The Sleeper Awakes, A Fabian Blueprint?
The details I'm about to cover may seem a bit wild at times,and some of the discussion here will delve into the occult and esotericism which understandably may put people off, but I would really encourage the reader to remain open-minded to these ideas. If you know nothing about the occult at all or you're not interested then by all means please ignore these aspects if its not your cup of tea.
Why Is This Book Important?
So many years ago I read this book 'The Sleeper Awakes' and believed at the time when I was younger and more naive that it was merely a science fiction story that had somehow managed to get some minor details correct, but as time went on more and more of it seemed strangely accurate. Some of the details of the story stuck in my mind over the years but it wasn't until I began reading information on the UN's Sustainable Development programs maybe four or five years ago that it became apparent that this book was beyond prescient in some of its details.As a result I ended up re-reading the book a number of years ago now to see what H. G. Well's had got right. I thought I might find some tedious anecdotal similarities but I was shocked at just how spot-on this novel was albeit with some exceptions.
Before I begin delving into the plot of this story its important to give you a brief understanding of the author H. G. Wells, who he was, and his motivations in life.
Who was H. G. Wells?
Mr Herbert George Wells was born 1866 in Bromley, Kent to an upper middle class family, Wells had initially gone on basic apprenticeships after leaving school but finally ended up as a teaching assistant at Midhurst Grammar School where he was free to join the debating societies and try his hand at writing fiction. Unsurprisingly given what we all know about universities today, Wells was then introduced to individuals that shared the ideology espoused by the then newly created Fabian Society and presumably found a network through socialists and anarchists that he could rely on to continue his political activism and get assistance for his science fiction writing.The Fabian Society would ultimately become and still remains the Labour Party's advisory organisation and is essentially the UK's answer to the Frankfurt School in terms of the social policies its seeks to promote and implement; a group of champagne socialists working tirelessly to incrementally change society in a way that they deem fit.
Its no surprise then that Wells would later write propaganda in favour of eugenics and supported the creation of a world government.
Wells eventually left the Fabian society in 1908 because he felt the organisation wasn't radical enough, but still ended up playing an active role in politics at home and internationally. Most people probably don't realise that a large number of his books were political in nature. Published works like The Shape of Things to Come or A Modern Utopia are a bizarre blend of futurism and fiction - books which I've personally owned for years but am never able to read because of their frankly awful writing style.
In 1920 he did an interview with Lenin and again in 1934 he visited the Soviet Union for a meeting with Stalin with his son George, who like his father, was also very much involved with the Social Darwinist community (he was a zoologist and a Russian translator.) Its not clear whether these interviews were partly official secret service jobs. Towards the end of his life Wells ended up in a privileged position where he was able to influence international affairs and had at least some credit in the creation of the UN declaration of Human Rights.
A Synopsis
'The Sleeper Awakes' presents itself as a relatively short science fiction story, I imagine when it was first published in 1910 it probably didn't evoke much in the way of political substance for the average reader. However I find the amount of seemingly prophetic details contained within it truly staggering and as a consequence, I've ended up with a ton of information to process and present to you now which hopefully you'll have the patience to sift through and read.If you want you read this book for yourself for free then you can find it here in its totality. The best way to do this would be to read each chapter and then come back here to this blog's corresponding chapter evaluation but obviously that would take considerable time and I'm not expecting anyone to do that. As I've said though, the amount of detail is staggering and although going through the story chapter by chapter doesn't seem the most methodical way of doing it, I think its probably the quickest.
The general story revolves around the protagonist Graham, a man who is plagued by insomnia and as a result is considering suicide, but as he walks along the Cornish coastline he happens upon a stranger who offers to help him. This stranger who we find is simply named 'Isbister' takes the insomniac back to his home and provides him with something that should help him sleep. Graham takes whatever concoction he is offered but ends up overdosing, quickly slipping into a coma that he wakes up from two-hundred years later in the heart of London. He quickly discovers that because of the interest he has accrued over the years he has become the richest man in the world, but this future world is far from perfect. The general population are kept dumbed down, distracted and confined to gigantic cities where they're kept in poverty.
Graham finds himself being used for political control by both the ruling elite, a committee of twelve technocrats - and an individual named Ostrog who is actively provoking the masses into mass revolt against the technocrats for his own personal gain.
Throughout the story there are hints at control structures, social engineering and even technologies like flat screen televisions and 3D printers. It is clear from the rather abrupt ending that the story itself is simply a vessel through which this world can be shared, the story itself is pretty awful (as are most of Wells' novels) but considering this was published in 1910 the world building is pretty much on point.
