Variations and Associations, or Don't Follow the White Rabbit, part 2

If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction and overview of the point of this blog that needs updating. Occult posts - posts on the history and meaning of occult images - have their own menu page above. All  posts are in the archive on the right. 
Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry.

It's been a while since an occult post and the second half of the White Rabbit is past due (click for part 1). We split it in two when we realized how dependent the symbol was on the writings of Lewis Carroll. Now we'll gather the main points from that one and look at the patterns in white rabbit symbolism after Alice. The themes are very dark - we have been careful with our image choices, but this was still a slog. We are not given a spirit of fear, but the dark wears on the psyche all the same.



Before Carroll, the rabbit had ancient associations of fertility and purity - two broad sets of meanings that could apply to almost anything and can even contradict each other given different contexts.

Piero di Cosimo, Venus, Mars and Cupid, between 1490 and 1505, oil on panel, Berlin State Museums

Titian, Mary and Infant Jesus with a Rabbit, around 1530, oil on canvas, Paris, Louvre

In the context of an obviously post-coital Mars and Venus, the rabbit symbolizes sexual lust. With the Madonna and Child, it represents purity and positive aspects of fertility - the rebirth of Jesus and the new life for humanity that follows the Resurrection. 

Just "fertility" as a concept is not morally directed. It requires context for that. Carroll provides the context for the modern occult.









It is easiest to think about the white rabbit not as a direct symbol - like a dollar sign for money or a green light for go - or even a clear correlation - like blue checkmarks and lying maggots on Twitter. It is best understood as indicating an attitude or orientation, or range of attitudes and orientations, based on a cluster of associations. What makes it hard to pin down is that the attitudes and associations span a moral range between diametric opposites - purity and lasciviousness are contrary, but the rabbit can be applied to both. And in doing so, it brings together things that should be furthest apart. This is not the fault of the rabbit - it's a gentle and timid creature with amazing reproductive powers that avoids danger and an archetype of mindless gluttony and lusts.

The Ladder of Divine Ascent or The Ladder of Paradise, 12th-century icon, Monastery of St Catherine, Mount Sinai
It's a moral continuum...

The fault is with the human shitstains that that are sexually stimulated by childhood innocence and try to mask depraved desire under a transparent pretense of normal appreciation. This is why we went so hard at Carroll in the last rabbit post - he fits a pattern.

There is a certain type of filth that is always hovering around children in a fascinated way, generally tries to get them alone, and has various "interests" and props designed to capture child attention. One cannot read about Lewis Carroll after learning about Walter Breen and not be struck by underlying similarities. We have mentioned this book as a horrifying look into the tacitly-accepted depravity in science fiction. Greyland's mother - Breen's wife Marion Zimmer Bradly - comes off as equally monstrous, but it's Breen who's the Carroll-style prowling groomer.

The pattern extends to the secondary filth that aids and abets the abuse by apologizing for the child rapist. Like author John D. Wright in this link. Would anyone be surprised if the pedo-apologists fantasize about child rape themselves, but lack the evil will to act on it?

Once you can see the pattern, the breezy dismissals from over a century later are appalling. Like this blurb from SJW mouthpiece Kirkus "Reviews" - "the bulk of the book details the peculiar ups and downs of the friendship between the child and the confirmed bachelor (whose best friends were always little girls, although there's no hint that these ties were anything but deliciously whimsical and rather cerebral). This is a patent lie. There's no direct admission, but there's enough smoke for a forest fire. 

Just set aside the preconceptions and look at the cover. Seriously, look at the cover. And this is a book that presents this as harmless, whimsical fun. 

The illustrations are similar - depictions of supposedly whimsical bonding that stinks of wrong to eyes that can see.










The Band is not above a rhetorical flourish, but we generally try and proceed in a logical way - explaining the contradictions we uncover and showing the evidence and reasoning for for our conclusions. But child abusers challenge our ability to maintain intellectual detachment. We despise them beyond words, and must consciously maintain frame to discuss this issue in a rational manner. There is a reason why this isn't a topic we have been in a hurry to take on.

Old millstone from the Dalgarven Mill, Museum of Ayrshire Country Life and Costume, North Ayrshire, Scotland

But it is an important one. 













These freaks with their silly stories and little eye-catching mannerisms are easily detected by vigilant adults. And parents whose children are victimized are often more ignorant and self-absorbed than actually wicked themselves. No matter how unpleasant to consider, this is a major vein of corruption at the heart of the West that needs exposure. If one ostrich pulls their head out of their ass and takes interest in the well-being of their children, than wading through this putrescence was worth it.

Joseph Bouvier, A Sylph Distributing the Early Morning Dew, 1858, oil on canvas, private collection

No need to recap Carroll here - the last post highlights the main points of his depraved psyche and how that echoes in his famous Alice books. 

We also saw notions of "fairyland" as a venue for sexualized images of children. This is not an extreme example, but enough to make the point and puncture the illusion of Victorian "propriety". And that's all we're going to show or share of this.  






While Carroll wasn't writing about Victorian fairies, he does fit perfectly with the convention of a fantasy other-realm and childhood sexuality. Only he is too clever to present it as blatantly as Victorian fairy-painters. What he does can be explained with Tolkien's term "applicability". This appears in the introduction to The Lord of the Rings and has gotten a lot of attention in the last couple of regular Band posts. Occult posts have more readers though, so we will briefly define it here for those who aren't interested in regular Band

Joe Gilronan, Bilbo's Eleventy-first” Birthday
Applicability describes how imaginary stories can comment on or open insights into the real world, without direct one-to-one symbolism. Think of it as patterns in the story - events, relationships, characters - that helps us better understand things that appear superficially different in our world function in the same way. Like the Shire as an insight into the natural health that comes from living in organic communities.


When we call the White Rabbit and the Alice stories applicable to pedophilic fantasy, we are NOT claiming that the story narrates sexual abuse, or even represents it with clear symbols or allegories. Applicability is subtler. It depicts relationships that reflect on - that are applicable to - real patterns of psychological manipulation that lead the victim into the abusive situation. And this extends well beyond child abuse and into the full range of exploitative and manipulative experiences that the White Rabbit has been connected to.

Olga Kovalyova, illustration for the Alice 150,  

This is why we did not reject the Alice books as categorically unfit for children and focused on the narrative pattern rather than the details. To repeat, the books don't overtly reference sexual deviancy, and can be enjoyed by children in healthy and safe settings.  

SHU (Shuichi Mizoguchi), Alice In Wonderland 300 piece APPLEONE Jigsaw Puzzle 

The White Rabbit's symbolic applicability kicks in when the situation - for adults or children - stops being healthy or safe. The problem is that this seems to be a norm. Searching images for this post has been more disturbing and unpleasant then we expected, and if you've read part one, you know we weren't exactly naive going in. If the results from both Duckduckgo and Google images are any indication, Alice is an absolute magnet for freaks and degenerates. Picture after picture imagines her in in inappropriate and sexually threatening poses and scenes - this one is quite tame. 

This isn't "proof" of anything, but it is significant that the story resonates this way with the wicked. It lends itself to perversion. The patterns that we have identified intellectually and critically seem to be something that human garbage are drawn to intuitively. 

Jesus Blasco, Alice In Wonderland

Is anyone surprised to see red stockings make an appearance?

