-28   2016-12-03-19-10-00 2016-12-03-19-08-44 2016-12-03-19-07-40

This is one of his Burning Man rants. He talks about a coven of vampires, crimson as the lords sons tortured blood, the devil, and so on:

2016-12-03-18-58-43
2016-12-03-18-58-522016-12-03-19-04-22 2016-12-03-19-04-14 2016-12-03-19-04-05 2016-12-03-19-03-56        2016-12-03-18-56-49   2016-12-03-18-55-15 2016-12-03-18-54-53 2016-12-03-18-46-58   2016-12-03-18-46-31 2016-12-03-18-44-32


[Update 12/14/16 8:15am]

It seems Micah Allison’s Facebook page is still up. She shared a post in which Derick describes their vision for ghost ship as a “fucking vanguard chalice temple hideout bomb shelter of the soul” and “the true crossroads of culture and revolution”. He also talks about the “black pyramid of death” and says “I am Derick Ion the baby killer”. Note the comments linking the stairs and his brother’s burnt body.

screenshot-2016-12-14-08-08-37

“I am Derick Ion the Baby Killer”

This Paradox Pollack video filmed at Satya Yuga was pulled from the Internet, but is now back. They appear to be using drugs in front of children, and there is talk of growing marijuana – which could explain the unusual electrical setup at the site. When he says “the gods”, he points to the Altar of Skulls behind him. He talks about “the old days of Burning Man” at 6:30:

Sparkuhl shared their story of a violent/criminal run-in with Derick Almena that was reported to the police, apparently not the only such complaint:

Source: Facebook

Source: Facebook

The “Gom Jabbar” is from Frank Herbert’s Dune Series:

The Gom Jabbar, also known as “the high handed enemy”, was a meta-cyanide poisoned needle that sat upon a thimble, and could thus be attached to a person’s fingertip.

All the noble houses kept a Gom Jabbar of some sort, and used it to dispose of rivals and enemies…The gom jabbar test would be to determine whether an individual’s awareness was stronger than their instincts. If their awareness of the gom jabbar’s presence was strong enough, it would override their instincts to withdraw from the test, which usually involved great physical pain.

The origins of the device itself are not clear. Indeed, the origins of its name are also debatable. The first word, “Gom”, could stem from the ancient acronym “GOM”, which stood for “God’s Own Medicine”, and was often used in the context of a drug (particularly opium) or biological chemical on ancient Earth. The second part “Jabbar” comes clearly from the ancient Arabic word jabbār, meaning to use coercion to force something.

[Source]

“Particularly opium”. The needle used by the high houses.

 


Some of the mainstream media outlets have been speaking to family and friends of the couple, who personally confirm the dark and twisted picture painted by all the skulls and rants.

KRON4 News:

“Honestly, I don’t think he is capable of feeling any kind of remorse or guilt,” said Allison’s father, Michael Allison of Portland, Oregon. “I’ve never seen him ever really care about anyone else.”

He described the couple as users of methamphetamine, heroin and crack and said their three young children were taken away from them by social service authorities for several months beginning last year. The youngsters were found hungry, infested with lice and ill-clothed, he said.

Michael Allison recalled Almena and Micah overcome with laughter once when they told of a fire-breather accidentally setting himself on fire at one of their many parties at the building, which was widely known as the Ghost Ship.

Almena “surrounds himself with people who are going to treat him like he’s some sort of guru,” said Danielle Boudreaux, who said she was a friend of the couple for eight years. “He enjoyed having minions around to do his tasks for him and help build this great — he thinks he’s building this artistic empire.”

[Source]

SF Chronicle:

“Derick is manipulative, mean, scary,” said Shelley Mack, who in 2014 and 2015 rented one of the trailers that contributed to the end-to-end clutter of artists’ studios and living spaces in the warehouse. “He ran a death trap with bad wiring, fire danger, too much stuff everywhere, and then he threatened everybody who spoke up on anything.

“It was a horror house there, and he’s the reason for it.”

Almena and Allison met through mutual friends, spent time in the Los Angeles area and traveled the world together. After Allison became pregnant with the couple’s first child in the early 2000s, they moved to Mendocino County, where Almena ran a thriving marijuana farm in the Willits area until he got into some kind of dispute and left.

A May post on Allison’s Facebook page presumably describes the vision for the Ghost Ship. Photo: Screen Shoot, Facebook

A May post on Allison’s Facebook page presumably describes the vision for the Ghost Ship. Photo: Screen Shot, Facebook

Derick got run out of Mendocino,” said an artist who has been a friend of Allison’s since the 1990s. “He has a way of pissing people off.” The artist briefly lived at the Ghost Ship, but had a falling-out with the couple over business issues more than a year ago. Like many who ran afoul of the Almena circle, he doesn’t want to be named for fear of being hounded on social media, or worse.

“Derick can be a decent person and build community,” the artist said. “But his response to everything after a while is to yell and scream. He’s incredibly insecure. He doesn’t know how to run a business. He’s always seducing people with his talk, then abuses them and keeps their money and kicks them out.

“He attracts people who are weak. He checks them out first, people who are kind and weak, then goes about exploiting their desires and weaknesses. He’s a manipulator … very seductive, silver-tongued.”

He worried that Allison was dominated by Almena. “She has a soft spot for dark dudes … and Derick has a dark, dirty vibe about him,” the artist said.

A 47-year-old Sonoma County artist, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution from the couple’s supporters, said she considered Almena and Allison to be part of an upper tier of the alternative arts community that controls access to resources such as a place to live, simply by accumulating enough cash to get a lease on a building like the Ghost Ship.

Like many in this small creative community, she knew the couple only peripherally, having once applied to live in a warehouse space they created in San Francisco years ago. She formed a low opinion of them as profiteers who ran what amounted to a cult.

“This cult likes to siphon resources and then play power trips in the community,” she said. “They’re no different than the establishment that they’re fighting. In fact, they’re a little more voracious.”

SFist:

a number of [his friends] paint a picture of an arguably cult-y, charismatic manipulator with a “dark” side that may have grown darker in recent years. 

