Why the Slender Man? WHO the Slender Man?

You might know him as an internet phenomenon, and because of this you might dismiss him as just that, another viral boogeyman meant to elicit a few minutes of uncomfortable joking from your friends and co-workers. To give something a name is to take away it's power, but the paradox of the Slender Man is that with each utterance his power grows. Who is he? More importantly, WHAT is he? And what does he want from us? Having appeared seemingly out of nowhere, tracing him back to his roots will be difficult. By all accounts, he is as old as man himself, so it is necessary for us to start our search somewhere in the 17th century.

The human experience is one colored by the quest for dominion, and it was no different for our Renaissance forebears. With vast empires at stake, nobles and wealthy power players sought guidance from outside the realm of the seemingly possible, exploring the new disciplines of alchemy, spiritism, and codified systems of ritual magick (spelled with a "k" as a result of the popularization of this alternate spelling by Alestair Crowley, in an attempt to distinguish it from prestidigitation and stage-foolery) all in an attempt to gain control, by and for means foul or fair. Europe in the 17th Century was a hotbed for Occult lodges, and among them rose the Roscrucians, or "The order of the Rosy Cross." Says Wikipedia:

The term Rosicrucian (symbol: the Rose Cross) describes a secret society of mystics, allegedly formed in late medieval Germany, holding a doctrine "built on esoteric truths of the ancient past", which, "concealed from the average man, provide insight into nature, the physical universe and the spiritual realm."[1]

Between 1607 and 1616, two anonymous manifestos were published, first in Germany and later throughout Europe.[2] These were Fama Fraternitatis RC (The Fame of the Brotherhood of RC) and Confessio Fraternitatis (The Confession of the Brotherhood of RC). The influence of these documents, presenting a "most laudable Order" of mystic-philosopher-doctors and promoting a "Universal Reformation of Mankind", gave rise to an enthusiasm called by its historian Dame Frances Yates the "Rosicrucian Enlightenment".[3]

In later centuries many esoteric societies have claimed to derive their doctrines, in whole or in part, from the original Rosicrucians. Several modern societies, which date the beginning of the Order to earlier centuries, have been formed for the study of Rosicrucianism and allied subjects.

But from whom does this esoteric discipline come? Certainly an organization with such lofty aims cannot merely spring into existence directly from the aether which it deigns to control? Enter The mysterious Count de St. Germain, an allegedly immortal being who was known across Europe and worldwide. He was personally associated (all anecdotally, in likelihood,) with Casanova, Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, King Louis the XV, Catherine the Great, and Anton Mesmer. (Among others.)

Among other things (as if being an immortal occultist who influenced the decisions of the mightiest empires on earth weren't enough) our intrepid Count presumably made his way to the mysterious orient, becoming a member of an Occult lodge with ties to yogic and tantric practices rooted in Tibetan Buddhism and native Bon Shamanism. According to George C. Andrews, conspiracy researcher and author (and a man to whom I am greatly in debt for some of the info in this article) these practices (Roscrucianism, Tibetan Buddhism, and assorted mid-century European occult gobboldy-gook) all amalgamated to form "The Initiated Brothers of Asia," a Buddhist profaning sect whose initiation allegedly culminated in contact with an "extra-dimensional being" who was able, under certain circumstances, to manifest physically. 

Now it gets REALLY weird. Enter Adolf Hitler. Hitler, power-mad, syphilitic sociopath that he was, dabbled quite openly in the occult, despite professing to staunch Catholicism. As any child he grew up in the eighties knows, (and who saw the "Indiana Jones" films) Hitler truly DID send Nazi expeditions to North Africa and the middle east in search of the Ark of the Covenant, as well as making vain attempts to locate the Spear of Longinus, The Shroud of Turin, and the True Cross (or pieces of it.)  When not engaged in such global-scale activities as mass-murder and the location of ancient relics, Hitler was also a member of...you guessed it: The initiated Brothers of Asia. This should come as no surprise to any serious student of the occult, the SS themselves were deeply rooted in ancient Teutonic ritual practices, and Heinrich Himmler himself had a castle at Wewelsburg, designed and built to capitalize on the ley-line energy of the area. (It was reported that the castle itself, specifically the north tower, was used as a "magickal weapon," and that attempts by allied forces to destroy it after the war all failed, so great was it's power.) 

Sources close to Hitler claimed that he was tormented by an invisible entity only he could see, and while this could very well be due to his syphilis, his drug abuse, or his general madness, it remains that by the end of the war, the Nazi regime was desperate to turn the tide against the Allies by any means necessary. This is where Hitler's invisible friend comes in. Let's take a look at German saucer technology, shall we?

Ok, let's not. There is a wealth of information available on this subject, and the reader is invited to do his/her own research on this matter, as the Slender author is tired and badly in need of some sleep. But suffice it to say, when the Allies captured the whole of German occupied territories, saucer shaped craft were, indeed recovered. Whether these were extraterrestrial in origin is open to debate, but what doesn't change is this:

The American government was sufficiently interested in these "prototypes" that they took great pains to smuggle Nazi war-criminals into the United States. With the help of the Vatican.

This was called "Project Paperclip," and was sanctioned by the Office of Strategic Services, the intelligence precursor to the C.I.A.

Thus the daisy chain between occult lodge/nazis/ and American intelligence services is complete. But what next? How would the U.S. Military utilize this technology? If it had been previously developed by an enemy combatant, countermeasures were obviously in place to render it's battlefield usefulness null. But at the end of the Second World War, Germany wasn't the enemy anymore. It was the Soviets.