Anyone...?














The question: what it is about the underlying pattern that makes it so amenable to toxic activities?

The biggest thing that jumps out at the structural-pattern level is dissociation. 

The Band has been understandably critical of psychology, but for the nonsense claims that fail even to reach the level of junk science. But there can be value in observing and naming consistent recurring behavior patterns - like dissociation.  According to one link, "dissociation is a psychological experience in which people feel disconnected from their sensory experience, sense of self, or personal history. It is usually experienced as a feeling of intense alienation or unreality, in which the person suddenly loses their sense of where they are, who they are, of what they are doing". A quick search will show a lots of similar definitions - it is a common and easily recognized condition.

What that stands out about dissociation besides how common it is is the wide rage of severity. The mildest form isn't much different from basic distraction or day-dreaming - when one is preoccupied and time passes unnoticed. The severe cases shatter psyches and are more relevant to this post. This bit from Infogalactic on pathological dissociation is a good summary:

Pathological dissociation involves dissociative disorders, like dissociative fugue and depersonalization disorder. These alterations can include: a sense that self or the world is unreal (depersonalization and derealization); a loss of memory (amnesia); forgetting identity or assuming a new self (fugue); and fragmentation of identity or self into separate streams of consciousness (dissociative identity disorder, formerly termed multiple personality disorder) and complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

The thing to remember when using psychological terms is that they are observations. There's no "dissociation bug" that can be tested for or cultured in a lab. Observe traits and draw conclusions. They're biologically imprecise, which is fine, so long as you aren't using them for more than they are. Observation suggests that the cluster of dissociative disorders can have different causes or none at all - Infogalactic again: "dissociative disorders are sometimes triggered by trauma, but may be preceded only by stress, psychoactive substances, or no identifiable trigger at all".

It would be easy to take a shot at Science! here, but we aren't critiquing the status of the social sciences in general. And there is nothing objectionable about noting that certain abnormal behavior patterns come about for different reasons. Individuals are complex, and what may cause one person to break and retreat inward psychically can just wash off another. What is relevant here is the observable correlation between severe dissociation and trauma. 










At the extreme, dissociation produces what are called "alters" - distinct, fragmented personalities that used to be called split-personality disorder. As an aside, psychology keeps changing terms because it is strictly observational labeling. Observe something different and you may need a new name. Which is why we don't put stock in much beyond the observations. But whatever the mechanism that produces them, alters are observably real, really disturbing, and potentially destructive. Here's a lengthy overview of the severe end of dissociative alters. And a more practical piece for families dealing with this.

It appears that alters are created as a response to trauma so severe that the mind constructs distinct alternative identities to escape. And this can be so powerful that the victim is unaware of these to the point that personalities can operate completely separately from each other - even in opposition to each other. The entire MK-Ultra / Monarch mind-control research and it's current descendants are based on using controlled trauma to create specific alters that can act without the victims knowledge. 

This makes sense - the idea of telepathically controlling someone remotely is far-fetched enough that most will dismiss it out of hand. But the idea that splinter personalities can be created that operate independently when triggered is way more plausible. Similar processes are observed in survivors of ritual child abuse - and there are numerous accounts of the deliberate creation of specific alters based on fictional characters. Is anyone surprised to see the Alice in Wonderland characters high on that list?

Click for image source.













What struck us when writing the last post about the Carroll books was how dissociative they are. Alice isn't splitting into alters, but she does move from impossible scene to impossible scene with a weird emotional detachment that is utterly at odds with the actual scenarios she encounters. If there is something in the stories that makes it catnip for human garbage looking to project their pathology, it is probably this. The isolated child in a strange place projects an inherent vulnerability, but if she were frightened, moving quickly, and scrambling to figure out a way to escape, it is more difficult to imagine her a "willing victim".

The original beloved John Tenniel drawings capture the dissociated flavor of both the Alice books. No scenario, no matter how frightening or shocking creates much response at all. 

The stories have been misrepresented as versions of the archetypal hero's journey, except they aren't. They don't have any of the knowledge-gaining, transformative, or ultimately beneficial outcomes that define the hero's journey. It is a journey, but adjectives matter. She returns no different than when she left, and no one else even noticed her absence. And consider how little agency she has, or power to influence what is happening. There is no choice here beyond the decision to follow the odd White Rabbit in the first place. Once she does that, the rest just unfolds. 





















There are two possibilities - the people calling it a hero's journey are idiot ignoramuses, or the transforming knowledge and experience is implied "between the lines". Both is an acceptable answer too. The stories aren't overtly sexually abusive on the surface but the pattern of the preternaturally-composed child floating through a sequence of nightmare scenarios is exactly the same as an abuser projecting willingness on their dissociated, psychically-fleeing victims. Then you think of Breen Carroll and all his special stories for special child friends....

Look further if you are skeptical, but for once we aren't strongly recommending it. What you will read is awful.

Now we bring in the White Rabbit - that centuries-old symbol of lust and innocence - to guide the dissociated girl on her involuntary nightmare journey, and we've found the transforming, between-the-lines content in this inverted "hero's journey".

Put that symbol together with the strange dissociated structure of the stories and the implied "experience" looks like the initiation of an innocent child into a perverse world of adult sexuality.







This is applicability - not beat for beat allegory or direct symbolism, but relationships that illuminate or offer insight into things in reality. It is a pretty abstract interpretation, but applicability is indirect, which means it can't be pinned to a single clear interpretation. And that brings us to the wide range of meanings connected to the White Rabbit post-Carroll and Alice. They are all applications of the figure to different aspects of real world. In other words, the different people will apply the idea of the rabbit from the books to their own circumstances, and these are as diverse as people and their interests.

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Collins 1939, colored plates by A.H. Watson

Not all the interpretations are perverse, manipulative, or sexualized. The Alice books are classics of children's literature for a reason, and are filled with memorable scenes and moments that aren't particularly sinister. The literal level of the story is fantastical, imaginative, intelligently written, and Alice gets home safe and unharmed.

And it is possible to depict a montage of things from the story without teasing violence, perversion, or the like. 













One of the most common general applications is the notion of the fantastical journey - either positive or negative in its relation to the truth. This is an important point, because the whole reason for using analogies and  metaphors from beloved and popular stories like Carroll's is to make the point more compelling or persuasive. One is more likely to respond favorably to something when it is related to something else - like a beloved or popular story - that he feels positive about and connected to. Liars understand this and can use warm association of this kind to reduce skepticism and enhance compliance on a subconscious level at least.

Think of the common phrase - "going down the rabbit hole". It is used to refer to the realization that something strange or off leads to a chain of revelations that turns your understanding of the world, or a big part of the world, upside-down. A really famous pop-culture variation appears in The Matrix:

Take the red pill is more iconic - probably because it is more original. But the sentiment here is basically the same as "down the rabbit hole" - a Carroll-themes journey into a reality very different than the one you think you live in.

But there's an inversion. 








The Alice stories presume that her everyday life is reality and Wonderland the dream escape place - at least on the surface. You can play "was it really all a dream" or "what's reality anyhow" interpretation games, but on the literal level, the stories make it clear that Alice's life out of Wonderland is the real one.

