And the White Knight is talking backwards…
i: Camelot has Fallen
“There was once no charity, loyalty, justice, or truth in the world. Enmity, disloyalty, injustice, and falsehood came into being…justice sought to recover its honour.”
Ramon Llull – the Order of Chivalry 1274
Grace Slick, the singer and writer of “White Rabbit”, commented that all fairy-tales read to little girls have a Prince Charming who comes and saves them. Alice did not. She was alone in a very strange place, but she kept on going and followed her curiosity. As Grace quipped, Alice’s guiding force becomes the enigmatic White Rabbit.
In Lewis Caroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass”, however, the White Knight does indeed rescue Alice, if only on one occasion. He rescues her from the Red Knight and escorts her to the next destination. The archetypal White Knight represents a heroic warrior fighting against evil, portrayed in diametrical opposition to the Black Knight. Carroll alludes to red and white, the usual colours of an ivory or bone chess set at that time, and so the Black knight becomes the Red Knight.
The Black and Red Knights who haunt the Arthurian legends are usually gloomy, half-feral denizens of the wild wood. They pitch their pavilions near crossroads and streams, challenging all comers to battle for no other apparent reason than for the sake of bloodlust. The Black Knight in particular, is a figure who masks his identity and that of his liege by forgoing heraldry. He is usually portrayed as a villain who abuses this anonymity. In contrast, the White Knight, or Knight-Errant, though not perfect, is on a quest for perfection, the transmutation of the man of lead – impure, corruptible, and opaque like the earth, into the man of gold – pure, incorruptible, and shining like the sun. The horse represents the body – the lower self, whilst the rider represents the higher self. His opponents – the Black and Red Knights, also represent aspects of the lower self which he must overcome.
And so, we have the pieces placed in opposition to one another.
The Grand Chessboard
The origin of chess is lost in the mists of time but we know it is at least 5000 years old, boards being found all over the ancient world such as in Egypt and Sumeria. However, the oldest connections date to India where it was part of the strategy of war and a vital component in the education of the Kshatriya – the “knights” of that age.
Later in history, the world would become infatuated with this ancient zero-sum game which epitomizes the dichotomy of “I win – you lose” competition.
“The observation that the great geopolitical struggle between nations is akin to a grand game of chess is hardly a novel one.
After all, Khosrau II, the ancient Sasanian king, saw the connection over 1,400 years ago: ‘If a ruler does not understand chess, how can he rule over a kingdom?’
Or take Leo Tolstoy’s conclusion, ‘War is like a game of chess.’
And who in The Corbett Report audience could forget Zbigniew Brzezinski’s infamous 1998 tome, The Grand Chessboard, in which he identified the Eurasian landmass as ‘the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played’?”
But chess also symbolizes the duality inherent in the universe.
The Beaucent, with its black and white pattern, was the war banner of those perceived White Knights of Christendom, the Knights Templar. Like the chessboard, it symbolized the dualistic struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness fought by a white and a black army.
The symbolism of the chessboard was later to be adopted by the Freemasons, said to be the inheritors of the Templar tradition. They taught that the ground floor of King Solomon’s temple followed the pattern, emblematic of human life, chequered with good and evil.
“The white king and his suite symbolize the Self and its vehicles; the black king and his retinue, the not-self–the false Ego and its legion. The game of chess thus sets forth the eternal struggle of each part of man’s compound nature against the shadow of itself.”
Manly P. Hall from his book, The Secret Teachings of all Ages
Black is the absence of visible light. White is visible light combining all colours. They have no moral valence in and of themselves, only that which is ascribed to them. Traditionally, the black king and his retinue are represented as “evil”, the false-self and its legion, and the white king and his suite are represented as “good”, the true self and its vehicles.
The dualistic view of the grand chessboard is something that can and has been exploited by a hidden hand. The Templars were presented to the mediaeval world as the paragons of virtue. That is until they fell from grace when their enemies claimed to have exposed the inner circles of their upper echelons, revealing their chequered past…
Black Knights may masquerade as White Knights.
White Knights may be portrayed and perceived as Black Knights.
Both sets of opposing chess pieces on the 3D chessboard can become useful idiots, manipulated from the shadows by another set, operating on a higher octave, the 4D chessboard.
Knights Talking Backwards
Caroll’s White Knight, although he never actually talks backwards, is extremely clumsy, a trait which he shares with Caroll’s Red Knight. They both keep falling off their horses, as if falling from the ideals of chivalry. They are both backwards and upside down in outlook, full of strange ideas that make no sense and have no practical value. Both scrupulously observe the “rules of war” but these rules themselves make no sense whatsoever.