There is also a secondary layer at the start of this tale which may, and I hasten to add its a pretty big may, be a rather camouflaged admission by Wells' of his involvement with British secret intelligence figures who were experimenting with occultism. I know, it sounds wacky, but bear with me...
Chapter 1:
The story starts in the Cornish village of Boscastle, known for its beautiful landscape and natural harbour. Boscastle was once home to a fishing community set within the valley with high hills encircling it on either side of the village. A river flows through the centre of the village ending in a natural harbour that is flanked by high and dangerous cliffs. Its a beautiful place and since Wells' time its been a fairly well known tourist trap.Suffering with insomnia, Graham is walking along the rugged terrain contemplating suicide when he meets a landscape painter named Isbister by chance. This newly met stranger ushers Graham away to his home and gives the insomniac a concoction to smoke to help him sleep, which predictably given the title of the novel, happens to last a few hundred years.
What intrigues me about this first chapter was that Boscastle around the early 20th century was heavily associated with paganism, cunners or witchcraft in general. So much so in fact that the well known occultist Cecil Williamson eventually came to set up his Museum of Witchcraft in the village.
The nearby 'Blackapit' (mentioned in Well's novel) was even used by Williamson for ritual practice throughout his stay in the area, and perhaps by chance there also exists a cave nearby called the pentargen which is associated with the Pendragon of Arthurian legend.
The reason why I raise these points is that I have a strong suspicion that the events in this novel are in fact some kind of drug or ritual induced remote-viewing that has been recorded and kind of edited into a story. I accept this sounds ridiculous, but it might explain a lot. Let me explain...
Originally I was suspicious of the name Isbister because I felt it had some resemblance to Aleister, aka, the well known occultist and suspected double-agent Aleister Crowley. I know that sounds tedious, but it wouldn't seem too outlandish as there is some evidence to suggest that Crowley and Wells may have had some correspondence around the time that 'The Sleeper Awakes' was being written- the pair may have been introduced to one another via another writer Arnold Bennett.
In Crowley's 'Confession's' he writes:
"He was [Bennett], of course, enormously pleased and very kindly offered to give me an introduction to H. G. Wells." *1
So straining our hypothesis a little further, we could also potentially link the character Isbister in the story to Crowley in another way because they were both painters. Crowley it seems even enjoyed painting coastal landscapes, (even if his skill was somewhat lacking.) Plus if Crowley was known for anything other than "satanism", it was clearly drugs - especially for ritual purposes.
In the story Graham goes back to Isbister's home, but apparently falls unconscious in a chair before Isbister even has a chance to administer any drug for the insomniac. Eventually Isbister gets worried as the following passage shows:
He looked again and saw that they [graham's eyes] were open and with the pupils rolled under the lids. He was suddenly afraid. Overcome by the strangeness of the man's condition, he took him by the shoulder and shook him. "Are you asleep?" he said, with his voice jumping into alto, and again, "Are you asleep?"
If this doesn't sound like a drug overdose then I don't know what does, but interestingly, although in the story Graham never actually takes anything before he randomly falls asleep whilst Isbister is still in mid-conversation, we may have some clues to what actually happened if this is indeed a dramatised version of a real event Wells' experienced.
Consider these few paragraphs:
The man was certainly very still. Isbister took up the portfolio, opened it, put it down, hesitated, seemed about to speak. "Perhaps," he whispered doubtfully. Presently he glanced at the door and back to the figure. Then he stole on tiptoe out of the room, glancing at his companion after each elaborate pace.
He closed the door noiselessly. The house door was standing open, and he went out beyond the porch, and stood where the monkshood rose at the corner of the garden bed. From this point he could see the stranger through the open window, still and dim, sitting head on hand. He had not moved.
A number of children going along the road stopped and regarded the artist curiously. A boatman exchanged civilities with him. He felt that possibly his circumspect attitude and position seemed peculiar and unaccountable. Smoking, perhaps, might seem more natural. He drew pipe and pouch from his pocket, filled the pipe slowly.
"I wonder," . . . he said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of complacency. "At any rate we must give him a chance." He struck a match in the virile way, and proceeded to light his pipe.
Presently he heard his landlady behind him, coming with his lamp lit from the kitchen. He turned, gesticulating with his pipe, and stopped her at the door of his sitting-room. He had some difficulty in explaining the situation in whispers, for she did not know he had a visitor. She retreated again with the lamp, still a little mystified to judge from her manner, and he resumed his hovering at the corner of the porch, flushed and less at his ease.