Now consider the variations on down the rabbit hole or following the white rabbit. These imply that the "real" world is the illusion and the "Wonderland" that you roll into is the truth. The journey seems unbelievable, but the experience turns out to be more "truthful" than what you thought reality is.

In The Matrix, following the white rabbit leads to a more real world outside of a computer simulation [in the Band's reality, the sequels never happened]. 

Going down the rabbit hole refers to strings of connections that can make you dizzy with how deeply they can rock your world. But they do that because they reveal truths that seem impossible. 

It is a complete inversion of Carroll's plots and tells us to think more carefully about applicability. The idea that following the white rabbit reveals hidden "truth" is consistent with the journey of experience that we just mentioned. In both cases, the traveler returns to their "real world" with a different set of knowledge and perspectives. More simply, what "truths" might a symbol of purity and lust lead an innocent girl into? 












So we have to pay attention to truth and falsehood with rabbits and rabbit holes - they all claim to be opening your eyes to what's real but some of them are lying. What's at the end - escape from illusion, or Pedoland? Dissection or Dissociation?

This makes the white rabbit difficult to analyze in terms of a specific type of journey, and this is made worse in a modern world where every "mystical" clown with a keyboard can enlighten us with their personal declaration of what a symbol "really" means. No history or background is needed - just empty feel good crystal shoppe crappe. Like a "spiritual living blogger", which may be moron for "shill"...

Start with the requisite Alice reference for subconscious appeal, then connect to the fantastic journey. Only the fiction is that the journey is into some kind of "true self" and not the inverted nonsense realm of Carroll. We even have the dissociation, in the form of "laugh at the madness". 

And how does a symbol "akin" to Alice's guide anyone anywhere worthwhile? Enough on this D-grade charlatan - it's beyond retarded. 

Or this pearl from the Astrology Web:

Apparently the rabbit stands for things with nothing to do with rabbits - smart, nurturing, modest - whatever sells "readings". It appears that these pop occult morons don't even try to make something up that's coherent. Just spam positive adjectives so that even dumber marks send money. 

How about a "professional psychic consultant":

This journey involves "the hollow" and "the opportunity to be filled"...

We can't make this up.












Well, that's the sorry gist of the White Rabbit as a spirit guide and as an occult symbol. It['s a group of variations on a group of associations that mix and match depending on where and when. Sometimes they can even be incompatible - like rabbit holes leading to and away from the truth. And because rabbits are so common all over the world, there's tons of other associations that can shade the dominant Carroll model.

Nanabozho is an important spirit in Anishinaabe mythology that generally takes rabbit form. This deity is a trickster and shape-shifter involved in the creation of the world, inventor of culture, and teacher of men. Likewise the rabbit-trickster god of the Cherokee - Jistu. Just one example, of the different sources of rabbit symbolism. 

Native American legends are popular, and there are plenty of sites claiming the rabbit as a clever, tricky, perceptive spirit animal. These beings are shape-shifters - they act out the transformation that the the Carroll-type White Rabbit symbol leads you into. Is it positive or negative?













Variations on sets of associations.

A more worldly symbol suggests a different kind of transformation - empty hedonism, licentiousness, and exploitation. This one presented the journey as one of freedom, but turned out to be lying to cash in on a de-moralizing society. 













Variations on sets of associations.


A good place to end this is with a return to the Psychedelic Occult - the weird blend of mass-manipulation, drugs, and bizarre fake metaphysics that the occult posts had been looking at. What better than Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit - the Alice-inspired anthem of the Height-Ashbury psy-op. Here's the studio version and, in a surprise boomergasm, the Woodstock version. Whatever else you can say, Grace Slick had a strong voice.

Jefferson Airplane, White Rabbit / Plastic Fantastic Lover, vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, single, RCA Victor, 1967

According to Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick, she wrote White Rabbit while listened to Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain album on LSD.

The song is unforgettable - a driving military march and Slick's powerful trippy vocals leading to a psychedelic crescendo. Apparently, the intent was to mirror psychedelic sensory distortions. 










And it was a psy-op. Piecing together all the details is too much for this post, but it's nothing we're unfamiliar with. The connections are all in the open - they're just not spoken of in venues where you'd come across them. They're rabbit holes - you have to take the initiative and piece it together.

Here are two pieces to show how to string together connections against the grain.

Start with someone like R.D. Laing - an inhuman blend of demented Postmodern psychology, and drug abuse. Connected of course to London’s Tavistock Institute, his theories on schizophrenia, sanity and altered states were toxic. He argued that there essentially was no sanity in the modern world - which is true in the sense that the material world is de-moralized. But rather than recognize that, this soulless husk and his fellow travelers abandoned the distinction between sanity and insanity altogether.

His big idea - ontological insecurity - was just fear of loss of identity. He then set out to induce it. 

63 room Hitchcock mansion in Millbrook, New York; Timothy Leary and Rosemary Woodruff work on Leary’s lecture in one of the rooms in1967

Then consider the prelude to the "Summer of Love" with Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, millionaire, stockbroker and LSD entrepreneur Billy Mellon Hitchcock, and their absurd collection of acid freaks at Hitchcock's sprawling Millbrook, NY estate. You have to pay attention to the article to see that Laing turns up at Millbrook. The rabbit hole here is the web of connections that ties all these characters, the CIA, and other shadowy quasi-official actors together. The 3.6 million hits of 250 microgram Orange Sunshine acid that Hitchcock - an heir to the Mellon fortune - dumped on San Francisco was done with the permission of the authorities. 









What the "Summer of Love" looks like is a grand social experiment. This link points out how much of a hothouse the Haight-Ashbury district was. Consider - within the same tiny area you had:

Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, poster for September 15, 1967 concert at the Hollywood Bowl

Multiple bands living in close proximity, including "scene" leaders The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Country Joe and the Fish, and Jefferson Airplane, This show by Bill Graham featuring "the San Francisco Scene" had the Airplane, the Dead, and Joplin's band, Big Brother and the Holding Company.

Scene and logo of the Process Church of the Final Judgement and the Manson and Hell's Angel's houses.  

Then there are the obvious villains, who are left out of all the sunny accounts of freedom, love, and music. The Hell's Angels in particular were on hand from the first Acid Tests - it is most likely that their "security" was more of a protection racket. The Satanic Process Church of the Final Judgement preached the reconciliation of Jesus and Satan and was typical of the darker side of Age of Aquarius gullibility, evil, manipulation, and sheer stupidity.

The Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic in the late 60s and today; CIA programmer Dr. Louis Joyon "Jolly" West

There were the doctors - the free clinic is generally held up as an enlightened step towards free health-care by idiot Kool-Ade drinkers, and still operates today. What is conveniently left out is the involvement of West, a CIA MK-Ultra subcontractor who set up shop at the clinic to "recruit" experimental volunteers from the hippy street population. West went on to provide cover for pedophiles as head of the monstrous False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

Louis J. West editor, Hallucinations, Grune and Stratton, New York, 1962; 2nd edition with R. K. Siegel, John Wiley & Sons, 1975

And some not-so-jolly theorizing from West's book - with covers of the 1975 edition. Note the publisher - Wiley (also Wiley-Blackwell) is a huge academic / scientific publisher.  This is the opposite of fringe. And he was in the direct employ of the CIA, attempting this very thing. 