Neither Almena nor Allison appear to have been making a living in the arts, with Almena formerly practicing photography and describing himself lately as a “realms creator,” with the Ghost Ship space his primary piece of work, apparently begun in 2013. Allison apparently “danced, taught archery and ‘created art through everything she touched,'” according to one friend speaking to the Chronicle, but it does not appear she necessarily made any art. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that the couple’s primary source of income was the rent they collected from subtenants in the space, which reportedly would range from $500 to $1000 per month…

…friend Zippy Lomax, a fellow photographer who says she was a great admirer of Almena’s work and has known him for twenty years, wrote this blog post earlier this week advocating for compassion. “Regardless what his track-record has been… he is still a human being, however lost we may have believed him to be,” she writes. “As a community, I believe we abandoned him long ago. We chose to stand disapprovingly at the edges, to judge his conduct from the sidelines, without daring to face the deeper issues that seeded his unfavorable demeanor.”

She and another friend of Almena and Allison’s who commented on that post speak vaguely of these “deeper issues” without being specific. Striking an angrier tone, a woman named Ariana writes, “I did my best in trying to save [Derick and Micah] from themselves, which was entirely what it was. Micah only wanted the help if Derick wanted the help and he was in complete denial that there was a even problem.” And she suggests that she was retaliated against by her former friends after some attempt to intervene in their lives. “I was not only blamed, I was threatened,” she says, “My family was threatened and he made up stories that people genuinely considered possible, he has done wrong by so many people, that is blunt truth. D had his swords out against the world, it was him vs everyone, even those who wanted to help.”

allison-photo.jpg
A recent photo inside the Ghost Ship by Micah Allison, posted to Facebook.

…former tenant Shelly Mack [said] “He was always selling this bullshit spirituality. That’s his schtick.” Indeed the Ghost Ship space was decorated with an eclectic mix of objects from various spiritual traditions, including Balinese statues, Hindu swastikas, and painted skulls a la Dia de los Muertos. 

…what the hell did Almena mean when, this past summer, he posted to Facebook, “I am the thriller love child of Manson, Pol Pot and Hitler“? He was perhaps referring to past or recent drug use and mandatory drug testing by Child Protective Services when he wrote, “Addictions never admitted armed me as revolutionary… as long as i seek help and healing, have current registration, pay my insurance, piss in a cup twice weekly … i can proverbally (sic) get away with murder.”

It’s one of multiple “dark and erratic” updates he posted, according to Lomax, and maybe we can read between the lines here about what contributed to this growing darkness…Allison’s father, Almena’s father-in-law, spoke to the Associated Press on Monday and made mention of methamphetamine, crack, and heroin use by the couple. “Honestly, I don’t think he is capable of feeling any kind of remorse or guilt,” said Michael Allison of Portland, Oregon. “I’ve never seen him ever really care about anyone else.” Allison added, perhaps referring to Almena’s influence on his daughter, “[Almena] was able to cast a spell on someone in a weird way that I just do not understand”

…These character analyses are ultimately moot, however — no one is arguing that Almena set out to intentionally harm people, and that is the implication of much of this talk. Discussion of this being a “commune” or “cult” ring false too — these were just die-hard Burners with a clichéd fetish for Eastern religions and an adolescent attitude toward safety.


[Update 12/14/16 4:04pm]

The youngest victim so far was a choir boy who had toured the world and appeared on America’s Got Talent – and the son of a cop.

OAKLAND (KTVU) —  The youngest of the Ghost Ship Warehouse victims so far is being described as a 17 year old boy, the son of an Alameda County Sheriff’s deputy, who was also a gifted singer.

Draven McGill was junior at Ruth Asawa High School of the Arts or SOTA in San Francisco, where friends describe him as the kindest and gentlest person they knew.
Officials at Pacifica Boychoir Academy of Oakland recall McGill as a unique and special boy. He spent five years performing and touring with the prestigious choir and even appeared on the show “America’s Got Talent.”

Photos provided by the Academy show McGill as a young boy as well as more recent photos of the 17 year old while on tour with the group in Sydney Australia.

17-YO victim of Oakland warehouse fire was son of Alameda Co. deputy
On the SOTA campus, the mood was somber. “I literally had class with him on Friday. We were working on our tests together and I said, ‘You know, see you after class!’ And I wasn’t expecting that, you know, that would be the last time I saw him,” said classmate, Caden Nemoff.

Word of McGill’s death spread quickly Saturday night on social media, just one day after the deadly fire that broke out at a party inside a warehouse in Oakland. Authorities say they have pulled 36 bodies from the rubble so far.

“[Draven’s] someone who’s so caring and loving and there’s not a mean or hurtful thing that I can recall him saying…he was just so genuinely nice to everyone,” classmate Cole Sisser said.

“Thinking over it… it was precious time I spent with him and I’d sing next to him,” said Cristian Rivas.

Classmates say McGill mentioned the Ghost Ship party to one friend, explaining that he had received a text message “last minute” which revealed a location for the bash. The friend apparently didn’t feel right about the party for some reason but didn’t dissuade him and now he regrets it.

Grief counselors were on hand today at the tight knit school which serves only 650 students. “As we started to hear news about the possibility [of Draven’s death] over the weekend we actually started to prepare for that this morning, first thing,” said Bill Sanderson, Assistant Superintendent for the SF Unified School District.

Paradox Pollack, the other “artist” in the Precipice Prescience video filmed at Satya Yuga with Derick Ion/Almena, has videos of Burning Man operas from 96,97, and 98 on his YouTube channel. It shows that these people are very much connected to Burning Man, and have been for decades. Download them now before he pulls them too.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8kq5i77hl7mampt/Screenshot%202016-12-14%2013.55.05.png?dl=0

 

 

In the “Precipice Prescience” video, Derrick Ion and Paradox Pollock discussed “old Burning Man”. These 3 videos are old Burning Man, it is very much occult as I have been exposing in my Shadow History series. Part 5 has been recorded and is being edited this week.

Here is Paradox Pollack pitching the “everything is one” message.

