The Fifth Aeon

The Fifth Aeon, Techno-Shamanism, Is on Its Way

Humanity has evolved through four major states of consciousness, or aeons, and a fifth is on the horizon. This first aeon comes out of the mists of time. It was an age of Shamanism and Magic when the rulers of men had a firm grasp of the psychic forces. Such forces conferred a high survival value on puny naked man living in intimate communion with the dangers of a hostile environment. This form of consciousness has left its mark in the various underground traditions of witchcraft and sorcery. It has also survived in the hands of several aboriginal cultures in which the powers were used to enforce social conformity.

The second Pagan aeon arose with a more settled way of life as agriculture and city dwelling began. As more complex forms of thought arose and men moved further away from nature, the knowledge of psychic forces became confused. Gods, spirits, and superstitution uneasily filled the gaps created by loss of natural knowledge and man's expanding awareness of his own mind.

The third, or Monotheistic, aeon arose inside of the pagan civilizations and swept their old form of consciousness away. The experiment was begun once in Egypt but failed. It really came into its own with Judaism and later with Christianity and Islam, which were offshoots of this. In the East, Buddhism was the form it took. In the monotheistic aeon men worshipped a singular, idealized form of themselves.

The Atheistic aeon arose within Western monotheistic cultures and began to spread throughout the world, although the process is far from complete. It is far from being a mere negation of monotheistic ideas. It contains the radical and positive notions that the universe can be understood and manipulated by careful observation of the behavior of material things. The existence of spiritual beings is considered to be a question without any real meaning. Men look toward their emotional experience as the only real ground of meaning.

. . . The evolution of consciousness is cyclic in the form of an upward spiral. The fifth aeon represents a return to the consciousness of the first aeon but in a higher form.

Chaoist philosophy will again become a dominant intellectual and moral force. Psychic powers will increasingly be looked to for solutions to man's problems. A series of general and specific prophecies may be extrapolated from current trends to show how this will come about, and what role the Illuminati will play in it.

Decades, possibly centuries, of warfare lie ahead. The remnants of monotheism are collapsing fast, despite the odd revival, before secular humanism and consumerism. The technological, atheist super-states are trying for a stranglehold on human consciousness. . .

. . . The medieval religions murdered millions to protect their own hegemony. Innumerable crusades, jihads, burnings, and massacres were committed. In the end no level of persecution could stave off the inevitable ascendency of Atheism.

Now it is the atheist super-states which are supplying the arms and dropping the bombs in support of the hegemony of consumer capitalism or consumer communism. And this is only the beginning. . . . There may be a breakdown of society which may take the form of an anti-technological jihad. These will not resolve the contradictions of the system but merely introduce a new dark age and slow the changes down.

—Peter J. Carroll, Liber Null & Psychonaut