The most revolting thing about boomertards isn't the naivety - that's understandable given the grotesque media-produced, de-moralized materialism that replaced healthy socialization and coherent values. It's the inability to move past the retarded myths they were fed in their youths, process new information, and evolve intellectually. It's like their brains were broken then frozen in amber - a singular generational phenomenon that may be post-war mind-control's greatest feat. 

The Psychedelic Shop - San Francisco's first head shop and protesting a bust in 1966 (top; bottom left) and in 1967 with the Grateful Dead. 

This was an epicenter of Haight-Ashbury drug culture and the prototype for the head shops that proliferated across America. 

 Cover of the San Francisco Oracle, vol. 1 no. 5, January, 1967

The San Francisco Oracle was the psychedelic underground newspaper that was the voice of the Haight scene for a year. It's pages are filled with a mix of music, drugs, the whole gamut of b.s. alternative "spiritualities", local goings on, etc. 

And an article from that issue: "The New Science" by Mukunda Das, San Francisco Oracle, 1, 5 promoting the Bhaktivedanta Swami's visit to San Francisco

And the event ad itself - because if there is one thing "Krishna Consciousness" needs is a "Mantra-rock festival dance" with degenerate parasite Alan Gisnberg:

Experimental theater and social groups like the San Francisco Mime Troop and the Diggers brought absurdist theater to the streets, gave away free food and stuff, and promoted nonsense ideologies.

The Diggers and their nonsense ideology. 

To be clear, the Band is very sympathetic to non-materialism - material greed and lust is a key source of modern demoralization. 

But if your rationalization involves dressing like clowns, free flows of "energy" and it all somehow ending violence... you're as likely to have as much long-term impact as they did.

Contrast the myth of free love to the reality of exploitation in the sex trade. Fortunately, this petri dish ensured a steady stream of drugged-out broke girls. That is, "amateur entertainers" with no one to protect them.

Clifford Seeley, poster for Jefferson Airplane, Gabor Szabo, Jimi Hendrix shows, 6/20-25/1967, Fillmore Auditorium

Psychedelic concerts at the Avalon Ballroom, the Family Dog and the Fillmore created the dissociative mental states that we've been discussing.  















This is the context for the Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit. As Paul Kantner put it: “sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, freedom, art, literature, poetry, Haight Street – it was just Heaven on Earth.” But then he also observed that this new rock music was intended to broaden the generation gap by alienating parents from children, and prepare for revolution.

There isn't much point in deep diving into the lyrics - it's a blend of oblique references to things from the Carroll books that most suggest drug use - hookah-smoking caterpillars and mushrooms. 

But the overall effect simulates the dissociative state that ties all the threads we've been looking together - abuse, manipulation, trama, psychedelics, insanity, and fleeing reality into madness while claiming enlightenment. 

Sets of variations on sets of associations

That's enough white rabbit. It's an unpleasant topic. But it is enough to get a handle on how this occult symbol operates. There isn't one fixed meaning, and the versions aren't all unequivocally negative. But the overall structure stinks and the most of the variations are terrible. As a rule of thumb, if you are a logos-facing person, be very wary of this one - probably best to give it a pass altogether.

Close with a proof of concept, or meet human filth Trevor Brown, a British "artist" based in Japan. His work is filled with violent pedophilic themes - much like fellow shit-stain Ray from the red shoes post. Here too, we see his perversion soft-peddled by likely fellow travelers and enablers. Here's one that calls it "brutally provacative" by a writer that probably should ensure his computer is never closely examined. 

We aren't interested in reproducing his porn - it isn't art by any legitimate Western standard, and we'd prefer not to pollute this site with it. It's a gratuitous panty shot. We also utterly reject his boomertard (born 1959 of course) concept of depravity as some sort of free expression virtue. It isn't. If you must see more, here's the link.

It's a pattern. 

That's enough Trevor hopefully forever - we are just using him as one of too many examples of how Alice and the White Rabbit keep turning up along the path through depravity, pedophilia, the destruction of innocence - naked evil. And this is where applicability comes back in. The Alice stories and their long-eared guide are not overtly perverse. There are some disturbing themes, but tame stuff by ordinary fantasy standards. As we've noted, there is no reason for a parent grounded in logos not to share them with their children. So why is this character such a magnet for human garbage? To the point where this post barely scratches the surface. 







The answer is that it is applicable. It's the structure - the weird dissociated tone, the meaningless "hero's journey", the isolated "curious" child alone in an inverted place - is the same as the ghastly situations that the white rabbit has come to be associated with. The content is radically different, so if you aren't either depraved or specifically looking for it, you probably don't even notice. That's applicability - it's just that Tolkien saw it as a way to illuminate something good, beautiful, or true in the chaos of real life and Carroll has special child friends...

By all means, keep exploring rabbit holes, but give following the white rabbit a healthy pass.

Earlier on, we considered a millstone. 

We are assured that that would be preferable. 

Follow the White Rabbit

If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction and overview of the point of this blog. Occult posts - posts on the history and meaning of occult images have their own menu page above. All  posts are in the archive on the right. 

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check a couple times a day and it will be up there.







If one thing has become clear from looking at occult imagery, it's that the symbols can't be pinned down to any one simple definition. They pick up their meanings from usage, and there is no way to control who picks them up and for what purpose. This is important because it avoids getting caught up in who the symbol-users "really" are. It is easy to get bogged down in trying to figure out if there are direct person-to-person links between one movement and another. Are the ancient Gnostics, the Templars, the Rosicrucians, and the Freemasons all secretly the same organization? Maybe, maybe not - the point is we'll never know for sure.

The Hermetic Tarot deck is based on designs from the order of the Golden Dawn, an occult group that we've run into a few times already. This was one of many versions of what the Band calls the spray of symbols - mystical, astrological, alchemical, kabbalistic, and other occult influences. You can see it here with a collection of symbols from different traditions that get mixed and matched in the inane world of the occult. 



















What we can be sure of is what symbols are being used and for what purpose. If Rosicrucians and Freemasons are transmitting the same message in the same way, they represent similar ideals. They're committed to the same pattern of self-deification - do what thou wilt, be your own god, etc. - through secret knowledge. They differ in the details, but they both invert what is knowable when empirical observation, logic, and faith when those reach their limits work together. That is, the satanic inversion of Truth, Beauty, and Good as we can comprehend them.

"Occult" image with Masonic altar and tiles, Rosicrucian crosses, generic Egyptian myths, and crystal pyramid. The specifics of each don't matter - it's the plugging into pattern of inversion.

This is why we look at general patterns - historical and more recent - to get a handle on the range of meanings that a symbol is associated with. This doesn't give the sort of clear dictionary definitions that would be nice, but it does indicate the general orientation of the user. The Band wrote three occult posts tracing out the occult history of the obelisk starting with the earliest records from Ancient Egypt. Here are the links if you're interested: click for part 1, part 2, part 3. The users are all different, but the broad idea of self-divination - bridging heaven and earth through secret knowledge and ritual - applies in each case. 






The general meaning forms from the accumulation of specific uses. The specific uses derive from the general meaning. This is the life of symbols - a slowly evolving range of associations anchored around a central theme moving through time.

