Truth, not only stranger, but also a lot more interesting, than fiction
Come on this epic journey and explore the connection between assassins, the bible, psychosis and spirituality..
Perched high on top of the Peshkari mountains in Northern Persia, they waited like falcons scoping the land. Until the time came for the dark ceremony. The moon glistened softly over the snow filled panoramic mountain range that lay before them, a vast chasm of life. Life before death. From the core of their beings they felt the warmth of the tea leaves enter their stomachs, briefly causing them to feel dizzy and detached. Once the active ingredient hit their blood streams and traveled to the brain, their world morphed into a kaleidoscopic paradise of ecstasy, power and complete and utter separation from the real world. In this trance they sharpened their knives and cut long blood markers into their forearms, repeating the names of their victims over and over like a mantra. The fire from the nearby camp flickered in their obsessive eyes like lightning cackling over an empty valley. They were ready, ready to deliver unto their own valley. To deliver the valley of death.
Greetings readers! What a mysteriously ominous opening you say? Well it will all make sense soon. I haven’t written an update in a while and there is no real reason for this, other than maybe laziness and not really knowing what to write about. Have had a few fans write to me about topics they would like covered, from robot dogs protecting SpaceX launch sites in the US, to the origin of the term “assassin” and how it is significant in the availability and legalisation of cannabis in the world today and more broadly about the current state of online news and how we don’t really know who to trust anymore with obtaining relevant and ‘truthful’ information. Oh the woes of the woke and initiated.
My retort to the latter request would be the following; could we ever be sure of who to trust? Ever? Since the dawn of time lies have ruled our world. Ever since the mainstreaming of books by Gutenberg in the middle hours of the 15th century, every person and their cat could publish whatever nonsense they wanted to. Just look at the number of King James version (KJV for the cool acronym) bibles there are in circulation; it is estimated that there is a KJV bible for every human on the planet, now that is a lot of garbage reading wouldn't you say? Average plot line, no arc and zero suspense (not to mention super boring characters.) For comparison the two books that come closest in historical production volume are JK Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” and “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes, which together have sold roughly 1 billion copies since their inception. Speaking of inception (not the film, which is the cinematic equivalent of James Joyce’s Ulysses - nonsensical not genius,) Don Quixote was published 35 years, almost to the day, before the KJV bible in 1605. Proof that faction came before fiction. Ouch, what a burn!
Okay so to address one of the reader requests, the word assassin comes from the Latin word ‘assassinu’ which is itself a crude adaptation of the Arabic word ḥašīšī or ‘hashish-eater’. If you didn’t know this already, what follows will blow your mind (if you do, you can sip the next two paragraphs, or skip even). Brace yourselves, for you ain’t read nothing yet.
It has nothing to do with Israel!
About two hundred years before Gutenberg invented the press and about three hundred before the bubonic plague would completely ravish the planet for 6 centuries, there existed a group of Shiite muslims who called themselves Nizari Ismailis. If you don’t know much about Islam, I will give you a quick run down. The reason why Jews and Muslims hate each other has to do with the biblical story of Abraham (who yes, castrated himself at the age of forty, to prove how much he loved the heavenly father - and he was also the dude who was willing to throw his first born son into a fire to prove his devotion to this merciful deity, but we digress) - well it turns out that Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmail - he had others too but for the sake of simplicity and this story let’s just say he just had two - and when it came to the end of Abraham’s life, the amazingly lovingly heavenly father in heaven, the white caucasian guy with the long beard told the dark semitic mesopotamian (who by now had gone blind cos he was like 300 years old) that he could bless one - not both - but just one of his two beloved sons. Ishmail being the oldest and hairiest, was supposed to get the blessings as this is how it traditionally worked in the patriarchal vestiges of biblical times - first born, first blessed.
Now Isaac was younger, smarter and cleverer than Ishmail, Thor’s Loki if you will, and he decided to play a trick and get the hide of a goat to cover his face so as to mimic Ishmail’s beard. Rumour has it that Isaac was Sarah’s (Abe’s wife) favourite son and that she put him up to this mischief, but these rumours are yet to be confirmed, our sources are working on it. So whilst Ishmail was out herding goats, Isaac saw his opportunity and with the hairy goat hide stuck to his face, snuck into Abraham’s room where he was lying on his bed reading the local paper. When Abraham solemnly touched Isaac’s face he gave the divine blessing of the heavens to Isaac and all of his future progeny. And Ishmail was left with the scraps.
Now all 23 and me genealogy DNA test kits aside, the Jewish people descended from Isaac (with the blessing carried in the ovaries of the women - hence why in the orthodox communities it is a prereq to have a Jewish mother to be considered bona fide Jewish) and the Muslim people descended from Ishmail without the blessing. Ah man, that’s not fair you say?