Long after he had smoked out his pipe, and when the bats were abroad, his curiosity dominated his complex hesitations, and he stole back into his darkling sitting-room. He paused in the doorway. The stranger was still in the same attitude, dark against the window. Save for the singing of some sailors aboard one of the little slate-carrying ships in the harbour, the evening was very still. Outside, the spikes of monkshood and delphinium stood erect and motionless against the shadow of the hillside.
In this passage, it is clear that something is being smoked, but we're not told what... or are we?
Two plants are mentioned here, one of them twice: Monkshood and Delphinium. Monkshood is a highly poisonous plant, its also known as Wolfbane. In India it was used as a powerful weapon they would lace arrows with (to drive their enemy insane) but they also used it as a sacred medicine which shamans allegedly combined with cannabis and smoked in order to connect with the consciousness of Shiva - but it must be stressed that this combination can easily lead to death. Delphinium too, which while also highly toxic, was also used in traditional medicine to treat, you guessed it, insomnia!
Now we are of course in danger of jumping to conclusions here and I dare say we probably have, but at the very least we have some pretty big coincidences here with obvious references to drug which only makes the Crowley possibility more intriguing to my mind. I will admit however that there is no proof that I'm aware of that Wells and Crowley ever did meet.
There is yet one more strange idiosyncrasy we need to address before moving on to the next chapter. Google the name 'Isbister' and not a great deal comes up, but one thing that does come up is another character in the novel series A Dance To The Music Of Time written by Anthony Powell. Powell's novels were basically a long-standing tongue-in-cheek piss take out early to mid-twentieth century English society and its real life figures, albeit with fictional names applied.
This other Isbister, first name Horace, from an entirely different story altogether is also a painter, which is yet another significant coincidence.
But this is where our Crowley connection becomes a bit severed because Powell's novels already had Crowley in his stories as a main character under the fictional name of Dr Trelawney. However that's not to say that this is where the strange synchronicities ends. The author Powell seemed to have a deep interest in the occult and divination. I found an old article from 1998 where Christopher Hitchen's complains that he [Powell]:
"...loses his way in a sort of pallid drizzle of New Age babble, picked up at third hand along with his other impressions of “the Sixties,” and allows even his most robust characters to succumb to runes, horoscopes, and the sickly blandishments of Aleister Crowley."
Powell also wrote a biography of the antiquarian John Aubury, the man who you could argue was one of the earliest pioneers of archæology who began the process of documenting and trying to make sense of the various neolithic sites in Britain. Whether this is indicative of Powell's interest in things of a pre-christian or esoteric nature would only be speculative, but perhaps not entirely illogical. Again perhaps tying in with that, Isbister also happens to be the name of an area known as a neolithic settlement found up in Orkney.
The weirdest thing to consider about all of these people though, is that Cecil Williamson, Aleister Crowley, Anthony Powell and to a lesser degree H. G. Wells and Arnold Bennett, were all at some point whether proven or alleged, to have been part of or worked on behalf of British Intelligence. A strange set of coincidences indeed.
Chapter 2:
The second chapter merely sets up the reader so that they may understand how someone who has lived for a very long time might earn a considerable sum of money. Unlike today, the currency in Britain and the world in general was still backed by precious metals in 1910 so the reader receives an explanation of what exactly FIAT currency is, and the major inflation and interest that would (and has) come with it:"And now the gold supplies are running short there is a tendency towards . . . appreciation."
This chapter also allows a third person perspective of 'Graham', which I would have thought again reiterates the idea of the protagonist being at the very least a poorly crafted caricature of Wells himself:
"He was a man of considerable gifts, but spasmodic, emotional. He had grave domestic troubles, divorced his wife, in fact, and it was as a relief from that, I think, that he took up politics of the rabid sort. He was a fanatical Radical -- a Socialist -- or typical Liberal, as they used to call themselves,-of the advanced school. Energetic -- flighty -- undisciplined. Overwork upon a controversy did this for him. I remember the pamphlet he wrote -- a curious production. Wild, whirling stuff. There were one or two prophecies. Some of them are already exploded, some of them are established facts. But for the most part to read such a thesis is to realise how full the world is of unanticipated things. He will have much to learn, much to unlearn, when he wakes. If ever a waking comes."
Read into Wells' political and personal life and you will find that the above passage is almost without uncertainty written about himself. He was of course a radical socialist, a liberal and had gone through a divorce a few years before work had started on this particular novel.
Given the subject of this blog post it is also intriguing that he would mention the fact that a pamphlet he [Graham/Wells?] wrote contained prophecies, some of which it says, are already established facts. Maybe this is another clue to the reader that Wells was trying to impart information to the reader.