This is complicated with the white rabbit because the symbol is actually very old, but the modern spray of meanings is tied to one source - Lewis Carroll's enduringly popular Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and it's sequel, Through the Looking Glass. So popular that they've passed into the "cultural unconscious" or whatever you want to call that those things that everyone has some awareness of whether or not they know the source directly. Carroll's stories have been retold and adapted countless times in every medium.

Disney alone has made them part of pop mythology. 

Alice has been so well-known for so long that no one really thinks about why this is the case. If you go back and read the story, it isn't the sort of thing that would predict that sort of popularity. To be blunt, the stories aren't that good. 










More specifically, the structure and tone is bizarre, with none of the elements that we would associate with a great story. Alice shuffles through psychedelic landscapes without any sense of growth or purpose, little narrative progress, and no significant meaning or insight into greater truth that connects art with logos. The sheer weirdness explains the counter-culture appeal, but it doesn't seem the sort of thing that would become a cultural landmark.

E. Shepherd, An Anxious Moment - Pooh and His Friends Watch For Eeyore To Float By, 1957, watercolor from The World of Pooh, a 1957 anthology combining the original Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner

None of the warm comradery, gentle insight into the nature of reality, or inevitable passing of childhood like Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh. 

Pauline Baynes, Edmund and the White Witch, colored version of drawing for C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia, 1950

Carroll's world is fantastic - his imagery is the main reason for the popularity of the book. But it offers none of the clear moral choice and personal growth of Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  
















The movie wasn't even all that popular when it came out - it wasn't released in theaters during Walt Disney's lifetime. One problem, according to the link, was that Carroll "doesn't have much in the way of plot. Alice is a passive character who does what the various inhabitants of Wonderland instruct..." and had "...little to identify with in terms of heroism or personality. At the time, people found Alice difficult to connect with on anything beyond a superficial level." Success only came in the late 60s when it "was seen as a “head film,” reflective of the drug culture of the generation, and fit with the psychedelic times." But now that take is "outdated" because reasons, and the film is "treasured as an imaginative and highly original entry in the Disney animated feature catalog." It's worth wondering what changed.

Tim Burton, Alice in Wonderland, 2010

Then there's the "live action" remake - a CGI-nightmare world with an older Alice who manages to keep her clothes on before morphing into perhaps the most preposterous trope in contemporary film - insipid British kick-ass warrior waif. 

The story has little resemblance to Carroll or the 1951 cartoon, and like most 21st-century movies, had no impact on popular culture. So we won't say much about it beyond pointing out that the general connection between Alice and inverted degeneracy. 



















Understanding the white rabbit means getting a read on Alice. 

There are a lot of posts on white rabbits, Alice in Wonderland, and various forms of occult and immoral activity. We aren't going to try and cover all the details - there are a lot of claims that are easy to find. This post will look at the white rabbit before Alice, then move into Carroll's books to see what patterns come out. It touches on a lot of the things that have come up in past occult posts - subconscious effects, sexual and social transgression, Gnostic self-divination, mind control, psychic dissociation - a whole range of inversion. We may even figure out why Lewis Carroll  is so popular. Part 2 will look at the white rabbit after Alice, and what "ideals" it represents today.

It's a blurry one - let's look at the big pieces


The rabbit before Alice is a typical traditional animal symbol like the goat or owl in early posts.

Stefan Kopinski, Cover art for the game Richard The Lionheart

Old animal symbols have uncertain and/or ancient roots and pick up meanings based on their characteristics. Sometimes these are unambiguous - lions always convey power, majesty, rulership and so forth. Others can be ambiguous and even contradictory - the owl is an intelligent night hunter, so became associated with wisdom and darkness. 











Rabbits are timid creatures that breed rapidly with several different associations - lust, vitality and rebirth coexist in the ancient world and the Middle Ages.

Titian, Madonna of the Rabbit, 1525-1530, oil on canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris

The ancient idea that the rabbit could reproduce without sexual intercourse had developed into a symbol of the Virgin birth by the later Middle Ages. This painting is typical - the whiteness of the rabbit adds color symbolism to indicate her purity.  

Frederick Morgan, Feeding the Rabbits, around 1904, unknown location

That idea of virginal purity fits the porcelain Victorian image of childhood captured in this picture. Exactly the thing that the occultic degenerates of the time, like degenerates everywhere, are compelled to pervert. 








The other side of the r-selected symbol is carnal lust - the opposite of the purity in the pictures above. This is more familiar to us today - consider the expression "breed like rabbits" or even r-selected sexuality as a prelude to mouse utopia. The Victorian painting below uses rabbits to highlight the perverse beastiality implicit in Shakespeare's Titania and Bottom subplot. In case it isn't clear enough, note the pose of the small dude front and center.

Edwin Henry Landseer, Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Titania and Bottom, between 1848 and 1851, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Victoria


The difference is that Shakespeare was playing the inversion of social status for comedy while showing the monstrous consequences of a breakdown in order. He situates the bit in Faerie to further highlight the unreal, inverted nature of it, and when the characters have recovered themselves, they've changed for the better. The point wasn't to be cool or a desirable state. But that's because Shakespeare was a great writer.

Three Victorian prints of children from an auction site.

Fairies in the Victorian Age brings us to the ambiguous nature of childhood in Carroll's day. A blend of idealized innocence, commodification and eroticism that is weird and disturbing at times (click for a brief history). 






The pattern is simple enough - the Victorian image of child as flawless porcelain doll is based on the beauty of innocence in theory, but in practice it turns children into objects of appreciation. And linking this beauty to "innocence" implicity adds a sexualized dimension - Victorians generally defined innocence and experience in terms of sexual awareness. The picture on the right is quite blatant in blurring the line between "innocent" and "knowing" appeal. It should surprise no one to learn that upper-class pedos commonly used aesthetic language - poetic praises for innocent childhood beauty - as cover.

Two more from the same site: 
The aesthetic is different, but the patterns are familiar. Children cast in age-inappropriate roles or displayed like objects of beauty - literally objectification. And you will notice that they are isolated - no adult supervision or social context to protect or enforce proper roles. At best they're dehumanized, at worst, objects of fantasy. 










Postmodernists still cover for them when they cluck about "judging" Victorian sexuality from a modern perspective. For those of use that actually exist in reality, the abhorrence, duplicity, and attraction to innocence that comes through in the accounts is all too recognizable. As are the explanations why is couldn't be that bad. The fact is not everyone was sexualizing little girls. As always, there was a type...

Reading To The Children, 1870, German lithograph

A. Hunt, A Happy Christmas to Papa and Mamma, 1874, English lithograph

Arthur John Elsley, The Happy Pair (A Royal Procession), 1894, oil on canvas, private collection

The Band dislikes child art in general for these reasons. But if you must have it, it isn't hard to depict the beauty of innocence in a way that doesn't lend itself to exploitation so blatantly. It's not that hard to add the implicit security of a caring parent, a family home, or even a group of peers. If the beauty of innocence were the only thing in play.  




This is relevant to Fairyland because the Victorian era also saw fairies become more childlike. As Shakespeare shows us, fairies were always associated with inverted and immoral behavior. Stealing children, black magic, and animal sexuality made them cautionary tales, but also made them appealing. But in the popular fairy painting of the Victorian era, Faerie was reduced to tiny fantastical worlds - delightfully trivial escapes for an increasingly affluent public.