Thus began the Cold War, and the classic American tale every schoolboy knows...the heroic race to space. But this technology didn't merely ride on the backs of it's Fascist predecessors. It required some good old fashioned American ingenuity. Enter John "Jack" Whiteside Parsons. Born in 1914, Parson was a self-educated rocket scientist. Seriously. While other boys were fishing and joining little league, Parsons was experimenting with solid rocket fuels, to enormous success. As well as co-founding the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (an agency that essentially became N.A.S.A.) Parsons was a vocal occultist, drawing no distinction between his work in rocketry and what he considered his "real" vocation: Ritual Magick. Oh yes, he was also a close friend of the Great Beast himself, Alestair Crowley, who personally appointed him head of the Agape Lodge of the Ordo Templo Orientis, a Thelemic Occult lodge re-envisioned by Crowley and modeled after many of the same Lodges that inspired Johann Sebbotendorf's "Thule" lodge, the Initiated Brothers of Asia, and later, the O.T.O. in it's various incarnations. So great was Parson's belief in the efficacy of ritual magick, it is reported he invoked the Greek God Pan before each rocket launch.

As Parsons toiled away on the American space program and his various and sundry occult interests, he began to draw the attention of some unusual characters, among them a former sailor and sci-fi author by the name of L. Ron Hubbard. Yes, THAT one, the founder of Scientology and object of scorn for generations to come. Hubbard was years away from developing Scientology, and in the meanwhile (in between stealing a sailboat from Jack Parsons and bilking him out of thousands of dollars in an ill concieved business plan involving the aforementioned boat) Hubbard took up residence in Parson's California mansion (the very one where Parsons would later die in a very, very mysterious explosion) and began to act as a "scribe" during the performance of various rituals. One of these, the "Babylon working" (alternately spelled as "The Babalon working) was written about by Alestair Crowley himself in "The Book of the Law," and was meant to open a sealed gateway between realities, granting the "Old ones full and unimpeded entry into our reality." This ritual was performed sometime between 1945-46, and in 1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold reported an object "skipping over the mountains, shaped like a saucer" over the Cascade mountain range in Washington state. We all know the rest.

So, what happens now? Decades pass, accounts of mysterious craft and their occupants increase exponentially year by year, and psychologist Carl Jung famously calls these sightings "Products of our collective unconscious." But why? What are we trying, collectively, to express subconsciously? 

Consider the following: Having invited these entities into our reality, it is no where tacitly implied that they must behave according to the "accepted" norms of trans-dimensional beings, i.e., they need not appear as pedestrian spooks such as poltergeists and grey alien/zeta reticulans. If these entities, or "Tulpas" are drawing energy from the psychic fabric of which they are cut, why should they be anything BUT menacing, evil, and bent on our grievous harm? Having sprung from the work of at least one Fascist Dictator, one Megalomaniacal Shyster, The Holy Roman Catholic Church, and countless government agencies, not to mention hundreds, perhaps THOUSANDS of ethically dubious ritual magick cooperatives, how could these beings POSSIBLY be anything other than horrifying? 

I know. I hear what you're saying. Tulpa? What's that? Again, Wikipedia tells us:

A number of prima facie unrelated definitions have been suggested:

An image or images held in the mind of a practitioner which aids in the manifestation of intent. An agency of psychic effect which exists and takes form on the pre-physical realms of existence, which acts in accord with the Intent of its creator(s).[4]

A living spiritual being created by humans. It could be a magical person's helper, or a being created by the belief in it from masses of people.[5]

A homunculus of awareness: an instantaneous observer / observed duality. Homunculi appear in various theories of cognitive philosophy and psychology to account for different facets of conscious self. They are created by everyone every moment (in some formulations they are everyone every moment); and they possess wills of their own

If a Tulpa is, as suggested, "Created by humans" and "In possession of it's own will" as well as being "CREATED BY THE BELIEF IN IT FROM MASSES OF PEOPLE," Well, you can see where this is going...

So Jack Parsons, the possessor of some mighty powerful mojo, opens a "cosmic gateway" and something flies through. It (or they) manifest themselves according to local and personal belief, in varieties as great as "little green men," Bigfoot, Mothman, The Flatwoods Monster, ad infinitum. Remember, once these beings are invited into our reality, they have wills of their own. It can be safely assumed that they can also summarily change form (A common Belief among Tibetan Buddhists) to suit the occasion. Which brings us back, again, to the Slender Man.

He wears a conservative suit and tie, which seems appropriate given the time in which he has chosen to manifest himself. Nothing too fancy or outlandish, certainly nothing that will draw attention. No antennae. No bubble shaped helmet. Nothing particularly inhuman about him at all, really. Unless you count his ability to stretch his limbs to grotesque lengths, draw people into another dimension, never to be seen again, and come and go as he pleases without regard to time, distance, or the laws of physics. 

These energies, Tulpas, thoughforms, spirits...whatever you choose to call them, have been the "Secret Chiefs" of the human race for as long as we have deigned to possess extraordinary powers. By making a gentleman's agreement we allow these "raw energies" into our dimension, allow them free reign, and all for the asking price of being granted powers which, in a parallel universe, are probably as commonplace as speech or hearing are, here in "our" dimension. Such is the Slender Man.

You invited him here. As my esteemed colleague Rev. Don says: "Sure, you've never thought of that before. Now try NOT seeing him." 

The Slender Man is your guest, like it or not. Having opened the door, you best invite him in. Unless you want him standing outside your window all night, knuckles dragging on the ground and all, waiting, as he has for countless ages, in countless forms.

Try not seeing him.