Chapter 3:
In this chapter, we are informed about his awakening two hundred years in the future, except Wells' description of the sleep is somewhat weird and leads me to believe again, that this book was actually some kind of vision seen through a drug induced or perhaps ritual experience:"..An awakening came.
What a wonderfully complex thing! this simple seeming unity -- the self! Who can trace its reintegration as morning after morning we awaken, the flux and confluence of its countless factors interweaving, rebuilding, the dim first stirrings of the soul, the growth and synthesis of the unconscious to the subconscious, the sub-conscious to dawning consciousness, until at last we recognise ourselves again. And as it happens to most of us after the night's sleep, so it was with Graham at the end of his vast slumber. A dim cloud of sensation taking shape, a cloudy dreariness, and he found himself vaguely somewhere, recumbent, faint, but alive.
The pilgrimage towards a personal being seemed to traverse vast gulfs, to occupy epochs. Gigantic dreams that were terrible realities at the time, left vague perplexing memories, strange creatures, strange scenery, as if from another planet. There was a distinct impression, too, of a momentous conversation, of a name -- he could not tell what name -- that was subsequently to recur, of some queer long-forgotten sensation of vein and muscle, of a feeling of vast hopeless effort, the effort of a man near drowning in darkness. Then came a panorama of dazzling unstable confluent scenes."
I could be completely off the mark here, but what Wells describes in this passage sounds very reminiscent of the kind of astral experiences you might expect from a drug like Monkshood which has been used in the past to attain a closeness with a deity! Talk of experiencing strange creatures and strange sceneries is somewhat hard to explain when the protagonist is meant to be in a coma!
The seeming inane chatter about consciousness and subconsciousness also seem to indicate that this is not a conventional 'awakening'. This awakening is clearly something altogether bigger than that. An awakening in a much more meaningful way.
The other thing to consider in this chapter is that the room in which Graham finds himself waking up in is like that of a clean, ornament-less room, somewhat evoking of the kinds of futurist styling we are shown today as being 'cool' modern decor and architecture, (but we'll hear a lot more about architecture in a short while.)
Chapter 4:
There is some crazy technological foresight in this chapter which given that this book is over a hundred years old now, seems almost a hundred per cent accurate:Graham lifted his arm and was astonished to find what strength the restoratives had given him. He thrust one leg over the side of the couch and then the other. His head no longer swam. He could scarcely credit his rapid recovery. He sat feeling his limbs.
"The man with the flaxen beard re-entered from the archway, and as he did so the cage of a lift came sliding down in front of the thickset man, and a lean, grey-bearded man, carrying a roll, and wearing a tightly-fitting costume of dark green, appeared therein.
"This is the tailor," said the thickset man with an introductory gesture.
" It will never do for you to wear that black. I cannot understand how it got here. But I shall. I shall.
You will be as rapid as possible?" he said to the tailor.
The man in green bowed, and, advancing, seated himself by Graham on the bed. His manner was calm, but his eyes were full of curiosity. "You will find the fashions altered, Sire," he said. He glanced from under his brows at the thickset man.
He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant fabrics poured out over his knees. "You lived, Sire, in a period essentially cylindrical -- the Victorian. With a tendency to the hemisphere in hats. Circular curves always. Now --" He flicked out a little appliance the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled the knob, and behold -- a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion on the dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern of bluish white satin. "That is my conception of your immediate treatment," he said.
The thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of Graham.
"We have very little time," he said.
"Trust me," said the tailor. "My machine follows. What do you think of this?"
"What is that?" asked the man from the nineteenth century.
"In your days they showed you a fashion-plate," said the tailor," but this is our modern development. See here." The little figure repeated its evolutions, but in a different costume. "Or this," and with a click another small figure in a more voluminous type of robe marched on to the dial. The tailor was very quick in his movements, and glanced twice towards the lift as he did these things.
It rumbled again, and a crop-haired anaemic lad with features of the Chinese type, clad in coarse pale blue canvas, appeared together with a complicated machine, which he pushed noiselessly on little castors into the room. Incontinently the little kinetoscope was dropped, Graham was invited to stand in front of the machine and the tailor muttered some instructions to the crop-haired lad, who answered in guttural tones and with words Graham did not recognise. The boy then went to conduct an incomprehensible monologue in the corner, and the tailor pulled out a number of slotted arms terminating in little discs, pulling them out until the discs were flat against the body of Graham, one at each shoulder blade, one at the elbows, one at the neck and so forth, so that at last there were, perhaps, two score of them upon his body and limbs. At the same time, some other person entered the room by the lift, behind Graham. The tailor set moving a mechanism that initiated a faint-sounding rhythmic movement of parts in the machine, and in another moment he was knocking up the levers and Graham was released. The tailor replaced his cloak of black, and the man with the flaxen beard proffered him a little glass of some refreshing fluid. Graham saw over the rim of the glass a pale-faced young man regarding him with a singular fixity."