He says he ran away from home when he was 14,  almost died in a fire, and got involved in an underground cult at a very early age. This gave him the ability to speak different languages and play different characters and assume their shapes, which led him into the circus. I’m not kidding, watch for yourself, that’s just the introduction.

screenshot-2016-12-14-16-18-43

There is no technology more primal than fire, the first technology. Fire is the only one of the four elements that is made by combining others (earth and air).

The UK’s Daily Mail stories says that mind control and “blood rituals” were being done in Satya Yuga.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4010390/Inside-cultish-mind-control-world-Oakland-inferno-warehouse-organizer-tenants-tell-personal-charisma-threats-violence-rituals.html

Details of the sinister and sometimes cult-like atmosphere around the ‘artist’ who ran the Oakland warehouse can be revealed.
Derick Ion Almena was in charge of the illegal enclave, described variously as a collective or a commune, where 36 died in Friday night’s devastating fire.
He is facing a criminal investigation into the lead-up to the fire, which happened in a warehouse filled with junk and where Almena was raising his three children with his wife, Micah Allison.
Now details can be disclosed of the power Almena exercised over those who lived in the space he illegally rented to them, to the extent that one described him as ‘a cult leader’.
Almena, who appeared on NBC’s Today Show on Tuesday in a testy exchange with Matt Lauer in which he ranted about being ‘sorry’ but offered no explanations for the conditions in the warehouse, was accused of using threats of violence to get his way, and being able to flip from charming to threatening in a heartbeat.

He even attempted to take a restraining order out against a tenant who complained about conditions in the warehouse.
The tenant, Shelley Mack, fell out with him in an angry dispute over the unsafe and unsanitary conditions in the ‘commune’.
In return he went to court, documents show that he went to court, alleging that she was illegally squatting at Ghost Ship and had falsely accused him of stealing a car, and also that she ‘repeatedly called CPS [child protective services] on fake accusations’.
Mack told DailyMail.com it was a lie to discredit her and described the strange atmosphere in the venue.
Describing him as a ‘cult leader’ she said Almena threatened her several times and one of his followers pulled a gun on her.
‘It was a cult if you believed what Derick had to say, but I didn’t,’ she said.
‘But there were people who did believe him though. If you didn’t follow him then they would threaten your life, pull guns on you, turn your electricity off.
‘They would block you from the bathroom, call the police and lie and make up reasons for you to get arrested
‘I had one friend in there who was a diabetic and Derick stole his medicine and his truck and kicked him out and called the police.
‘If you didn’t show that you were willing to do whatever he wanted you to do, you were on the out.
 ‘If you didn’t buy in to the way things were run they ostracized you, kicked you out and kept your money and your things.
The Ghost Ship building is littered with statues sinister-looking painted skulls and other religious symbols from Western and Eastern traditions – items collected by Almena and his wife Micah Allison during their travels
‘They would make it incredibly difficult, I had to call the police to get an escort out of there.
‘Derick would say this is a collective, we are building this spiritual, creative world, you had to buy in to that.’

Satya Yuga is a reference to Hindu theology, which sees it as the golden age at the start of time.
There is no evidence Almena was himself practicing the Hindu religion, but he appears to have picked from elements of it in his ‘art’ and his father-in-law had previously told DailyMail.com that he spent lengthy periods in Bali, the majority Hindu Indonesian island.
He wanted you to believe the whole Satya Yuga philosophy, spiritual, lyrical. He was into all this spiritual Yugi, Yogi bulls***,’ she said.
‘It wasn’t a religion but it was a belief. He’d give these big speeches, on and on and on. It was all poetic, a lot of it didn’t make any sense.
‘He would speak in lyrics a lot of the time, he would say we’re a family, we care about each other and we’re living off this vibe in this wonderful, beautiful artistic thing.’
Mack, who lived in the warehouse for four months, leaving in February 2015, said Almena considered himself a Yogi – a person dedicated to yoga practice and the tantra traditions of Hinduism.
Mack said Almena had a close circle of people around him who followed his commands.
‘He provided the appearance of a positive vibe, there was the words and the music and the art. He gave these people a place to stay and a space for their art and their creativity,‘ she said.
We had meetings, he would have his own long dialogue or he would send out three or four pages of texts, stuff that was so bizarre you couldn’t understand half of what he was saying, it was like somebody being on drugs and talking to you.’
Mack says Almena’s wife Micah Allison was always by his side.
Don’t forget his wife, she was there co-signing everything,’ she said.
Allison is self-described as the group’s ‘Mother Superior’ and in a May 2014 Facebook post, she described the Ghost Ship as ‘the true crossroads of culture and revolution in Oakland.’
She added: ‘Within the walls of the most beautiful temple living tribute tied bound nailed erected and held together with love and blood. It is the center of the universe.’
Mack said a man called Max Ohr – nicknamed ‘Warlord’ – was Almena’s right-hand man and would regularly do the leader’s bidding.
She added: ‘Derick would tell him [Max] what to do and he’d do it, he had a devout group around him that still believes in him and is still lying for him.’
It’s believed Ohr, who escaped the blaze on Friday, was running the door for the rave that night.
The violent side of the Almena’s group has also been exposed in court papers and by the testimony of other tenants who lived under Almena’s rule and visitors to the warehouse.

Philippe Lewis said that he rented the Ghost Ship for an event on January 3, 2015, but that Almena demanded extra money for the space.
When he refused to pay more, he says Almena became violent and stole his sound system ‘hiding it in the space.’
During the incident, it was claimed, Almena locked individuals into the converted warehouse and held them captive.
In a petition for a restraining order filed with the Alameda Superior Court, Lewis alleged that Almena threatened him.
‘I’m going to get my gun,’ he allegedly told Lewis, who had seen a box of new bullets while in the property.
He also claims he was attacked, sustained a dislocated shoulder and was kicked in the head by Almena’s henchmen – who assaulted Lewis on their leader’s orders.
He also says claims he saw evidence of a gun and bows and crossbow weapons on the property.
A friend of Lewis’, who asked not to be named, told DailyMail.com: ‘Philippe doesn’t want to have to deal with Almena any more than he has to, they are a violent group. He’s trying to protect his family right now.’
Another man who was at the party for the same dispute wrote in court documents that: ‘I was robbed of my iPhone & Philippe’s property at Derrick’s (sic) direction & beaten by his staff.’
Speaking to DailyMail.com, the man who asked not to be named, said: ‘I was at a party with a friend who had set up an event. I had never been there before.
‘There was an argument over money and Almena tried to beat my friend up and I videoed it on my phone. Almena ordered his people to attack me. They beat me up as well. I called the police but nothing was done.
‘It was very sinister and I spent a lot of time telling people not to go back there.

