Date: Tue, 09 May 2000 09:36:03 -0700
From: toolband (toolband@toolband.com)
Subject: TOOL 54


    TOOL NEWSLETTER 	

MAY, 2000 E.V.


This month's newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Terrance McKenna,
psychonaut extraordinare who passed into Universe B with a refined
perichoresis on April 3, 2000 e.v. at 2:15 Pacific Time. Terrance's
transformation was brought about by a brain tumor(a genetic trait
unrelated to his experimentation with psychoactive substances)which
serves as further evidence that humankind was a low-budget creation. 
Well-equipped for the journey, he's now on that great court betwixt the
stars with its denizens of self-dribbling, jeweled basketballs.


With the lawsuit now behind them,TOOL continues to make
progress doing what they do best- writing music.  As to when their next
recording will be released, let's just say that there is light at the
end of the proverbial tunnel, or to put it poetically: there is a
golden penumbra surrounding the eclipse of legal actions taken.
 

*****************************************************************************


"Forgetting who I was for the first time in my life, just a
scared little creature with a featureless body, all I could do was feel
and see. That is when you know how infinite the universe is, when you
have no reference point (cognition). Nothing to compare any thing to.
Just a bunch of sensory data experienced by an Infant."

- excerpt from a letter by a TOOL fan

I have been reading a very intriguing book about altered
states of consciousness and different theories about the 
universe,time,dreams,ESP,and all other sorts of unsolved riddles of the
brain and body. It is entitled"Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot.
- recommendation by a fan

*****************************************************************************


Q: Is TOOL planning on creating a web page for fan art?

A: As you know, TOOL will be launching
http://dissectional.com in a couple of months.  There will be a section
dedicated to fan contributions.  If you would like to contribute art,
stories, news, or other gossip, you can e-mail contribute@toolband.com
or you can snail mail the band at:


TOOL
8391 Beverly BLVD.
PO BOX 298
Los Angeles, CA
90048


Q: Where can I buy TOOL stuff? 
A: Good news, the TOOL on-line store will be up this week

http://www.toolband.com/shop/index.html


Q: Did TOOL use Crowley's Book Four to draw inspiration
for any of the lyrics?  

A: Not really, but as a facet of cosmic consciousness - as its terrestrial
expression, both drew inspiration from the same source.  Heady stuff, eh?


Q: What's new in Danny's bookcase?  

A: SEX AND ROCKETS: THE OCCULT WORLD OF JACK PARSONS by Jack Carter(Feral
House).


By day, Jack Parsons was an American rocket-scientist who was one of
the founders of the Jet Propulsion Lab.  By night, he was a
card-carrying member of Aleister Crowley':s OTO, practicing rituals of
sex-magick in his Pasadena mansion with a colorful gathering of
bohemians, artists, atheists and anarchists that made up the California
Agape Lodge.  SEX AND ROCKETS is an excellent biography of the Pasadena
Wizard, chronicling his early years as a highly-respected scientist and
explosives expert to his later days as a disenchanted yet determined
occultist who vowed at all costs to cross the abyss, embarking on a
Black Pilgrimage which ended with his tragic and mysterious death.




THE BESTIRRING OF THE NOMMOS: A SERIOUS MYSTERY REVISITED
 PART ONE
Excerpts from a lecture given at P.U.P.
LODGE(Hollywood)


by FRATER IJYNX on January 17, 2000 e.v.

THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE DOGON 101

for those probationers, neophytes and tertiary members whose drink is
other than The Black Wine of Owls


There is a great mystery surrounding an African tribe called the Dogon.
 Like many people, I first became aware of this after reading THE
SIRIUS MYSTERY by American orientalist, Robert K.G. Temple.  Now, after
 nearly twenty-five years, Temple's scholarly work is back in print
with a new forward by the author containing further revelations to
support his case that the earth was visited by an advanced race around
4500 B.C.  These beliefs are based on detailed and specific knowledge
of sub-Saharan tribal cultures, in particular those of the Dogon who
live in the Republic of Mali.  It was a report in a 1940s scientific
journal entitled "A Sudanese Sirius System" by the French
anthropologist team of  M. Griaule and G. Deiterlen which prompted
Temple to do his own researches into the matter. 


What had so intrigued him was the fact that the Dogon, a tribe known
for their complex cosmology, gave special significance to a star that
is totally invisible to the naked eye. The Dogon, it seems, venerate
not Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky(as seen from the
earth)and relatively close at a distance of 8.7 light years away(about
52 trillion miles), but its invisible companion which the they call Po,
named after a tiny cereal grain known as Digitaria.  The notion of 
Sirius A having a companion  was first suspected in 1844 by Friedrich
Bessel, a German astronomer, who, after ten years of observing
peculiarities in the motion of Sirius A, using advanced mathematical
computations, deduced that its slight wobbling was the result of the
gravitational influence of a companion star.   But, it wasn't until
1862  that Alvan Clark first saw the faint companion in his telescope,
at the time one of the most sophisticated optical instruments on the
planet.   Today the dark neighbor is known prosaically as Sirius B, and
was first photographed in 1970. If this was the extent of the Dogon's
knowledge regarding the Sirius system then we might dismiss the whole
thing by saying that they were "just damned lucky guessers" as R.A.
Wilson joked in his book, THE COSMIC TRIGGER. 