Notice the tailor has a hand held 'kinetoscope' which is capable of automatically measuring the protagonist and is able to show Graham how he might look in different styles. Bare in mind, a kinetoscope is just a fancy word for a moving screen, so is it really beyond the foreseeable future that we might in the not so distant future have a tablet or smartphone that is able to run a 'tailor app' that could measure a person accurately? It's probably possible now.
The machine that is rolled in on wheels to make Graham's clothes also seems remarkably similar to a 3D printer. That sort of technology is already on its way right now, let alone in another hundred years.
When I first wrote the first draft for this blog post this technology all seemed a little way off but six or seven years later these sorts of innovations are beginning to show themselves with developers, fashion designers and engineers actively investigating 3D clothing printers.
This is also the first indication that the society in which Graham finds himself in is now 'multicultural' with the appearance of a young man with "features of the Chinese type".
Chapter 5:
Compare Wells' vision for a future city and it strangely matches the kinds of design that we've been seeing for maybe the last twenty or thirty years in science fiction and futurist art:The place into which he looked was an aisle of Titanic buildings, curving spaciously in either direction. Overhead mighty cantilevers sprang together across the huge width of the place, and a tracery of translucent material shut out the sky. Gigantic globes of cool white light shamed the pale sunbeams that filtered down through the girders and wires. Here and there a gossamer suspension bridge dotted with foot passengers flung across the chasm and the air was webbed with slender cables. A cliff of edifice hung above him, he perceived as he glanced upward, and the opposite facade was grey and dim and broken by great archings, circular perforations, balconies, buttresses, turret projections, myriads of vast windows, and an intricate scheme of architectural relief. Athwart these ran inscriptions horizontally and obliquely in an unfamiliar lettering.
I just find it almost impossible that a man living in Victorian England could have possibly predicted architectural trends so incredibly accurately. The city that the novel describes is enclosed by walls and a huge glass roof - natural light is filtered and minimised and huge buildings are propped up with cables and cantilevers.
One could imagine a city enclosed within a giant, translucent 'millennium dome' today quite easily.
Chapter 6:
Even energy production in this story seems spot on with giant windmills towering over this future London:"Graham suddenly glanced up to see whence he came, and beheld through the glassy roof and the network of cables and girders, dim rhythmically passing forms like the vans of windmills, and between them glimpses of a remote and pallid sky. Then Howard had thrust him forward across the bridge, and he was in a little narrow passage decorated with geometrical patterns."
The most astounding aspect of this chapter however is when Graham meets the twelve members of the world council. Anyone who has even the slightest understanding of religious symbolism will understand how important the number twelve is here. Graham being the richest man in the world at this point is technically the supreme leader which makes these twelve men his trustees or overseers (disciples perhaps.)
So exactly where does he meet these twelve world leaders? Well, this is interesting too because he meets them in the 'Chamber of Atlas', where lo and behold in the councils main chamber there sits a statue of Atlas holding up the sky (Uranus.) Atlas and Uranus on an occult level would essentially signify the highest attainment or man - the point at which man has taken on an almost God-like position (which perhaps echoes the eugenic or Darwinistic undertones of all of the Fabian movement's work.)
If this doesn't strike you as even slightly odd, it may interest you to learn that the statue of Atlas was later co-opted by Ayn Rand's capitalist philosophy called Objectivism, with her well-knwon philosophy-fiction book Atlas Shrugged.
Objectivism is a movement defined not only with its support of free market capitalism to a point that materialism trumps all else.
A statue of Atlas also appears outside of the Rockefeller Centre in New York which again links the financial aspects of this novel and the philosophical reality of the worlds most powerful people - again, these same sorts of people like Rockefeller in the real world who appear to have no concern other than the pursuit of money.
Chapter 7:
Again in this chapter, a seemingly innocent book about a time traveller turns out to be completely jam packed with more political and philosophical references.In this chapter, Graham is shoved into a room for a number of days (a room which is incredibly detailed and once again seems entirely feasible in terms of future architecture and technology) and he comes across these 'books' which are held on small metal cylinders instead of paper and ink. These books he comes across are:
The Man Who Would be King
Which is a novel which in many ways seems politically similar to 'The Sleeper Awakes' in how power is derived through stealth and deception, divide and conquer. But The Man Who Would Be King also speaks of quasi-masonic rituals, which if we want to push the point, might tally up with Well's inner-circle considering the suspicion that he had at various times worked for the secret service.This book was written Rudyard Kipling who strangely enough was another author like Wells who ended up assisting the British war effort by producing propaganda for the British Intelligence services.
