Opening chapter from Demons of Eleusis.
It was the recommendation of an extraordinary book called Operators and Things which started me on the path of putting this work together. A strangely unrevelatory title at first glance which one might think was some kind of glossary of telephone switchboard terminology but it was anything but mundane. It is one of those books which reading forces you to reconsider your whole perception of reality itself and the events of the story, which are in fact autobiographical and the kind of story that you could probably only make-up after a 3 day LSD and magic-marker bender at Disneyland.
The book was written by Barbara O’Brien, a lady who apparently developed schizophrenia in the 1950’s as a result of a long and stressful period at work during which she was forced to observe the behaviour of various psychopathic personality types using underhanded means to displace good people from their jobs, and step into shoes they were wholly unfit and unable to fill. She then observes how the psychopaths turn on each other and even manage to undermine the whole foundation of the company with their self-serving pursuit of power and their employment of malicious lies and deceptions to reach their power goals.
The author at her place of work seems to be one of the few people to notice these nefarious shenanigans and she, knowing the true nature of some of the people around her starts to live every moment in fear of them, what they can do, what they represent and perhaps how utterly unsuspecting and defenceless the company and other employees are when it comes up against such malign intelligence. But this is not a story about psychopaths, it is a story about a schizophrenic, and one morning after the mounting fear and terror of the psychopaths at work comes to some kind of head, Barbara awakes to find three ghostly forms at her bedside telling her that she is now part of a special secret experiment. The nature of the experiment is to reveal the secret ‘world of the Operators’ to one of the ‘Things’ and to see what happens.
A ‘Thing’ is the operator’s term for a human being and the Operators themselves are an organized non corporeal collective intelligence which apparently ‘buy’ operating rights or charters for human beings, and then they control them by directly dictating their thoughts and supposedly guide them through life. The aim of this is apparently to feed themselves as they seem to gain energy by causing reactions and emotional feelings in the ‘Things’ or humans they control and possibly they benefit human development in general, indeed one of the discarnate voices of the Operators speaking to Barbara makes the claim:
“If it weren’t for Operators, Things would still be wandering in and out of caves.”
A similar line of thought appears referenced in a Masonic compendium book from 1847 entitled The Golden Remains of Early Masonic Writers compiled by George Oliver:
“In the history of man, there is nothing more remarkable than that Masonry and civilisation, like twin sisters, have gone hand in hand. The Orders of Architecture mark their growth and progress. Dark, dreary, and comfortless were those days when Masonry had not laid her line, or extended her compass. The race of mankind, in full possession of wild and savage liberty, mutually afraid of, and offending each other, hid themselves in thickets of the wood, or in dens and caverns of the earth. In those poor recesses and gloomy solitudes, Masonry found them, and the Grand Geometrician of the Universe, pitying their forlorn situation, instructed them to build houses for their case, defence, and comfort. It is easy to conceive that in the early state of society, genius had expanded but little. The first efforts were small, and the structure simple and rude; no more than a number of trees leaning together at the top, in the form of a cone, interwoven with twigs, and plastered with mud to exclude the air and complete the work."