Alice helps the White Knight turn himself around and the right way up. Carroll, a mathematics professor who actually referred to himself in his correspondence as “White Knight”, saw Alice, the object of his strange obsession, as the redeeming quality that counteracts the inverted, mirror-image forms of logic that feature throughout his books. Indeed, in chivalrous tales, the damsel or virgin represents the missing element of the soul.
This quixotic manifestation of the White Knight, having broken away from the world of his origin in order to go off on his own to right perceived wrongs, motivated by idealism and goals that are illusory, perhaps mirrors those leaders – the knights, and their followers – the pawns, that are afflicted with a form of mass formation psychosis. Historical knights served as soldiers or paid others to serve as soldiers for King and country. In addition to this role, they were also administrators, governors, generals, and politicians and so all leaders can be seen as symbolic representations. History attests to the folly of these figures.
These quixotic White Knights, Red Knights, and Black Knights talking backwards correlate to the “Deep State functionaries” a term used on the Wikispooks website. This term covers all lower-level agents under Deep State control – those completely or partially unaware of the hidden agenda and being played by it. They may hold key positions, in corporations, governments, intelligence agencies and the military.
Some are hypnotized by the ideology of the mass formation psychosis that the particular population they are embedded in is under the grip of. These are the true quixotic White Knights talking backwards of today. They believe they are acting for the good of the community and fanatically follow the rules and ideals even if they are absurd, even to the point of their own destruction. The rule of law has been replaced by the rule of insanity. The redeeming quality that Alice represents is notably absent.
Some functionaries are going along because they are motivated by fear or greed, perhaps corrupt subjects of blackmail or bribery. Others are just plain confused and the victims of trickery.
In truth, nearly all of us have at some time been influenced to some degree by this intentionally induced mass formation psychosis brought about by the ultimate weapon of mass manipulation – propaganda.
“…We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”
Louis Bernays
Nearly all of us have been unwitting Deep State functionaries – useful idiots – to varying degrees at some point in our lives.
Who are the useful idiots useful for?
The men we have never heard of, the eminences grise, the puppet-masters of the grey zone.
These are the chess pieces on the 4D chessboard that move the other pieces, the black and white. King, queen, castle, bishop, knight… they are all pawns, Grey Pawns, to these pieces on a higher octave. What hidden hand moves them?
White Hats and Black Hats
It is perhaps this manipulation of useful idiots that Grace Slick alluded to when she sang of the White Knight talking backwards in 1965. It has been suggested that she was referring to the United States army claiming to come to the rescue of Vietnam, and this endeavour not making sense, two years after the assassination of John F Kennedy (JFK) which swiftly followed his declaration of intent to withdraw US troops. Camelot in ruins…
This Cold War era military confrontation saw about 2.5 million US soldiers, presented to the public as white knights and pawns, go off to fight in the cause of “containment” of Soviet influence, championed by the Vietcong, the red knights and pawns. Together with their US-supported surrogate forces they slaughtered 1.1 million enemy combatants in a conflict that also claimed the lives of 2 million civilians.
Around 58,000 US soldiers died in combat, and the rest returned in ignominious defeat, publicly scorned as black knights and pawns by their fellow countrymen who had opposed the war.
The diametrically opposed “superpowers” of the US-led NATO and the USSR-led Warsaw pact, locked in an arms race to Armageddon but in the meantime only engaging in covert/proxy wars, was the dominant narrative from the 1950’s to the 1980’s. The Cold War was “real” for those under the mutually antipathetic mass formation psychoses, the narrative being unchallenged by the commercially controlled media of the West and the Soviet propaganda department of the East.
The false dichotomy of good and evil projected onto a society was a favoured instrument of mind-control, and the US was no exception.
Between the 1920s and the 1940’s, through the medium of western movies, the dichotomy of the white knight and the black knight had evolved into the white hat, representing law and order versus the black hat, representing lawlessness and chaos. The terms are still used today.
However, this was challenged in 1952 with the film “High Noon”, as the heroic but flawed protagonist, Will Kane, played by Gary Cooper, wore a black hat to signify a divergence from the convention.
Will Kane is a white knight disguised as a black knight who tries to raise a posse to fight off four gunmen to defend his town. However, no one will help him and he ends up having to go it alone. After defeating them at high noon, the pivotal moment of truth, he rides off in disgust, clad in his armour of cynicism.
The man who wrote the script, Carl Foreman, intended it as an allegory for the Hollywood blacklist, those who sought to enforce it, and the cowardly community that stood by silently, petrified in the face of the Red Scare. In Foreman’s own words:
“As I was writing the screenplay, it became insane, because life was mirroring art and art was mirroring life, it was all happening at the same time. I became that guy. I became the Gary Cooper character.”
The American Heritage Dictionary gives the definition of McCarthyism as:
1. The political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence
2. The use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair, in order to suppress opposition
The Red Scare was about painting White Knights as Red Knights.