The man claims Almena made threats after the incident and that’s why he filed a restraining order, which ultimately wasn’t granted.
‘I showed up in court but it didn’t work out,’ he said.

Danielle Boudreaux, who has known Almena and his wife Allison for eight years, said Almena was charismatic and easily influenced those around him.
But she said she saw a ‘change’ in him due to drug use.
‘I knew Derick very well. The drugs made a big change in him. He was always this polar opposite person. One hand could be charming, making you feel you have great ideas, very able to persuade people in that way. There was always this dark vicious side underneath. That was never not present.
‘He was like a cult leader, he has that sort of charisma, draws people in.’
Almena promoted himself as a spiritual man and says on social media he’s a ‘student of the shadows’.
He purported to worship the Hindu gods Shiva and Kali.
In Hinduism our present time is Kali Yuga – ruled over by Kali, the demon who is the source of all evil.

Kali wears a garland of skulls and a skirt of dismembered arms, holds a sword in one hand and a severed head in the other.
The group’s Facebook page – presumably with Almena’s input – displays a drawing of Kali as its profile picture.
‘An unprecedented fusion of earth home bomb bunker helter skelter spelunker shelters and indonesian straw huts rolling into valleys and down alleys,’ is how Satya Yuga describes itself on the social media site.
In fact it was a warehouse near the railtracks, stuffed with junk and violating safety codes.
The Ghost Ship building is also littered with statues of Shiva and Kali and sinister looking painted skulls and other religious symbols from Western and Eastern traditions – items collected by Almena and his wife Micah Allison during their travels.
Shiva – the destroyer – is often depicted with four arms and a serpent around his neck.
The imagery raises questions over exactly what was happening in the building.
In a document seen by DailyMail.com in which Mack logged her grievances as a tenant at the time, she records a complaint about a fellow tenant called Lisa – a woman she says was close to Almena – saying she carried out ‘blood rituals’ in the warehouse.
She wrote: ‘Lisa is complaining about the TV but I’m not coming to you complaining when she is dripping blood in the sitting room after coming back from one of her rituals?’

Blood rituals and animal sacrifice can be used in Hinduism, which Hindus see as a way of honoring the Gods, but it is unclear if this was what ‘Lisa’ was doing. Mack declined to expand on her complaint.

Almena’s response to the fire has included language which suggested he saw himself as a father-figure.
‘They’re my children. They’re my friends, they’re my family, they’re my loves, they’re my future. What else do I have to say,’ he told San Francisco’s KGO-TV.

Investigators said they have told the fire and sheriff’s departments to treat the area as ‘a potential crime scene’. Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said Monday her office has just started its probe and has not yet determined whether a crime even occurred.

Source: Daily Mail

 



[Update 12/15/16 1:49pm]

Performer Morgan Sorne has contacted me via Facebook objecting to the use of the word “occult” in relation to their “Viva Muerta” (“Living Dead”) performance:

Morgan Sorne:

…are you serious? Were you there? Those women are Butoh dancers. The theme of the night was to honor the dead. Just because it was named viva muerta doesn’t mean that it was in any way an occult ritual. The only reason I am entertaining this dialogue is because you stand to do some good with your reach and influence. Those people are artists. Derick’s rants were designed to instigate and scare people. You are buying into his joke by reacting as you have in making the post. You are out of your depth and need to do some deeper investigating. I would encourage you to do some reading on the subjects, and if you are truly a burner you are missing a huge point regarding the nature of what the burn represents for people. Do you truly understand what the occult is? I know Derick and his family. He has three beautiful children who are suffering because of the tragedy and those wounds are deepened by posts like the one you made here. If you want a reading list start with books like Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung, Flash of the Spirit by Robert Farris Thompson and Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Watch Dance of Darkness on YouTube regarding the origins of Butoh in Japan. I don’t know what point you are trying to make with me but I am astounded that you would even try to counter with any argument as you were. Not. There. You are embarrassing yourself. The best thing you could do is to apologize to the public for the post and take it down.

He is talking about two women doing ritual fire dancing with multiple naked flames on their head, inside the junk-filled sprinkler-free premises that burned down killing 36 people. Watch the video, here it is again, you didn’t have to be there to see that this looks pretty dangerous – and quite spooky.

What is Butoh? The New York Times headline says “Dance of Darkness”:

BUTOH IS NOT FOR THE FRAIL. THE AVANT-garde dance form that today is Japan’s most startling cultural export does not aim to charm. Instead, it sets out to assault the senses. The hallmarks of this theater of protest include full body paint (white or dark or gold), near or complete nudity, shaved heads, grotesque costumes, clawed hands, rolled-up eyes and mouths opened in silent screams.

[Source: New York Times]

Nothing occult about the Dance of Darkness and clawed hands and grotesque masks in silent screams, is there? What other dance would one do, in a temple to Shiva the god of destruction?

We’ve discussed Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey mythology and its links to Esalen and the Stanford Research Institute.

Here is the preceding dialog with this DJ, some of which I already posted. They admitted that they did not organize the fire dance performance as part of their act – so how can they claim to know what meaning was in the ritual? They dodge the question about who did direct it (and fund it, assuming artists were getting paid for their art in this collective). Perhaps they are cognizant of the significant liability issues surrounding this disaster, the performance was more than a year ago so nobody is suggeting Morgan Sorne had any responsibility for it. But, occult is occult: you can’t convince me that doing the dance of darkness in front of a bunch of skulls and “alters” to the god of destruction is not an occult ritual. Sorry buddy.