John Anster Fitzgerald, The Fairies' Banquet, 1859, oil on canvas

Here's a good example of a Victorian fairy painting  - very detailed fantasy worlds that are very imaginative but tiny. 











Remember that Faerie always had a reputation for moral inversion - it's the otherworld. So it isn't a surprise to see that many Victorian fairy paintings were openly erotic.

John Atkinson Grimshaw, Iris, 1886, oil on canvas, Leeds Art Gallery, England

Grimshaw was a gifted painter of light effects, which he uses to create a magical atmosphere. The fairy just happens to double as a classical nude. 

John Simmons, Fairy Lying on a Leaf, mid-18th century, oil on canvas

Fairyland was playing the part that Classical mythology usually did - a fantasy realm where real-world norms don't apply. That is, an excuse for nudes. 

This was nothing new. 














When it crosses into pure degeneracy is when the eroticism of the old adult fairyland is carried over to the new childlike fairies.

Arthur Rackham, A Fairy Song, from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', 1908, engraving

Rackham's illustrations for Shakespeare are a good example. The date is a bit later though - the erotic fairy children appear on stage before moving into the visual arts. Rackham isn't as bad as some, but we aren't interested in reproducing pedophilic trash.

Mass entertainment culture introducing degeneracy before it becomes normalized in the public imagination is another really familiar pattern. 













Which brings us to Lewis Carroll. 

It is obvious from the historical record that the man was a pedophile - the only real questions seem to be whether he "acted" on it, and how much of a pedo taking full frontal nude photos of pre-pubescent girls and having hundreds of child "friends" makes him. Seriously.

Lewis Carroll, Portrait of the MacDonald Family with Lewis Carroll, 1863, Scottish National Portrait Gallery

We won't be posting his photos for the same reason as the sexualized child fairies. They are easy to find online if this portrait is not sufficiently unpleasant. 

The attempts to wave pedophilia away is one of the more disgusting aspects of Postmodern "ethics" - whether or not Carroll - or the pervs gushing over scantily clad "fairies" on stage for that matter - are  "ok" or "less bad" because what they were doing was permissible in their circles at the time. But everybody wasn't doing it. And Alice Liddell's family eventually banned Carroll from the house. It's more likely he preyed on their naivety then them being all right with his grooming. If there is one place where we do have an advantage over the Victorians, it's that we've seen more evil of the world directly. The Carrolls don't fool us.

The Band skimmed a number of sites while looking into this, and they all feel the need to point out the difference in Victorian attitudes towards the sexual exploitation of children and modern ones. It's like an unwritten rule. This raises at least two problems:


1. What are these "modern values" that cause such hardship for poor Lewis' reputation?

Shirley Temple in the Baby Burlesk short, “Kid In Hollywood.”

JonBenet Ramsey performing during a beauty pageant

Modern children are ridiculously sexualized, through everything from pop culture to the internet to schools. Only the degeneracy has spread to every imaginable permutation, to the point where logos-facing parents have to disconnect from the whole institution-media complex or deny basic realities like sex and genetics or the necessity of carbon to a green planet. The Victorian creeps seem almost quaint compared to the institutionalized perversion of Pedowood. There's a line running from the playhouse fairies through the Baby Burlesque of pre-Hayes Hollywood through to the abusr of "drag" kids in the public eye. The more de-moralized the culture, the more open and extreme the abuse of children. 









2. The idea that the sexual abuse of children is somehow less abominable because people collected pictures of it is beyond ridiculous.  

This is a big one because it gets to the fetid rancid heart of what passes for modern "morality". Not the difference between internally and externally driven moral codes that we saw in an earlier occult post, but where is the moral code coming from?

Traditional American morality is Christian, so it is based a fixed standard.

Vitor Schietti, long-exposure photograph. 

There are differences in interpretation, but the Bible does say we see Truth as through a glass darkly. But even a blurry view gives a sense of direction. It's on us to adapt the standard as best we can. That's what moral reasoning is. Criminal codes and standards of evidence change, but the basic direction - it's wrong to steal - doesn't.

Chuck Pinson, A  Moment on Memory Lane, 2014

This is different from internal / external. Christian morality assumes an internal drive from the free choice to align with logos. But there is nothing to prevent a Christian code from being imposed from the outside like any system. 

Much of the appeal of mid-20th century America comes from a society that forced compliance with secularized Christian ethics through different means. 



Postmodern morality is the opposite. The Band has posted a ton on Postmodernism - dismantling that particular web of lies was the inspiration to start this blog. What matters here are two big underlying concepts that tie the different versions of Postmodern thought together:

1. Reality is produced through representations, communications, and sign systems. Whether some exterior reality "exists" in a philosophical sense is irrelevant, since all we can see, think, or say is expressed in references to other signs, images, media, and folkways. Meaning comes from consensus or habit, nothing external. This changes over time, but by internal churn, not a clearer handle on "truth".

Immersive Van Gogh show, 2019, L’Atelier des Lumières, Paris

Postmodernists often call this "discourse" because there is no existing word that sums it up. When they say something is a "discursive construct" or "there is no outside the text", what they mean is that texts - discourse - is all we can ever have. Like Borges' Labyrinth - a maze of books that goes forever and reaches nowhere.








2. Reality as it applies to us is purely subjective - how we understand and interact with our fundamentally discursive existence is an internal process. Since there is no "meaning" to find, reality as it appears to us is what we make of it.

Svetoslav Stoyanov, Creator Of Reality, 2012, oil painting

It's a two-way process - we become aware of the world around us and subjectively respond to it and are shaped by it in personal ways. So whoever controls the discourse controls the world. You all just have to believe. The idea that subjective human will and desire ultimately determines reality is what makes this a luciferian form of Satanic inversion in the Band's terms.

Postmodern morality isn't a good faith best effort to adapt an external standard to the present. In the Postmodern world, endless adaptation is all there is - discursive "reality" and subjective response. There is no standard - just what a never-defined "we" believe at the time. This is the moral relativism that is a Postmodern calling card - since there is no meaning, and reality is all discourse generated by collective subjectivities, simple distinctions of right and wrong are judged solely on "community standards".






Back to Carroll, we see this in the need to point out that Victorian standards around the exploitation of children was different. Note that they never explain why this is, or ask if naivety and fake propriety might have provided cover for things that jump out to our more jaded eyes. It's never that the Victorians were gullible, it's always that we shouldn't judge the pedos. Carroll may have wormed his way into Alice's life because the Liddells were self-absorbed, disinterested, and/or naive, but it appears that once they clued in, they had no trouble judging the pedo. The lack of legal action is a "cultural difference" but the moral judgment is the same.

Lewis Carroll demonstrates a favorite "dating" technique.

The alternative is to pretend that there was nothing abhorant at all - just a "shy stammering don" who  "loved children". But one was special, a little girl with haunting eyes named Alice.". It's safe to assume that readers are mainly adult - consider an authorized media that presents the idea of a weird loner "haunted" by the eyes of someone's little girl as touching. 

National Geographic is a disgrace. They've pushed every bit of globalist nonsense from "climate science" to open borders while somehow being credible in the eyes of many. Here they whitewash child grooming. Then again, they are English establishment...

Cut to the chase - if you see this lurking outside, close the window. 










