You're tuned to the Televisionary Oracle

a pseudonym for a multinational corporation

composed of psychics, psychologists, and private detectives

who know more about you than you know about yourself

FAKE OUT

You're tuned to the Televisionary Oracle

a cover story for

time-travelers from the future

who are impersonating

the still small voice of your guardian angel

FAKE OUT

You're tuned to the Televisionary Oracle

entirely a creation of your imagination

and a repository for all your projections

about the caretaker

you've always wanted

FAKE OUT

You're tuned to the Televisionary Oracle

et cetera

For our first discussion on the history of spiritual pranks, beauty and truth fans, we turn to a performance by the renowned sixteenth-century physician Paracelsus.

First a little background on the man. Like Johannes Kepler, who was both astronomer and astrologer, Paracelsus was one of those rare scientists capable of living in the Drivetime. On the one hand he was a full-on, no-apologies alchemist who loved to commune with the spirits. On the other, he was an influential medical reformer who articulated a new model for disease. Previously it was thought to result from imbalances in the body's humors. Paracelsus replaced it with the theory that external agents attacked the body and could be driven out with chemicals.

He was named to the chair of medicine at the University of Basel in 1524. Soon after, he made a most astounding promise. He said he had discovered the Elixir of Life, the true Philosopher's Stone, and would reveal it to the students and faculty in a public demonstration.

On the appointed day, the hall of learning filled with curious but skeptical scholars. Before him on a table, Paracelsus set a large jar covered with black cloth. For three long hours he lectured on the First Matter, the raw material of the Elixir of Life. He quoted from Philalethes, who said that the First Matter is "a virgin who meets her wooers in foul garments." The Qabalists, Paracelsus noted, advised the seeker after truth to find the First Matter in "the stone that the Builders rejected." Even Pythagoras himself claimed the Philosopher's Stone could be made from a substance that the rabble look upon as being the vilest thing on Earth.

As the learned men grew impatient, shifting restlessly in their seats, Paracelsus finally circled to his climax. "Discarded daily as worthless refuse," he boomed, "eternally scorned and devalued, it is now ready, through my sponsorship, to receive its well-deserved due. In the bowels of the Earth have I found it. In the sewers and the gutters and the wasted places. And now, behold. The mystery is unveiled." Whereupon Paracelsus lifted the black cloth with a flourish and revealed ... a pile of shit.

Instantly there was a storm of howling and stamping. Outraged, his colleagues denounced him as a fraud and exhibitionist. "If you knew how misguided you are," he shouted back, "you would make the sign of the cross on yourselves with a fox's tail."

Four centuries later, Carl Jung used dry, scholarly language to drive home the same point that an earlier performance artist, Paracelsus, had so amusingly made in Basel. The process of individuation and the awakening of the Self, Jung said, must begin by addressing the shadow--the disowned and ugly aspects of the personality.

This sneak preview

of the music of the spheres

is brought to you by

VULTURE CULTURE,

the fan club

for those specialists

that eat the rot

and transform it into fuel.

Like the ancient Egyptians,

we regard vultures as compassionate purifiers

sacred to the Goddess

because they process the rotting flesh of the corpse,

thereby expediting the soul's transition to heaven.