“You could walk down the street and see friends of yours recognize you, turn, and walk the other way.” Foreman.
Film Noir, literally “black film”, was a genre of American thriller or detective films made in the period 1944–54 that also depicted cynical White Knights disguised as Black Knights. Notable among these were Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade and Rick Blaine, all played by Humphrey Bogart. The world they inhabit is perpetually gloomy, pessimistic, and corrupt, yet they still fight for truth and justice, just not in the conventional fashion.
During the 50’s and 60’s UFO folklore began portraying a certain variety of G-Men – governmental agents and quasi-governmental agents – as men in black: sinister figures working for mysterious organizations intent on suppressing the truth. Later they became associated with unmarked black helicopters that ominously hovered over those who ventured too close. These figures were the inspiration for the agents that feature within the fictional world of “The Matrix”, guarding the false reality from those who would reveal it as such. They were also the inspiration for such shows as “The X-Files” and the more light-hearted “Men-in-Black” film series.
White King or Black King?
Today these tropes are often used to ridicule conspiracy theorists. What are conspiracy theorists though, if not white knights painted as black knights talking backwards? In a corrupt world, clad in cynical armour, they work to uncover the truth under the perpetual risk of paranoia and pariahdom.
The term “conspiracy theorist” in its modern derisory connotation originated in the 60’s after the assassination of JFK despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that he referred to a “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” in his speech at the Waldorf Hotel in 1961, two years before his assassination:
“For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.”
Now, it must be said this is only part of the speech, a part plastered over the internet, people rarely reading or listening to the whole speech. Insightful commentator James Corbett, in taking the whole speech into context, has for a good while held the view that the JFK speech was in fact a brilliant exercise in propaganda, the opposite to what it has been portrayed as.
The speech took place at the height of the Cold War on April 27th1961, a couple of weeks after the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. In Corbett’s view JFK was in fact cajoling the press into keeping state secrets.
JFK opened with an apparently light-hearted anecdote about the New York Herald Tribune employing Karl Marx as its London correspondent in 1851, remarking that if only this institution and thus Capitalism had treated him more kindly, Marx may not have initiated “the cause that would bequeath the world the seeds of Leninism, Stalinism, revolution and the cold war.” – Communism.
He then proceeded with the next part of the speech, also often cherry-picked, beginning thus “The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.” In Corbett’s view, this was a feint, the next part revealed the true agenda of the speech.
“But I do ask every publisher, every editor, and every newsman in the nation to re-examine his own standards, and to recognize the nature of our country’s peril.”
Here he is apparently calling for self-censorship on the part of the press. Next Corbett notes that JFK, in Corbett’s view, refers to the Communists as the enemy that presents such a peril to the American way.
“Today no war has been declared–and however fierce the struggle may be, it may never be declared in the traditional fashion. Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe. The survival of our friends is in danger. And yet no war has been declared, no borders have been crossed by marching troops, no missiles have been fired.”
In regard to the “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” part of the speech quoted originally above, Corbett is adamant that JFK is referring to the “Commies”. He believes that at this time JFK was still processing the Bay of Pigs and had a long way to go before transitioning into the JFK of 1963.
In this view JFK was a White King talking backwards or even a Black King in disguise.
I’m not entirely convinced myself.
Why does JFK never say outright that it is the “Communists” that are advancing around the globe, acting under cover of darkness, infiltrating, subverting, and intimidating?
Why does JFK instead refer to “secret societies, secret oaths, secret proceedings, a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy relying primarily on covert means” and so on?
He refers to Marx in his opening anecdote, yes, but he also refers to Marx being originally sponsored by a Capitalist institution. It’s also true that Socialism began as a group of secret societies that operated covertly, but some of them were also sponsored by Capitalist institutions. This has relevance to an avenue of research that will be covered later in this series of articles. It is important to note that once the Soviet State had been established, the Communists were no longer operating as a secret society, they were out in the open. Certainly, their secret service – the KGB still operated under the cover of darkness at home and around the globe but why doesn’t JFK mention them overtly?
Could it be possible that he was playing a double game here, obliquely referring to another group, in an attempt to not arouse the suspicions of such a group and pass a message onto those both switched on and sympathetic to his cause? If so, they would have been few amongst his audience.
He most certainly already knew of other secret societies closer to home. His own father Joseph Kennedy had also been a member of one. He himself, and his brother Robert Kennedy (RFK), had been on a crusade against this notorious secret society since the 1950’s, whilst at the same time being tied up with it.
Were these two crusaders genuine White Knights, quixotic White Knights talking backwards, White Knights disguised as Black Knights or even Black Knights disguised as White Knights?
The question itself is an important step into transcending the 3D chessboard, one that we shall take in the next part.
Baker Street Rising 