This "don't judge because they're different" is how Postmodern moral inversion tries to normalize abhorrence. The only reason to downplay Carroll's pedophilia is to undermine what should be a natural moral aversion. Ask why some entity may want you to question your feelings about the sexual exploitation of children. Are all these sites consciously pushing a pro-pedo agenda? It's impossible to say, but we don't have to. That's what makes Postmodern moral relativism so evil - you don't have to even be aware of what you are doing to advance its anti-human luciferian "agenda". Moral inversion and cultural entropy is baked into how our centrally-controlled authorized culture frames basic assumptions. And explaining why Victorian pedophilia is somehow less deserving of condemnation just seems to become an unwritten rule.

When someone is trying to tell you that morality doesn't apply to immoral people, ask why. 

A  lot of resources on-line that delve into Carroll's aberrant personality and the less-than-wholesome imagery and messages in the Alice books. Click for a link to the most thorough of them -  it does sometimes force the connections, but the patterns are unmistakable.

David Day, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded: The Full Text of Lewis Carroll's Novel with its Many Hidden Meanings Revealed, 2015, click for epub

This is the by far the most thorough analysis of Carroll's images and symbols - the result of decades of research. The references are incredibly complex - complexity that led Day to conclude that the Alice books can be interpreted as coded summary of human knowledge as understood by 19th-century occultist mathematicians. And Carroll was captivated by the whole interlaced body of occult thought that we keep running into in these occult posts. 

Wordplay and mathematical wizardry from Pythagorianism and Cabalistic numerology through Fibonacci sequences to Boolean logic, filtered though Classical myth, Victorian supernaturalism, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy - too much to summarize here.

Since Postmodernists like cultural relativism, here's some: fairy-land had different connotation in Carroll's day...

Relevant because the structure of Wonderland has a lot less to do with English fairy lore then than ancient mythological archtetype. David Day points out that it basically retells the transforming journey to the underworld - the world's oldest existing myth best known in the stories of Egyptian Isis, Babylonian Ishtar and Greek Persephone. What does "fairy-land" mean to a Victorian pedo?





Day dug through Carroll's diaries, letters, and private papers in assembling his book and blew up some popular myths in the process. It turns out that oft-told tale of Carroll spontaneously regaling Alice and her sisters with Wonderland is b.s. - according to his own papers, he'd been sharing versions of it with his "child friends" for years. He even produced an earlier version called "Alice’s Adventures Under Ground". So he lied to appear more creative and less polished - exactly the sort of pitch that a groomer uses to disarm. It is also not surprising to learn that Carroll was only one of Dodson's pseudonyms. Masking himself and hiding in plain sight were personal patterns that line up neatly with degenerate sexuality and Rosicrucian/ Theosophic secret society occultism.

Jonathon Earl Bowser, The Awakening, 1998

According to Day, the myth of Persephone is the frame story of Alice’s Adventures - the Theosophical version where the goddess of spring returning from the underworld symbolizes personal spiritual rebirth through a hidden occult knowledge. They tie into the Eleusinian mysteries into this as well - unity of all religions and so forth. Both the original "Alice's Adventures Under Ground" and Alice in Wonderland follow this structure quite closely. Underworld as an occult rite of passage. 

It's interesting that the river where Carroll liked to take the children boating and where he first told them his "Alice" story was called the Isis. Isis was the Egyptian variant on the Theosophic notion of underworld myth and spiritual rebirth. These ideas were old and tangled in folklore - even seeping into the local version of Christian life. The British version involved the goddess Eostre - source of the word Easter

Lewis Carroll, Alice Liddell as 'The Queen of May', 1859

The May Queen was a legend with Medieval roots that involves crowning a personification of spring. This also picked up popular Christian connotations, but is folkloric and closer to pagan tradition in its ritual form. Here's the imaginary modern version.

A photo proves little - Carroll was obsessed with children and took a lot of pictures. But they weren't usually in costume. So it's worth noting that the one that is shows Alice in a role that is perfectly consistent with the idea of occult rebirth through "unity of all religions" underworld journey-spring symbolism.











If we can think of the Alice stories as an occult journey of rebirth, the white rabbit is obviously a psychopomp or guide of souls. These take many forms - angels are a common one, and Virgil in Dante's Divine Commedy a good literary example. In mythology, psychopomps are often animals, and Persephone and Eostre were both commonly portrayed with rabbits. This ties back into the association between rabbits and benevolent fertility - the return of spring and the Resurrection are life-giving rebirths, just on different levels. In the ever-changing life of symbols, overlap is easy. The origins of Easter Bunny in Eostre’s rabbit is a perfect example.

For the record, the Band is not opposed to "pagan" symbols in Christian holidays. Our perspective is that "the West" is built on Christian morals and metaphysics playing out in different national cultures. This is what distinguishes omni-nationalism from globalism - we don't want to force one form of cultural expression on everyone. Folkways are a huge part of a nation - right up there with language. What matters is how the symbols are used. Do they express logos in a national language, or some other occult nonsense? An Easter bunny is a customary festival chocolate if you don't use it to replace what Easter means. 














Day even offers a possible real-life model for the White Rabbit in his story - Elias Ashmole, physician, antiquary, astrologer, Rosicrucian alchemist, Freemason, member of the Royal Society, and master of court ceremony. Whether this is the case, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded places Carroll in the middle of the Theosophical culture that was especially influential in his Oxford. And it's also important to note that the Alice books are far to intelligent - shockingly smart, if if Day's research holds up - to be random in their patterns. The structural, linguistic, and numeric complexities are far too integrated to be picked up subconsciously from cultural background noise. The books set a floor for Carroll's intellect - he had to have an exceptional mind to have composed it - and the mathematical relationships show the rigorous logical thought behind the apparent nonsense. Something as obvious to a Victorian Oxford Theosophist as the journey through the underworld is not accidental. Nothing about Carroll was.

E. Gertrude Thomson, cover illustration of The Nursery "Alice" by Lewis Carroll, 1890

Day determined from Carroll's own papers - which have to be read with a grain of salt given how fake he was - that it was the Cabala in particular that inspired a rabbit being pursued down a hole for the opening to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. 

The basic pattern is clear when you put aside the mythologizing and pedo-apologetics and put together the spray of symbols. What kind of spirit guide is the White Rabbit? One that combines innocence and rebirth. That is, an idealized Victorian child at the start of an esoteric journey of enlightenment.








Recognizing that the structure of the Alice books was based on a Theosophic myth of rebirth does not mean that the book is inherently evil. But it is not inherently good, and does not convey any sort of positive moral message for a child to absorb. At best it is neutral escapism - fun enough if the child is otherwise grounded in logos, but pretty much the last thing you want as a source of life lessons. A look at the nature of that journey of enlightenment will show why the book has been so popular with de-moralized globalists and occultists for so long.

William H. Bond, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, National Geographic Image Collection


Carroll's imagery is fantastic and explains why the story is so captivating. The journey takes her from one bewildering scene to the next at breakneck speed, with a twisting, paradoxical language that never lets you catch your breath.

Eri-noa, Bellflower, watercolor, Pixiv, colored pencil 

The Band isn't going to recap more symbolism - the links have lots of that. It's the narrative structure where Alice's Adventures in Wonderland shows the occult direction of Carroll's spray. Lots of sites mention the classic model of the hero's journey - an storytelling archetype that turns up in just about every time and tradition. 