The Heart of Darkness
This story was apparently the inspiration for the Vietnam film Apocalypse Now, but the general theme of the book, I think anyway, is that all cultures are inherently bestial - that we cannot hope to tame the primal instinct and that presumably mankind will always be rotten in some way or another.The Madonna of the Future
This story was written by Henry James who it seems Wells had issues with (there is a lengthy account of the argument here.)It seems as though James' novels offer a somewhat different world view that Wells took issue with, favouring the beauty in a flawed existence and liberty - the act of expressing oneself is the true purpose of literature and art in general - not the end product, whereas Wells felt that literature was to be used for conveying messages in quite a literal manner.
For some reasons, despite James having respect for Wells' writing this difference of opinion became a great argument. Why Wells decided to include these three novels isn't clear but in the story it does say that Graham recognises The Man Who Would Be King as "one of the best stories in the world" but says he has never heard of The Heart of Darkness nor The Madonna of the Future.
I would say that the way he has highlighted these stories suggests Wells believes that mankind can be drilled into being civilised and disciplined through social control, but this is a leap - I'd certainly welcome any thoughts on this.
In this chapter, Graham also comes across a flat screen television in his room which shows brain-numbing soap operas or reality TV, finding promiscuous sexual activity and "altered moral ideals" are being represented:
"At last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of the apparatus was blank again.
It was a strange world into which he had been permitted to see, unscrupulous, pleasure seeking, energetic, subtle, a world too of dire economic struggle; there were allusions he did not understand, incidents that conveyed strange suggestions of altered moral ideals, flashes of dubious enlightenment. The blue canvas that bulked so largely in his first impression of the city ways appeared again and again as the costume of the common people. He had no doubt the story was contemporary, and its intense realism was undeniable. And the end had been a tragedy that oppressed him. He sat staring at the blankness."
Chapter 8:
Graham is rescued from his room that he is being held captive in and taken outside amongst the wind turbines and taken to meet the working class rebels who hope Graham will do the right thing and bring an end to "the councils" control over their lives.It says:
"Graham had a surging vision of a great hall crowded with people. He saw no individuals, he was conscious of a froth of pink faces, of waving arms and garments, he felt the occult influence of a vast crowd pouring over him, buoying him up."
Those with a basic understanding of the occult will know that conscious observation and participation is as much to do with magickal works as is the ritual itself. So when he speaks of deriving occult influence from the vast crowds, this may well be quite literal. Its well known for instance that when thousands of individuals are together people cease to act in a kind of hive-mind mode of thought.
Chapter 9:
Having been rescued Graham is able to ask some questions for the first time which up to now haven't been answered:"Tell me!" he cried. "Who am I? Who am I?"
The others came nearer to hear his words. "Who am I?" His eyes searched their faces.
"They have told him nothing!" cried the girl.
"Tell me, tell me!" cried Graham.
"You are the Master of the Earth. You are owner of half the world."
He did not believe he heard aright. He resisted the persuasion. He pretended not to understand, not to hear. He lifted his voice again. "I have been awake three days -- a prisoner three days. I judge there is some struggle between a number of people in this city -- it is London?"
"Yes," said the younger man.
"And those who meet in the great hall with the white Atlas? How does it concern me? In some way it has to do with me. Why, I don't know. Drugs? It seems to me that while I have slept the world has gone mad. I have gone mad."
"Who are those Councillors under the Atlas? Why should they try to drug me?"
"To keep you insensible," said the man in yellow.
"To prevent your interference."
"But why?"
"Because you are the Atlas, Sire," said the man in yellow. "The world is on your shoulders. They rule it in your name."
The sounds from the hall had died into a silence threaded by one monotonous voice. Now suddenly, trampling on these last words, came a deafening tumult, a roaring and thundering, cheer crowded on cheer, voices hoarse and shrill, beating, overlapping, and while it lasted the people in the little room could not hear each other shout.
Graham stood, his intelligence clinging helplessly to the thing he had just heard. "The Council," he repeated blankly, and then snatched at a name that had struck him. "But who is Ostrog?" he said.
"He is the organiser -- the organiser of the revolt. Our Leader -- in your name."
"In my name? -- And you? Why is he not here?"
