Generation X: Speed, Fame and Resistance
Finding ones Self in the Kali Yuga
Edie Sedgwick was an It-Girl in the dawn of Generation X; muse of Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. She was from a wealthy, connected, troubled American family with unstable parents, and was one of three of eight siblings who died in their youth.
A film was made on her life called ‘Factory Girl’ in 2006. Sedgwick was naturally attracted to the energetic, artistic 60’s counterculture, but by her ‘Saturn Return’ — that stern, judicial god of cosmic discipline — she was dead from an overdose at 28.
Her rise and fall was a fitting introduction to Generation X, one unofficial motto being, ‘Look after yourself — because nobody else will.’
A book published in 1991 aiming to reflect upon Generation X’s materially afflicted, spiritually sterile generation was ‘Generation X; Tales of an Accelerated Culture.’ Its author, Douglas Coupland was credited for the term Generation X.
Generation X’s youth was amplified in the 1990’s by grunge rock musicians Kurt Cobain (dead at 27yrs), Layne Stanley (d.34yrs) and Dolores O’Riodan (d.46yrs).
With one step back one could watch these fiery, wilful comets appear from nowhere, follow an arc and crash back to earth; bright, short-lived beacons above a cold black sea. What ignited them and what did they seek? In the life of 90’s music legend Chris Cornell, lead vocal of bands Audioslave and Soundgarden (who died at 52years in 2017 of apparent suicide) one is perhaps intuitively, grimly gratified with an answer.
Meanwhile on more literal X trails, Electric Universe member Andrew Hall, energy engineer and author, studies geological plasma signatures in the landscape and recently found an interesting ‘X’ at the top of a mountain in Colorado.
Hall notes in a Thunderbolts Project video, ‘Cosmic Resonance,’ that energy flows in a more torturous path than conventional science suggests, like ‘water in a rocky stream’.
Investigating the heart of the Laramie Mountains (USA), Andrew Hall found that X marks the spot of a massive plasma discharge, surrounded by geologic evidence of supersonic shock waves creating further electro-magnetic patterns. Paying attention to the ‘X’ formation, he describes it as evidence of faster energy flow.
Strangely then, the accelerated X of Douglas Coupland’s ‘Generation X’ book title has a firm footing in clearly demonstrated plasma physics.
This link could of course be dismissed as arbitrary; X is as likely to represent the mathematic unknown quantity, but as metaphysician René Guénon notes, ‘Far from being artificially invented by man, symbols are to be found in nature itself, or rather, that the whole of nature amounts to no more than a symbol of transcendent realities.’
-R. Guénon, The Symbolism of the Cross, ‘The Directions of Space.’
Hall’s Laramie Mountain video then contrasts the plasma discharge X alongside a similar graphic of impedance flow, which happens to be in the classic ‘✛’ shape.
Thus X is accelerated energy, and ✛ (the cross) is ‘impeded’ energy.
In Islamic esoterism, the cross is defined as amplitude (indefinite horizontal extension), and exaltation (indefinite vertical extension). The cross is a vital part of all religions and traditions and symbolises the “total integration of the being” — more commonly known as the Holy Grail, eternal youth, and Realisation of Self.
Chris and Christ mean anointed (by oil). One is anointed by the ‘chrism’ or oil that rises in the spinal column during Kundalini fires, creating the hardened or crystallised pineal gland from its former sandy state. One ‘crosses the desert’ so to speak — that is, if one has developed enough resistance to the Kundalini fires. Herein lies the most potential for trouble. Without correct resistance (another term for ego dissolution/ overcoming the animal nature/integrating the shadow) fires will burn out of control.
In the context of a house, one employs a qualified electrician to rig the system so blown fuses don’t cause an inferno. Christianity’s very hidden (Hermetic) objective was once the end goal of the meditative state, opening the gates of consciousness in gradual steps to Christ consciousness, so named for the ‘anointing oil’ or chrism which must rise slowly from where the Kundalini electricity lies, coiled three and a half times at the base of the spine, to then overflow at the 33rd degree, or 33rd vertebra.
This ignites the pineal ‘sand’ in a cool and collected biological process that feels like the most almighty acid trip which lasts for at least five to eight days, and voilà — one sees/becomes the Universe in all its profound glory and is united with it Forever More.
Rush the process and ! BAM ! — crazy person.