But not only do the Dogon know of the invisible companion's existence,
they also know that the orbital period of Digitaria  is 49.9 years, an
event which they celebrate with an elaborate ceremony.  Even more
astonishing, they know that the orbit of Digitaria is elliptical, and
that Sirius A was at one foci of this orbit instead of  being at the
center which, as Temple points out, one would expect of a "primitive"
tribe.  And if all that were not enough, the Dogon also claim that
Digitaria is one of the heaviest types of stars in the universe , a
fact that modern astronomers now know to be true,  As it turns out,
Sirius B is an exotic type of star known as a white dwarf.


So the question is: where did the Dogon, a nearly stone-age tribe, get
such detailed information about the Sirius system?  According to the
Dogon, the answer is that it was imparted by the Nommos, fish-like
beings who came down from the skies in ages past and bequeathed to
mankind its civilization.  The Dogon claim these traditions are at
least 800 years old, handed down from generation to generation by the
tribal priests.  


When Temple's book was first published, his skeptics claimed that the
Dogon's knowledge must have come from a more mundane source - namely
missionaries.

Others believed it was all due to chance!  On the other side of the
coin, those willing to listen to Temple's argument were impressed by
his  research which, unlike other proponents of the ancient astronaut
theory(Von Daniken in particular), was both well-documented and
cautious.  Temple himself claimed to be embarrassed by the idea of
extraterrestrial visitors. Some, myself included, felt the most likely
solution was that the original anthropologist team had hoaxed the
entire thing. 


After all, it is only a mystery if a"primitive" African tribe know
these things, not members of the scientific community.  Temple,
himself, must have considered this but chose not to believe it, for, as
he points out in the book, Griaule and Deiterlen didn't trumpet this
part of the story in their writings, but, instead , merely placed it as
a footnote, which stated the question has not been solved, nor even
asked, of how men with no instruments at their disposal could know the
movements and certain characteristics of stars which are scarcely
visible.  The telling point here is that they used the word "scarcely
visible" when in fact, Sirius B is totally invisible to the naked eye.


After reading the book, I came across another strange tale about the
Sirius mystery.  This was Voltaire's MICROMEGAS, a book published in
1752 about a being from a satellite of Sirius who travels to earth with
a dwarf companion to impart wisdom to a certain member of the
priesthood!  Not only is this an accurate title for describing a dense
white dwarf star, but the story is remarkably prophetic  in light of
what modern astronomers have recently rediscovered.


  There is also a rather curious story that I read in a pulp from the
1940s which relates to the Sirius mystery.  This is a short story
called "THE FIRE TRAIL" which appeared "Amazing Stories" VOL 22 #1 from
January 1948.  It was written by Oge-Make, possibly a native American,
who in the summer of 1947(remember this date)had a message of vital
importance he wished to convey to the people of the world. In the story
, the Indian leaves his body in what today sounds like a remote-viewing
experience. The story may contain coded references to visitors from the
Sirius system in earth's ancient history.  I will talk more about this
later, when I discuss the occult tradition surrounding Sirius.   But,
before we move on, I want to go back to Temple's critics.  As it turns
out, the Dogon also describe a third star in the Sirius system with an
orbiting planet.  This star they call "Emme Ya" .  When THE SIRIUS
MYSTERY was first published there was no observable evidence of this
additional companion.  This was used as the strongest evidence against
the idea of visitation by amphibious beings in our past.  Which brings
us to the new forward  of  the recent reprint.  In 1995, the existence
of a red dwarf star was confirmed. This is called Sirius C.  So the
Dogon were damned lucky guessers after all!..  


*****************************************************************************

Calendar of Events


MAY 5..............................PLANETARY ALIGNMENT (END OF THE WORLD?)

MAY 10.............................NATIVITY OF A CERTAIN DRUMMER

MAY 19.............................. JUSTIN RETURNS TO ENGLAND BRIEFLY
TO PURCHASE A VERY RARE JAPANESE KOTO

MAY 22............................... "MER DE NOMS,"WILL BE RELEASED

*****************************************************************************

Live chat's with TOOL members will be posted in the news
THIS WEEK! stay tuned.


THANX TO EVERYONE

HAPPY TRAILS

JUSTIN
DANNY
MAYNARD
ADAM