Morgan
I am deeply hurt and offended by the way in which my performance from 2012 at a day of the dead showcase has been used in your post. This video has been abused and misused so many times since the tragic fire. I would appreciate it if you did not share it as a part of whatever agenda you have. To better inform you, the performance was an impromptu collaboration with the artists in that community. I wrote an opera called house of stone which was intended to be an experiential performance where audience and artists could collaborate with me. In no way was this an occult performance. A lot of people in this west coast community have used fire in their art. I personally don’t like it when people use sacred objects from other cultures (as many artists tend to do) as it wasn’t theirs to use in the first place, but I always have an open mind and heart even when the contribution is on the dark side. Without light there is no dark. Without dark there is no light. Artists explore all aspects of the human condition, light and dark with the intention of better understanding the self. Its often misinterpreted and misunderstood but the hope is that we can have an open mind to such dialogues. Your post doesn’t help that dialogue. It feeds a media frenzy. It feeds fear. I would encourage you to better research your source material.
Burners.Me
was your performance called “Viva Muerta”? Who provided the fire dancers?


Morgan

The event was called viva muerta – to honor day of the dead. There was a full line up of Bay Area bands and I was on tour passing through. Those were two belly dancers in the community who asked if they could join me on stage for a song and I always say yes when dancers ask me to join a performance

Tues 08:11

Burners.Me
So the Temple of Shiva provided their own dancers to Shiva.

Day of the dead is “Dia de los Muertos” , not “Viva Muerta”


[Update 12/15/16]

This is from the SF Chronicle, last week:

There is no easy way to untangle the story of Micah Allison from that of Derick Ion Almena — the wife and husband behind the Oakland warehouse art collective that burned down last week in the deadliest fire in the city’s history.

To their friends, that’s because the 17-year bond between “true soulmates” is impossible to break. To Allison’s father, Michael Allison, it’s because spending years under Almena’s dominating and unpredictable personality has corrupted the daughter he loved.

In posts on Facebook, Michael Allison said “my beautiful, sweet daughter” was “a good person at one time.” But he told The Chronicle this weekend that Almena isolated her from her family and friends with the manipulative arrogance that many say he displayed in running the Ghost Ship warehouse where 36 people died in a fire Dec. 2.

“I never liked Derick, and suspected drug use,” Michael Allison said. “But I didn’t know the extent of it. And I thought, like everyone did, that once the kids came along, they would step up and start being responsible.”

He added that he and his daughter, who is now 40, “had many long, hard talks about Derick. But she convinced me that things were looking up, and they would have a stable home and business, and the shenanigans would end.”

 

Neither Micah Allison nor Almena has been available for comment. Allison doted on her husband and their three children on social media, and Almena posted on Facebook before the fire that he had been drug-free for eight months. And in an August 2013 post lashing out at people he believed were attacking his “virtue,” Almena scoffed at the suggestion that he dominated Allison.

“I have been married to Micah since the moment eye (sic) saw her,” he wrote. “Never a woman in between. 14 years and 3 children that my aggressive violent angry abusive tender humbled honored thankful delicate hands did cradle from womb.”

Michael Allison said that when the couple told him of their plans for the art collective that became the Ghost Ship warehouse, he was optimistic for them.

But although friends and other artists in the alternative arts community described the Ghost Ship as a creative hodgepodge of antiques, Balinese statues and makeshift wood structures, Danielle Boudreaux, a former friend of the couple’s, said the warehouse looked that way only for parties and events.

Most of the time, garbage, broken glass, nails, rotting food, cat feces and leftover glow sticks littered the warehouse’s concrete floors, where the couple’s children would run around barefoot, Boudreaux said.

She said that when she first met the couple in 2010, Allison was the sweet woman her father remembers. It was at a memorial for a mutual friend, and even though the two women didn’t know each other, when Boudreaux broke down in tears, Allison embraced her.

But Allison was changing by the time she and Almena moved to the Oakland warehouse in late 2013, Boudreaux said. Allison told her Almena wouldn’t let her call her mother, she said. At a dinner party in front of their kids, Boudreaux said, she watched him berate her and call her “every name in the book.”

Boudreaux suspected the couple were using drugs, and she and Allison’s family persuaded Allison to check into a rehab program last year. Within a few weeks, she says, Almena got her to leave it.

The couple’s children went to school with Boudreaux’s, but were chronically absent and infested with lice, she said. Boudreaux alerted Allison’s parents, who called Child Protective Services. Authorities briefly took the children in 2015, but Almena and Allison got them back.

Friends of the couple said these allegations are far from the truth. Isa Shisha, an artist who frequently performed at the Ghost Ship, said Almena and Allison were “true soulmates,” and Allison was a “badass mama who fiercely protects her family.”

“They have the family most of us dream of having,” Shisha said.

On Facebook, Allison asked her friends to write the judge involved in their CPS case and help her family from being “condemned on base of speculation and slander.” Both Boudreaux and Michael Allison say Micah never forgave them.

“Right when she went to rehab, she wrote me this long letter thanking me for getting her out,” Boudreaux said. “Then he went down there and pulled her out, and a few days later, she wrote me the exact opposite letter, asking me how I could dare plot against her husband. She is so loyal to him, to her own detriment. She is beyond having any personality of her own.”

Boudreaux continued, “When she was very young, she had aspirations of being a dancer, but the whole time we were friends, she never did anything like that. Neither of them worked the entire time I (knew) them, except to build stages for parties. When they got the Ghost Ship, everything changed. It all became about his dream.”

Allison’s father said he’s “holding out hope for her still.” But he and his daughter, he concedes, don’t talk anymore.

“She hates me for telling the truth about her life, and about Derick,” he said.

“This darkness, I don’t see any light at the end of it.”

[Source: SF Chronicle]

Resident of Oakland Firetrap Blames Burning Man Crowd

Breitbart News brings a first hand report of the history of the Satya Yuga collective that appears to have rented the property as a warehouse, yet somehow for at least 2 years had as many as 20 residents plus children and pets. Only one of the tenants perished in the blaze, resident genius computer expert and homeless Harvard graduate Peter Wadsworth. The other 35 dead were there for the rave all night underground EDM event.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mxy5caqdbcn2efn/Screenshot%202016-12-12%2010.25.26.png?dl=0

The “Ghost Ship,” the warehouse and artists’ colony where 36 people lost their lives in the Oakland fire last Friday night, was “a serious attempt to bring the Black Oakland culture back into the art scene,” former resident Alexander Doré told Breitbart News.
However, that vision was overrun by what Doré referred to as the “Burning Man crowd.