Meditation carefully unlocks each gate (or chakra in yogic terms) in keeping with the gently rising consciousness of the person. There is a genuine science to it and it genuinely works, but there is also genuine risk involved for the unprepared.
Kundalini-induced psychosis can be temporary, but it can also be permanent.
One ought to be sure of a genuinely purified heart (ego) because the serious electrical charge must be sustained mentally and physically for five to seven days at its most intense, and months at a lesser grade of intensity as electromagnetism/fires/spirit works its way through the earthen body to hook one up to the universal Big Picture.
So what happens when a normal person (not without talent) is given cash and exaltation rendering them free from care? Lack of freedom from care is what Ananda Coomaraswarmy believes is the problem with the west, trapped as it is in survival mode due to the industrial lifestyle. Meditation has been replaced by properly prescribed medication, the latter of which has become the greatest killer in the US.
Does any given celebrity, when amplified a thousand fold by artificial means, turn to pharmaceuticals to cope with the sheer intensity of life? Or do they meditate their way to a full extension of possibilities, realising Self and liberating the soul?
The symbolism of the cross maintains the same meaning throughout all the doctrines of all the cultures of the globe; amplitude and exaltation followed by the integration of the extensions. Symbolically, X is also speed; the cross impedes breakneck speed.
Chris Cornell and Edie Sedgwick’s lives were clues hidden like stolen jewels in plain sight for those on the path. Sedgwick basked in the heat of media interest which, like a magnifying glass on an ant, burned her up under its focus. Could her suicidal overdose have been averted by practising her ancestral French Hugenot religion to which her family supposedly subscribed — or was the form of Calvinist Protestantism too corrupted for meditative traditions? Would Catholicism have helped? Not if Dolores O’Riodan, overdosing lead singer of the Cranberries was the example.
The energy sleeping at the base of ones spine must flow with consciously meditative, regulated impedance to its goal, like water in a rocky stream, to achieve the eternal peace of the Grail. There is no other way. It follows an electrical law — because it is.
The faster and louder the life, the more electrical potential to ‘burn down the house’ but that doesn’t mean youth and people who desire material enjoyment should deny themselves. Edie Sedgwick literally burned her house down, survived it, then died a few years later after a diet of literal electroshock therapy, drugs and alcohol. She felt her way in the dark as one must in these closing chapters of the Kali Yuga but it may be wise to remember that “It is always darkest before the dawn.”
Chris Cornell’s amplified energy had the power to stop one short, absorbing it in to the very marrow, enlivening perhaps a tiny, buried, esoteric bone of memory, the luz; screaming down to it, drawing it up, harmonising with something true, raw and very wrong with the life and times of Generation X buried deep within its collective soul.
Chris Cornell was the Tarot’s hanged man, a sacrifice (released, made sacred, martyred); a carefully calculated cosmic alarm clock set for Generation X.
“What is in question,” says Vaulliard, [quoted by Guénon in Symbolism of the Cross] “is a development proceeding from Thought down to a modification into Sound (Voice), from the impenetrable to the comprehensible.
It will be seen that we have before us a symbolic account of the mystery that has universal genesis for its object and that is bound up with the mystery of unity.”
To almost conclude, Cornell is from the Latin ‘Cornelius’ who, in the New Testament was told to go and find Peter. In Latin, Pietro (Peter) means ‘stone,’ anoint the stone (the 33rd degree) to discover authentic amplitude and exaltation, also known as Self.
The original, ancient and eternal goal of life.
In fluid dynamics, an eddy is a movement (of fluid) deviating from the general flow. Idols like influencer, Edie, might hold a spark or symbol of something transcendent (like a name) they are still “false idols” because the “Kingdom of God is within”.
When one finds more spiritual direction in a 1994 song heard in a seasonal mountain bar than in 15 years of Anglican church it might be that a significant acceleration of time, karma and consciousness is afoot.
As Sedgwick famously said, ‘I’m not rebelling, I’m trying to find a better way.’
An artist will lightly sketch an X on their canvas as a perspective guide before drawing a picture of a scene with a vanishing point. The following Audioslave video is based on the 1971 film ‘Vanishing Point’, a film considered a cult classic (the song’s lyrics are classic occult..). Quality headphones are highly recommended for Chris Cornell’s excellent c.4 octave vocal range, but also for the blissful silence at the end.
N.B. Waiting in the desert, ripe for Exodus at 3:33.