"He -- has deputed us. I am his brother -- his half-brother, Lincoln. He wants you to show yourself to these people and then come on to him. That is why he has sent. He is at the wind-vane offices directing. The people are marching."
"In your name," shouted the younger man. "They have ruled, crushed, tyrannised. At last even --"
"In my name! My name! Master?"
The younger man suddenly became audible in a pause of the outer thunder, indignant and vociferous, a high penetrating voice under his red aquiline nose and bushy moustache. "No one expected you to wake. No one expected you to wake. They were cunning. Damned tyrants! But they were taken by surprise. They did not know whether to drug you, hypnotise you, kill you."
Again the hall dominated everything.
"Ostrog is at the wind-vane offices ready -- . Even now there is a rumour of fighting beginning."
So this is the first time we are introduced to Ostrog, the leader of the resistance against the council, supposedly fighting for the good of all the workers. Ostrog unsurprisingly is a Russian word for a type of prison. The revolution which starts in this chapter and goes on until the end of the book is yet another surprising element because it predicts what is essentially a communist dictatorship arising from a revolution before the Soviets were even a significant political force. (This book was written 1910, Soviets never came into power until 1917!)
Chapter 10 & 11:
In these chapters, Graham finds himself caught up in the hostilities between the oppressed working-class and the world council's security teams.Now up until this point I haven't mentioned the police forces, but Wells makes a point in this novel of making a distinction between the ethnic English police who all wear red uniforms, and the "negro" police who wear stripy black and yellow uniforms.
The battle comes to blows with the revolutionaries taking huge casualties because the security forces deliberately cut the lights out in the city (all lighting in the city is seemingly artificial.) In the confusion Graham manages to get away to a quiet residential district where he has a long conversation with an elderly gentleman who seems to understand the world more than anyone else.
One of the most interesting points raised by this old man is revealed in the following conversation:
"No," said Graham, wondering what Babble Machine might be. "And you are certain this Ostrog -- you are certain Ostrog organised this rebellion and arranged for the waking of the Sleeper? Just to assert himself -- because he was not elected to the Council?
"Everyone knows that, I should think," said the old man. "Except -- just fools.
In this chapter then we come to understand that Ostrog's rebellion has nothing to do with the rights of the every day man and more to do with the fact that Ostrog was not elected to be part of the twelve man council, and aims to overthrow the system in order to be a dictator. It was likely Ostrog who woke Graham up with medication so that he could be used politically to stir up the population to act in a way that Ostrog wanted.
The following passage said by the old man though is perhaps the most true thing ever said in a work of fiction, read this next passage carefully and think who this council might be today:
"Eh! -- but you're not up to things. Money attracts money -- and twelve brains are better than one. They played it cleverly. They worked politics with money, and kept on adding to the money by working currency and tariffs. They grew -- they grew. And for years the twelve trustees hid the growing of the Sleeper's estate, under double names and company titles and all that. The Council spread by title deed, mortgage, share, every political party, every newspaper, they bought. If you listen to the old stories you will see the Council growing and growing Billions and billions of lions at last -- the Sleeper's estate. And all growing out of a whim -- out of this Warming's will, and an accident to Isbister's sons.
The council then are what we may today call our globalist bankers who in today's world use vast amounts of money to sway political opinion and undermine anything that stands in the way of their control.
The paragraph said by this old man leads me to personally think that the 'sleeper' in the financial sense of this book is actually you and I, the general public which works, takes loans, makes investments and generally uses the financial institutions. If we were all aware of how our own money, how our own labour - was being hijacked, used and manipulated by the most powerful people in the world we might realise our place as being the masters of our own destiny and refuse to take part in the system. But we aren't collectively aware, or at least prefer to remain ignorant and allow our labours to be leeched off of by these few at the top of society, and hence this world state grow and grows.
Chapter 12:
When the uprising occurs around London the 'Red Police' seem to be caught off guard, it tends to suggest that the worlds population has been without proper warfare or weaponry for some time by the explanations given to Graham:"That is the flag of the Council -- the flag of the Rule of the World. It will fall. The fight is over. Their attack on the theatre was their last frantic struggle. They have only a thousand men or so, and some of these men will be disloyal. They have little ammunition. And we are reviving the ancient arts. We are casting guns."
The above paragraph seems to show that to have any chance of ousting an unwanted leadership, you need to build and store weapons to do so, and they do eventually go on to overwhelm the city security services.