“We called it ‘the space,’” Doré said. He described himself as a close acquaintance of Derick Ion Almena, the man known as the leader of the community, and one of his wife Mika’s close friends.

We didn’t even give it a name. It was meant to be private. None of it was for sale,” Doré said. “[Almena] wanted me to be a partner and I was brought over to the space by some local musicians and a lady who lived there because I was the third bass player in Sly and the Family Stone,” a well-known American band from San Francisco that was very popular from the 1960s through the 1980s.

Of the owner of the building, Oakland landlord Chor Ng, Doré said: “He should have applied for the permits.” The building was found to lack sprinklers and fire alarms, and the city’s efforts to inspect the premises were unsuccessful — though critics charge that local officials were lax in their duty to enforce fire codes.

“Ending up at this warehouse was part of my, I don’t want to say ‘downfall,’ but I got lost,” Doré said. He later left the community.

“I decided to say goodbye to Derick because I felt there was too much dark energy there due to the people living there,” he said, including youth that he claimed were into drugs, and who took advantage of Almena’s comparatively reasonable — although allegedly illegal — living accommodations in an area where skyrocketing rents have pushed traditional residents out.

Doré explained to Breitbart News that the vision behind “the space” was to revitalize and harness the Bay Area’s seemingly lost African-American culture.

[Source]

What to some is perceived as a “serious attempt to bring the Black Oakland culture back into the art scene”, is seen by others as the classic gentrification model. The (mostly white) artists get sent in to drive the black families out of the neighborhoods. Black artists might get invited in to create the appearance of integration; maybe you find another Basquiat. Usually the ones that make it don’t stick around in the same neighborhoods they grew up in.

I’ve seen it happen over the last 20 years in the Tenderloin, SOMA, the Mission, Hayes Valley, Oakland, and in downtown LA. I’ve heard about it happening in places like Dallas and Houston too. First they send in the crack, and ruin the inner city neighborhoods, driving property values down and spreading poverty. Foreclosures boom, and buildings end up in the hands of the banks. Then, the artists come in, usually following the drugs and not caring about run-down buildings because they can paint them. They get away with more street art because the neighborhood is otherwise decrepit. Get enough artists together in one area and it can be marketed as a “colony”. Then the gays come in. They do all the houses up and make the neighborhood flourish with their higher disposable incomes and on-trend tastes. They don’t mind that the area is unsafe for children, since generally they don’t have them. Then the hipsters come, also without children. And then the rich yuppies. By then, the neighborhood has become safe for children again: private school children. Most of the people who built the community can no longer afford to live there and are no longer wanted. Then  comes the foreign money, looking for a blue chip home for their offshore investments. By this point the mortgages have been pooled and collateralized and synthesized and repackaged into bond and share offerings. The jobs left are service jobs, and if there is any art left is in high end galleries.

I’m sorry if anyone finds that description offensive, but it happens time and time again with such consistency that it cannot be coincidence. It is either a biological wiring, something in the DNA of humanity; or it is a long-term plan of social engineering – so successful that it keeps being repeated, regardless of the consequences. Hollywood itself began as one of these occult artists colonies. Qui bono? Follow the money. When an Oakland townhouse goes from $100,000 to $1 million, imagine what that does if you own 20-story buildings and entire city blocks.

My information is that the rent to be part of the Fruitvale Satya Yuga collective was $5,000 per month and the residents were paying $750 per month – which would be $15,000 per month if all 20 paid the same. If anyone can confirm or correct this please comment. The money clearly was not reinvested in safety, but it does indicate the potential real estate profits lurking darkly in the background of this and other tragic fires.

One resident, who had a fire extinguisher in hand and discarded it for a cat carrier, described the space as “amazing”, “beautiful”, and “family oriented”. YMMV.

Kelber woke up to hearing someone screaming “fire” and grabbed a fire extinguisher. She opened her gate and looked down the hallway and saw 15-foot flames, “a giant fireball.” 

She then tossed the fire extinguisher, realizing it wasn’t going to do her any good, and tried to grab her cat carrier from a loft area.

“I was almost knocked unconscious by the smoke,” she said. Then the power went out. The smoke pushed her window open, which let in air that fueled the fire.

She grabbed her cat and ran out. “The fire trucks still weren’t here so I went racing around the corner screaming ‘fire,’ carrying my cat.” 

Kelber and Frito said that they thought 22 or 23 people lived in the building, which was 10,000 square feet.

“It was one of the most amazing, beautiful spaces,” Kelber said.

She said somebody was always working on a different project, or cooking something.

“It was one of the most amazing, family-oriented spaces,” she said. “That’s why it was created.”

The idea that it is acceptable to have all night dance parties in family oriented spaces is not widely shared throughout the rest of the world. Even in Melbourne, arguably the world capital of warehouse parties, the “artists” would not try something like this. The police and family protection services would be there in a heartbeat. So why would it be socially acceptable in the San Francisco Bay Area?

This is an example of why the propaganda that “kids at Burning Man are fine” is dangerous. The argument goes like this: “All these smart billionaires go to Burning Man, and people take their kids to Burning Man, therefore it is smart to have all night dance parties around children”. This is a logical fallacy, a non sequitur.

I don’t see too many billionaires bringing their young children to Burning Man, why is that?

There is a great deal to be said for the good old-fashioned family unit. One man, one woman, and the biological children generated by mixing their genes together. Bringing the children up with good values, in an environment of love, promoting honesty and kindness. This model has taken humanity this far, why do we need to attack it? To go back to the Dark Ages? I am all for including other lifestyles, but surely nobody thinks it is OK that children lived in this place surrounded by skulls and occult imagery.

This music video was filmed at the Ghost Ship warehouse. It is full of occult symbolism and mind control visual techniques. The name “ROCChilds” seems like an almagamation of Rockefeller and Rothschild, as well as a nod to Illuminati rapper Jay-Z’s record label ROC-A-Fella records.