Well, here is where it gets interesting, Muslims historically dislike Judaism not only because of the trick played by Isaac 6000 years ago but most Imams also claim that this trickery actually never even happened and that Ishmail did get the blessing after all and the Jews have been lying about it ever since, call it an elaborate PR stunt or whatnot.
Now years later and after Mo had already ascended to heaven on his white steed from the dome where the Al-Aqsa mosque now sits in Jerusalem, the Muslims got divided into Shiites and Sunnis. The Shiites believe that their prophet is going to return back from the heavens to fight the devil and make all the wrongs right in the world, whereas the Sunnis believe this has already happened and we are already living in the post-Mo return phase of the world. If you understand this little nugget, Middle East politics suddenly make a whole lot more sense. Sunnis are more modern and less conservative in their teachings and belief whereas the shiites tend to be a lot more traditional and orthodox following the Quran word for word. To illustrate this even further, those places where the women predominantly where burquas are shiite and the more modern muslim areas are sunni - Saudi Arabi is mostly shiite, whereas modern Iraq before it was bombed back into the last millennium by the Great Satan, was majority Sunni. Iran is a mix of sunni, shiite and zoroastrian (of Friedrich Nietzsche Thus Spoke Zarathustra fame - the oldest recorded religion on earth, they are also pretty cool and worship fire, but anyway digression again.)
Insane in the Membrane
Now back to the Nizari Ismailis (whose ancestor Ishmael got duped out of the divine blessing remember,) - why were they called “hashish eaters” and what has this got to do with assassins? Well it turns out that these guys who lived in the mountainous region of Persia (northern Iran nowadays) in the 12th century were incredibly good at using knives and hunting in small groups, taking out rival tribes at night without anyone being aware of it. Their notoriety and stealthiness spread among the kingdoms of the world and many sent messengers to find out if the stories were true. Another rumour has it that voyaging parties from the far east came and stayed with the Nizaris for nearly half a century and brought back to the region that is now modern day China and Japan, a little magic potion that was the secret to the Nizaris killing spree success. On an aside, this is supposedly where the Japanese concept of “ninjas” comes from but again, don’t quote us on that, our sources are still working on confirming this. The Nizaris were so good at killing people that wealthy merchants would hire them to eliminate their competitors and their families and this is where the modern word “assassin” really derives its meaning. Until they were taken out by the Turks, the Nizaris were powerful and somewhat ruthless mercenaries.
So, what was the secret sauce of the Nizari Ismailis? It turns out that the reason why they were so good at being stealthy at snuffing people’s lights out, was that they were “rolling blunts with their homies listening to Snoop Dogg, shazam!” - not quite but almost. So before they would go into kill mode, these 12th century Persian Cheech and Chongs were chowing down on hashish buds like there was no tomorrow, purporting them into a THC infused dream world where reality and fiction fused together in one smooth, slightly multicoloured, hypnosis that enabled them to harness superpowers because they didn’t think that what was happening was real and that’s why they were so ruthless.
To those of you who have tried smoking weed, this may sound improbable, but when you eat cannabis raw, it does all sorts of things to your brain and body, making you numb and exit reality for a brief spell depending on the volume consumed.
Back to Earth Major Tom
Now did that blow your mind like a tightly packed menali chillum? Well, it is here where I wanted to exercise a word of caution. As cool as it seems that these dark age ninja warriors ingested weed and then became badass superheroes, it must also be said that ingesting high grade marijuana products can lead to psychosis. I know, because I have been through this myself. After eating a particularly powerful high THC pot brownie I went through a psychotic episode for nearly 3 weeks and ended up in an acute psychiatric unit of a city hospital - not knowing who I was or where and completely convinced that everyone around me was either secret police or trying to kill me or both. It took 4 full days and a barrage of antipsychotic medication to bring me back to reality and out of the 7 circles of Dante’s inferno. To really drive this home, I have been bilingual since I was 6 and speak fluent German and English, and so whilst I was going through the episode, I completely forgot how to speak German and didn’t even believe I was German for the entire time, that this part of my heritage had been made up, by the “secret police.” This might sound funny and in hindsight it is, but going through that episode I can tell you it was the scariest thing I have ever encountered. I almost drowned once on my 33rd birthday and that was a cake walk in comparison. Sorry for the buzzkill, but just felt this needed to be shared as part of a public service announcement, to balance out the coolness of the assassin origin story I guess - but rest assured there is a lot more to this story and I will drip feed this through to you readers over the next few years. I kind of lived in a parallel dimension for a while, and if you want to find out more about this place, stick with this newsletter, all shall be revealed in time. I had known for a long time about the connection between cannabis and psychosis but like with so many things, the folly of youth had me believing that I was invincible and that this only happened to other people, mere mortals.