The basics are well known. Someone ventures out of their environment, has fantastic adventures, acquires some wisdom, and returns home changed to make a positive impact. The thing is though, this is such a simple general pattern that it really doesn't tell much. You need to consider where they go, what they learn, and what constitutes a positive change.









If the White Rabbit guides the innocent soul on a hero's journey to enlightenment, what does the journey look like? How does it unfold? 

Transforming innocence isn't a good start. In Victorian terms, innocence transforms into experience - the same sexualized pair of opposites that we saw in the eroticized images of porcelain children. But that's more symbolism. The structure of the journey narrative is really odd too.

John Tenniel, Queen of Hearts shouting at Alice, colored

Note about the original pictures. Carroll did his own illustrations for the original "Alice's Adventures Underground" and chose Sir John Tenniel, an English illustrator and political cartoonist for the Alice books. Tenniel's drawings are almost as famous as the story. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was done in 1864-1865, and Through the Looking Glass from 1869- 1872. The color versions for The Nursery Alice were prepared in the 1880s.

One of the most striking things about the Carroll books is the dissociated emotional tone. Alice shows mild worry at first, but generally moves from scene to impossible scene with a weird detachment. This actually makes it easier for small children emotionally, since they identify with Alice and if she isn't too upset, it can't be that scary. 




It becomes odd when you consider how horrifying some of the things she doesn't react to actually are.

John Tenniel, Alice dancing with the Gryphon and Mock Turtle, colored

Monstrous creatures, murderous queens, being lost in an inexplicable world, even the slaughter of sentient oysters - the stuff of nightmares on the surface. The recent Hollywood versions were typical examples of making children's stories dark and violent for emotionally-stunted film audiences, but Carroll gave them a lot to work with. You just don't notice because Alice never reacts as if she is threatened. 

In other words, she's found herself here, but is unaffected and comfortable going along. 










This level of dissociation is obviously not healthy. It also explains why Alice symbolism - white rabbits in particular - are so popular in the mind control and pedophilia worlds. It's all psychic fragmentation and disconnect in the face of trauma. And the complete lack of any sort of threat awareness is probably the most disturbing part. The Band isn't going further here, but it's not hard to see the pattern. There just isn't much point in spending time parsing out the "secret" information that is readily available on the internet. If duckduckgo is spitting it out, it's not pulling any final curtains.

A comparison with two other timeless children's classics featuring fantastic places makes this clearer.

J. R. R. Tolkien, Bilbo Comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves\, watercolor, illustration for his The Hobbit, 1937

Tolkien, like Carroll, was an artist as well as a writer. The Hobbit follows the hero's journey archetype closely. Bilbo is a curious but comfortable rustic thrust into a wild series of adventures in a vast and terrifying world. When he returns, he is has new wisdom, and new appreciation for his home. The adventures build a coherent narrative, and Bilbo reacts, adapts, and grows in the way a healthy person should. 

E. H. Sbepherd, Winnie-the-Pooh postcard

Winnie-the-Pooh isn't a journey in the same way - more of a set of separate stories in the same imaginary world. The tone is gentle, but so are the trials - the emotions of the characters are as appropriate to their environments as Bilbo's. And the messages are honest. Friendship and positive values mixed with subtle insights into human nature. The journey comes in at the end of The House at Pooh Corner, when Christopher Robin has to leave the world of fantasy and begin the transition to adult life. 

He was six. 

Mark Forster, Christopher Robin, 2018

Of course, that didn't prevent the Devil Mouse from inverting the message into a Peter Pan fantasy of perpetual childhood. Literally. It's Hook for the new millennium. Cute enough on the surface, but a depressing truth about the de-moralized modern culture. With nothing to live for but escapism and stuff...

** quick aside **

Consider this as a value systen: this world is so inverted that it peddles the fantas "escape" from the unending materialism it preaches as the highest value.

** end aside ** 

...returning to childhood is the ultimate fantasy. Where everything was play and death much further away. When you live in the world of logos, age and death are neither to be fled nor feared. They just are. But when you live in logos, the world isn't de-moralized and materialism isn't all there is.






With Alice's journey, there is no progression to the narrative beyond the occasional appearance of the White Rabbit to signal a scene change. Comedy gives way to horror to wonder without rhyme or reason. And then it just ends. There is no growth, no lessons to absorb.

But this is supposed to be a "hero's journey". Alice returns home, but what has she learned? 

Reliable knowledge of the dangers of the world and awareness of the value of his safe and comfortable community?

An understanding of positive sociability and base understanding of human foibles in preparation to leave the nursery?

Or whatever happens, it's all good. Just follow the White Rabbit and you'll wake up safe and sound with Mr. Carroll at home in the end. 













After all, it's just "experience".


Hidden messages aside, the story is emotionally off. Dissociated. As we said, this doesn't make the Alice books inherently evil. But they aren't inherently good, and they present a disjointed world and disconnected heroine that is riddled with occult symbolism and easily adapted to really nefarious things.

This is plenty long for an occult post. We'll do the post-Alice white rabbit later. It's just that the books were so influential and have been used in so many negative contexts that it was important to understand why they're so susceptible to these interpretations. And what we saw was another churn of usual spray of symbols. A personal spin on a lot of occult noise with a disturbing message of innocence transformed. And like any occult spray, source material for later ones to churn again.

Why was it so popular? The imagery was part of it. But the message was also globalist friendly - no pesky morality, no value of community, no preparation for adulthood - at best, disjointed escapism for it's own sake, and at worse, a journey into exploitation and dissociation.

More next time.

The Band doesn't usually promote sites or products because it is important that this vehicle be allied to nothing but the truth as we understand it when following observations and logic. Any errors are our own. But the recovery of the real Western culture beneath the webs of occult and Postmodern lies is the point of the Band, and this is tremendous initiative in that direction. If you've wondered how we fight, here's a great opportunity.

The Redacted Press has launched a crowdfunding campaign for a reissuing of the 1918 edition of the ten volume Collier Junior Classics. This is as essential a collection of the actual Western tradition for young readers as you will find in one place, and invaluable for anyone seeking to educate children outside de-moralized mass culture. Here are the spines and a glimpse at the interior - and yes, Lewis Carroll is there as he ought to be. 

It's not surprising that the Junior Classics were gradually converged during their various editions until being pulled entirely. Now this is putting that resource back in circulation. It isn't the exact 1918 version - the FAQ says "the 2020 edition of the Junior Classics is primarily based on the 1918 edition, with some content from the 1958 edition replacing stories from the earlier edition that are now outdated or repetitious". But the text from the sources is unchanged from the originals. Not adapted for globalist sensibilities, or dwindling IQs, or any other devolutionary nonsense.

And a look at the e-book version.

It is a crowdfunding platform, but it isn't a donation. The price is the same as what the books will retail for. It's just a way get in on a very serious project. The left has been very good at perverting and co-opting children's spaces. But we aren't the old impotent "conservatives" - cucking and cashing in as their culture burns. We build reality facing alternatives, and this checks out as a good one. 

The Band gives this the highest possible recommendation. Not just for the books themselves, which are reason enough. But to push back against the darkness with the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.