The song is not bad, with some impressive guitar work at the end. But the imagery is very concerning, in light of the holocaust that subsequently occurred at this temple to Shiva.

screenshot-2016-12-12-09-54-41

Crypto-landlord Derick Ion Almena and his partner Micah Allison make a cameo in the video

The Poor Man’s Burning Man: Part One

by Whatsblem the Pro

People have some pretty crazy ideas regarding what Burning Man is all about. Even hardcore burners have a difficult time agreeing just what it is we’re all doing out there, unless they are wise enough to define it as something very open-ended that is many different things to many people.

One of the more common misapprehensions that so many people have about Burning Man is that it’s a hippie peace ‘n’ love (and sex and drugs) festival. While it’s true that every variety of hippie – from crafty, hard-working old ’60s-vintage radicals with tons of skills, to ragged young drainbows in tie-dyed Grateful Dead Army uniforms begging “the universe” for tickets and water – can be found in Black Rock City, that’s because it is a city, with many diverse streams of culture. Among the teeming masses of Nevada’s third-largest urban center, there’s plenty of room for quite a large number of every species of hippie without it being all about them. “Burners are hippies” as a meme is just plain mistaken.

Burners are people who tend to have certain things in common, but the commonalities are striped across a staggeringly broad spectrum of other cultures. . . so broad, that I would go so far as to say that burner culture is probably the most eclectic human culture yet devised, taking the worthiest bits and pieces from many sources and melding them into a tasty gumbo of mutual understanding and acceptance. Sometimes respect goes hand-in-hand with that acceptance, and sometimes it doesn’t, and that’s fine; we’re not a fundamentally hippie-based culture, and it’s fairly well-understood that we don’t have to love or even like each other to make room for each other and do what we do. The oft-heard playa sentiment “fuck yer day” does not generally mean “GTFO.”

Good. Very, very good. -- Image: abbiehoffman.tumblr.com

Good. Very, very good. — Image: abbiehoffman.tumblr.com

Bad. Very, very, very, very, bad. -- Photo: Shutterstock

Bad. Very, very, very, very, bad. — Photo: Shutterstock

Another very popular myth is that you have to be rich to go to Burning Man; there’s a persistent tall tale among non-burners to the effect that Black Rock City is populated entirely by elitist multimillionaires, which seems rather at odds with the notion that we’re all hippie beggars who eat out of dumpsters and hit up working people for spare change so we can buy weed.

I know a lot of financially challenged people who go to Burning Man. Not a few of them live well below the poverty line all year ’round, often because they are artists and because they donate a lot of their time and effort. I know a lot of non-artists who go to Burning Man and are financially challenged, too. . . and I don’t mean that their stock portfolio took a bruising when the housing bubble burst; I mean they have trouble paying the rent on time and feeding themselves decently, and sometimes have to spend weeks or months living in their vehicles.

There is, of course, an eternal and vital intersection that brings the rich into contact with the creative poor, transforms entire swathes of decayed cityscape in flurries of urban renewal, and foments patronage of the arts. . . and if Burning Man is representative of that intersection, it is the crossroads of an Art superhighway with Big Money Boulevard. The usual result of that kind of interaction is that some crumbling, dangerous neighborhood with cheap real estate fills up with artists looking to live cheaply, and the money follows them and eventually injects some hoidy-toidy into the area, driving the average rent up and driving the struggling artists out, to seek shoestring budget living elsewhere and start the process over again.

Burning Man is different. There’s no real estate market to sway, just ticket prices. . . so there’s no way for the money to gentrify us and drive out the funky low-budget players in favor of “white cube” art gallery snobs.

It does take a significant investment to render yourself playa-ready, obtain a ticket, and transport your ass and your gear to the Black Rock desert. . . and the cost can get much steeper if you happen to live someplace on the other side of an ocean. Your investment, however – and it is an investment, not just money blown on an expensive vacation – doesn’t necessarily have to involve much in the way of actual cash.

How, though, do the burning poor manage it, exactly? How can you do it too?

In a nutshell, the answer is simple: Find some burners who have more going on than you do, and make yourself useful. If you can manage to identify and fill a necessary function for an art project or theme camp or other conclave of burners, then you’re GOING, and that’s all there is to it. Take up the slack for your crew, make yourself invaluable, and your crew will take up the slack for you. This could mean a month or two of unpaid labor on some massive art gewgaw; it could mean signing up for some crucial role in an established theme camp, like cook, or art car driver; it could mean joining DPW and earning your patches (although you won’t typically get a free ticket your first year). For some, it might mean being pretty and sucking cock on demand in some venture capitalist’s swanky RV; if that’s an acceptable billet in your view of the world, more power to you; nobody can tell you you’re wrong but you, and I would like to respectfully request your phone number, please.

Image

This article is the first in what will be a regular series that will show you one avenue to getting to Black Rock City in a very practical and detailed way: I am embedding myself with the International Arts Megacrew to work on their 2013 project, known as “The Control Tower.” Initially, I’ll be making swag and soliciting donations of essential equipment and materials for the project, and my role will change and expand as the project progresses and evolves.

I’ve already written about the Control Tower project, but I’ll begin by giving you some background.

The International Arts Megacrew is the group that built architect Ken Rose’s Temple of Transition in 2011. Their 2013 project, the Control Tower, will be built at the Generator, a brand-new community industrial arts space in Sparks, just outside Reno, Nevada. The Generator is managed by the Pier Crew’s Matt Schultz, and generously funded by an anonymous donor who has underwritten quite a bit of playa art over the years.

I wasn’t a member of the IAM’s Temple crew in 2011, but I did show up for the last few weeks of their build, and assisted the welders, mostly by grinding metal for hours on end in oven-like heat at the Hobson’s Corner site in Reno. I first became acquainted with the Pier Crew people while working on Burn Wall Street (sorry about that), as the two projects shared space at the Salvagery. When I saw how incredibly cool the Pier’s project was, I donated some old fencing swords I had for the skeletal crew of the ship they built, and served as humble shop bitch providing elbow grease and other assistance to the gentleman who designed and built the ship’s anchor.