Yeah so the US Department of Defense built robot dogs are now patrolling Elon Musk’s satellite propelling centres and we can’t trust anyone with the truth anymore right? Wrong. The robot dogs are a fad and truth never existed in the first place, this whole world is a projection of your mind. Einstein agreed with this as do all quantum physicists. What you think, you create in your world. This became even more apparent during my psychosis and was also the reason why the hashish-eaters were so good at delivering death in this dimension, they were literally operating from a different place in space and time.
And here the best part of this story:
My saviours in that psychiatric unit, were not doctors, not nurses, not psychiatrists, counsellors or powerful stabilsing drugs, no what saved me in that place was a 3 hour discussion and singing session I was fortunate enough to experience with the hospital’s Māori staff. On my fifth day in that place and on the day I was released from isolation, I encountered an old man who called himself Piri. When I was still in my delusion and heavily sedated, Piri came up to me after lunch and asked if he could hold my hand. He was a smaller man, dark olive skin with the whitest hair you could imagine, cut shoulder length, he was also wearing a bright green pounamu pendant that was shaped like a spiral, a koru, the symbol for the different phases of life, dipping in and out of the spiritual world whilst staying firmly embedded in physical reality. I held his hand and he held my gaze. Looking deep inside of me and stirring something that had laid dormant for a while, I do believe Piri woke my soul up from a slumber. He said:
“Glad to have you back. We missed you. I hope the other world wasn’t too scary”
… Piri was so nonchalant that it took my breath away, I was dumbfounded and my heart was racing. Can you come and spare a few hours to sit with us and sing some songs he asked. I complied as if in a daze and sat down with a group of about 20 staff and maybe 3 other patients. I didn’t feel nervous, I didn’t feel scared, I felt, this is hard to put into words, but you know that feeling you have when you come home after being away for a long time? That’s what I felt. I felt at home for the first time in a long time, home and accepted. We sang the waiata (song) Purea Nei:
and then we sang Pokarekare Ana (sung here by my beautiful friend and brother Maaka Pohatu and his awesome band, the Māori Sidesteps)
… and again it is almost impossible to describe in words what happened to me here but it was like something lifted me out of my body - the only other time I felt that sensation was swimming underwater in the ocean. Which brings me to the discussion we had in this intimate circle, after the singing we went around the group and each of us had to describe what home felt like to our individual wairua (spirit) - many of the participants described their ancestral lands in splendid detail from luscious fields, towering maunga (mountains) and pristine awa (rivers) and when it came to me I just blurted out “swimming in the ocean, because i feel connected to the whole world, because the oceans are all one”. And right after I said that, I had my first thought in German again and I blurted “Ich sehe euch” which means as much as “I see you.”
And with that I was out of my psychosis, being around this incredible group of people, so in tune with nature and with a massive capacity for love and spirituality, I had been brought back from whatever dimension had been harbouring me for the past weeks.
Going deep
That whole experience is quite blurry in my mind and to this day I can’t remember why I said that phrase in German; my favourite Māori greeting is “tēnā koe” which means as much as “there you are” - a simple way of acknowledging the presence of another person. So beautiful in its simplicity, so powerful in its meaning - so maybe that is why I said it? I also can’t remember what compelled me to say ocean regarding where I felt most at home, but hey, I can’t remember much from this time. I did however come back to reality and swore never to drink alcohol or do drugs again. Like Anthony Hopkins said (who gave up drinking on the 29th of December 1975, days after i was born) “I’m happy I’m an alcoholic, it’s a gift” and with this next line I can hugely identify as I believe that when I was in my psychosis, my subconscious took me on a little drive along the cracks of reality as we perceive it and whatever lies beyond, a small dalliance or flirtation with death if you will:
“It's fun to move forward in life and think, Don't look back, because there's a big, gaping abyss behind you, and it's called death.”
Thank you Sir Anthony, I hear you loud and clear, and for all you other people out there younger than myself, let my experience be a lesson of sorts, drugs and alcohol are super powerful, just look at how they compelled those historical assassins to get blazed and kill off all their neighbours? You don’t want that.
And don’t worry about robot dogs or the news not being truthful, just be true to yourself and all else will fall into place - speak the truth, it will follow you and living in this dimension will set you free.
I’m not going to apologise for going to a dark place after presumably having made you laugh out loud and gasp in awe, I want to take you on a journey with these pieces, partly because it is cathartic and partly because I am a born educator and storyteller. So you have to bear with me, thanks for reading until the end and speaking of saying sorry, I wanted to leave you with this beautiful little nugget, in te reo Māori there is no such word as ‘sorry’ - instead there is only “arohanui” which means love, if you want to apologise or just acknowledge someone you say “love” and how beautiful is that? Language is important and we have a lot to learn from Māori, not only in terms of the way we use language, but also the way we live.
Yes we do.
Don’t look back.
Arohanui.
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Thank you very much.
Mauri Ora.
“It takes generosity to discover the whole through others. If you realize you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert.”
The legend himself, Jacques Yves Cousteau.