The Pier Crew amazed us all in 2012 -- Photo: Jason Silverio

The Pier Crew amazed us all in 2012 — Photo: Jason Silverio

When I first visited the Generator, it was to interview Jerry Snyder about his Ichthyosaur Puppet project. Matt Schultz was there as well, and we got reacquainted with each other and spent some time touring the space as Matt gave me the lowdown on his vision.

“The Generator,” he told me, “is not just a place for Burning Man projects. This will be a space for the entire community, where anyone who is willing to pitch in and contribute a bit is welcome – without paying any fees whatsoever – to come and make art, learn new skills, and teach new skills to others. We’re going to have some serious tools here for people to use. They’ll have to bring their own materials, unless someone here who doesn’t mind sharing happens to have what they need.

“It’s an arts incubator,” he sums up. “A hive of creative people who share their talents, resources and ideas to make amazing new art.”

Schultz points to the freshly-painted walls of the gigantic open space, which is still brand-new and mostly devoid of any hint of tools or activity. “We put out the word, and a whole crew of volunteers came in here and did all that painting. That’s what I’m talking about when I say we need people to be willing to contribute. It’s a tribal thing; if you behave like a member of the tribe and don’t mind spending a little bit of your time doing things that help everyone, then there should be no problem with you being here and getting all kinds of benefits from the space and the resources in it.”

As we talk, I reflect on the welcoming nature of our community. It’s true that I’ve got a little bit of an inside track, but there’s no favoritism in play here; had I shown up cold, knowing nobody at the Generator and having no history with them, we would be having the same conversation, and I’d be given the same opportunity to participate.

“Is there anything I can do to help out today?” I ask.

Schultz shows me to a room where painting supplies are stored, and gives me instructions for painting the spacious bathroom, a job which someone has begun but not yet finished. He leaves the building as I get to work with the roller. . . to an extent, the trust here is given freely, to be rescinded if necessary, rather than earned. I spend the rest of the afternoon painting happily.

It's a lot less empty this week -- Photo: Whatsblem the Pro

It’s a lot less empty this week — Photo: Whatsblem the Pro

The next day I show up early for a meeting with the IAM’s leader, James Diarmaid Horken, aka ‘Irish.’ The space reserved for the Control Tower build, empty the day before, has erupted into a fully-equipped meeting and planning zone overnight, with pallets screwed together to support a large L-shaped expanse of whiteboard, a big desk at which Irish sits working, a model of the Control Tower in bamboo and wire, and a complete living room set, with artificial houseplants and decorative sculpture making the semicircle of couches and coffee tables seem warm and homey in the cold sterility of the giant warehouse.

As I’m waiting for the rest of the group to assemble and come to order, I stroll around surveying the other changes that have taken place while I was sleeping. There are more tools, more tables, more spaces marked off on the floors in chalk. Someone is setting up welding equipment and a really expensive professional-grade drill press in a large side room. The Generator is still mostly just a big empty industrial space, but signs of life are unmistakable, and it is booming and blooming with a palpable vitality.

Old friends and new ones drift in, gathering to find out what the Control Tower project is all about. I chat with Ken Rose, the IAM’s architect, about the computational architecture behind the construction techniques that will give the structure great strength using a minimum of materials. “Russian mathematicians came up with this stuff about a hundred years ago,” he tells me. “Open-lattice hyperboloids like the one we’re going to build offer very good structural strength using only about 25% of the materials we’d need to build a rectangular frame structure.”

Soon the meeting is underway, and Irish is giving us a run-down of the road ahead. He has made lists of equipment, supplies, and materials we’re going to need, and written it all on the whiteboards behind him, with other lists and notes that give us an idea of what skill sets are going to be required. The prospective crew members listen intently, their eyes focused on the whiteboards, or the scale model, or on Irish and Ken as they explain their vision and the rough timetable they’ve devised. They tell us about the vast array of programmable LEDs, and the flamethrowers, and the lasers. They talk about everything from the meaning behind the ideas, to hard logistical challenges that we’ll be facing.

When the meeting is over, we unwind a bit, eating watermelon and bouncing ideas and Nerf darts off each other’s heads. Other people on other projects are knocking off for the day as well. A small but spirited war erupts in one of the still-open areas; Nerf guns are more abundant here than is probably typical of industrial work spaces. As I’m minding my own business and looking over a coffee table book of art by Leonardo da Vinci, a Nerf dart strikes me directly in the forehead and sticks there.

The next few days are a flurry of activity. My mornings are spent doing research and making phone calls, trying to drum up support in the form of donations from local business people. In the afternoons I get my personal working space at the Generator set up, so I can work on carving and tooling leather to make swag for people who donate to our project. More artists and more tools are showing up, almost hourly. The first ribs of the ichthyosaur skeleton that Jerry Snyder is building hang on a huge rack. Someone seems to be constructing a dance floor in one corner; judging by the work, whoever it is must be a master carpenter.

Irish calls me on the phone one morning soon after the Control Tower meeting. “Will you be here this evening around ten o’clock?” he asks me. “We’re having a laser test.”

“Lasers?” I say, ears perking up. “Of course I’ll be there.”

When I arrive, two people are unloading some serious laser gear from the back of a truck inside the Generator. The fellow in charge of the lasers is Skippy, an Opulent Temple member who provides OT and other organizations and events with laser light shows, using an array of equipment mostly salvaged, rebuilt, and repurposed from discarded medical equipment. When he’s ready and his smoke generator is puffing away, we turn the lights out, and he activates his multicolored little wonders of science in a dazzling automated sequence that lasts over an hour.

We’re all friends, or at least not enemies. We’re working hard, and we’re having a blast doing it. We’re not just building art, we’re building a new world. One day, if humanity doesn’t destroy itself somehow and civilization manages to endure, the day will come when automation makes us all redundant as workers; when that day comes, everyone will be like us: doing only the types of work that they find worth doing. Soon come, soon come.

You can read Part Two of The Poor Man’s Burning Man at:

 http://burners.me/2013/05/28/the-poor-mans-burning-man-2-the-glamorous-life-of-a-model/