Chapter 13:
With the defeat of the 'Red Police' and the twelve man Council, Graham is expected to give a speech on a balcony overlooking the vast crowds from the main Council building, but look closely at these rather interesting few paragraphs:"The western sky was a pallid bluish green, and Jupiter shone high in the south, before the capitulation was accomplished. Above was a slow insensible change, the advance of night serene and beautiful; below was hurry, excitement, conflicting orders, pauses, spasmodic developments of organisation, a vast ascending clamour and confusion. Before the Council came out, toiling perspiring men, directed by a conflict of shouts, carried forth hundreds of those who had perished in the hand-to-hand conflict within those long passages and chambers.
"The Master, the Master! God and the Master," shouted the people." To hell with the Council!" Graham looked at their multitudes, receding beyond counting into a shouting haze, and then at Ostrog beside him, white and steadfast and still. His eye went again to the little group of White Councillors. And then he looked up at the familiar quiet stars overhead. The marvellous element in his fate was suddenly vivid. Could that be his indeed, that little life in his memory two hundred years gone by -- and this as well?"
Ostrog, the man who the people believe is leading them to freedom from oppression is only using Graham as a way of controlling the masses and intends to do much worse than the twelve man council ever did, however at this point Graham genuinely believes that he is to be the supreme leader of the world and the crowds below him believe this too.
I've highlighted perhaps one of the most revealing points in all of this though with the frankly bizarre inclusion of the description of the night sky displaying Jupiter "high in the south".
Now consider that they are in the hall of Atlas, the room that holds the statue holding 'the globe' (Uranus) and Graham just happens to look up and pay particular attention to Jupiter in the nights sky... all of these add up to very potent occult symbology.
As I've already stated, Atlas with Uranus equates to the ultimate achievement of mankind, of having gained god-like status whilst Jupiter symbolises deeper thought and knowledge, the third eye and of course Jupiter is God of Kingship.
Chapter 14:
There is too much to write on when evaluating this chapter. Far too much rings true today when we look back at history. The only thing which Wells got completely wrong was the idea that flight technology would be held back, but don't forget he probably began writing this book before the Wright brothers had begun displaying their heavier-than-air aircraft.The most important points are contained herein:
Wielding an enormous influence and patronage, the Council had early assumed a political aspect; and in its development it had continually used its wealth to tip the beam of political decisions and its political advantages to grasp yet more and more wealth. At last the party organisations of two hemispheres were in its hands; it became an inner council of political control. Its last struggle was with the tacit alliance of the great Jewish families. But these families were linked only by a feeble sentiment, at any time inheritance might fling a huge fragment of their resources to a minor, a woman or a fool, marriages and legacies alienated hundreds of thousands at one blow. The Council had no such breach in its continuity. Steadily, steadfastly it grew.
The original Council was not simply twelve men of exceptional ability; they fused, it was a council of genius. It struck boldly for riches, for political influence, and the two subserved each other. With amazing foresight it spent great sums of money on the art of flying, holding that invention back against an hour foreseen. It used the patent laws, and a thousand half-legal expedients, to hamper all investigators who refused to work with it. In the old days it never missed a capable man. It paid his price. Its policy in those days was vigorous -- unerring, and against it as it grew steadily and incessantly was only the chaotic selfish rule of the casually rich. In a hundred years Graham had become almost exclusive owner of Africa, of South America, of France, of London, of England and all its influence -- for all practical purposes, that is -- a power in North America -- then the dominant power in America. The Council bought and organised China, drilled Asia, crippled the Old World empires, undermined them financially, fought and defeated them.
And this spreading usurpation of the world was so dexterously performed -- a proteus -- hundreds of banks, companies, syndicates, masked the Council's operations -- that it was already far advanced before common men suspected the tyranny that had come. The Council never hesitated, never faltered. Means of communication, land, buildings, governments, municipalities, the territorial companies of the tropics, every human enterprise, it gathered greedily. And it drilled and marshalled its men, its railway police, its roadway police, its house guards, and drain and cable guards, its hosts of land-workers. Their unions it did not fight, but it undermined and betrayed and bought them.
I'll let the reader gauge the prophecy contained within the above few paragraphs and take from it what they will.
Chapter 15:
In this chapter Graham is taken to a private function where all the 'important' people like the mayors, the priests, government advisers and film directors etc all meet to suck up to each other. I don't doubt that such meetings happen today, in fact in the UK there are many organisations that fit the bill. Common Purpose or the Tavistock Institute to name just a few, but whilst this is interesting from the perspective that today's society is taught to respect the 'celebrity' classes, there isn't too much going on in this chapter save for the discussion on education which highlights very well what today's 'education' is about."About the public elementary schools," said Graham. "Do you control them?"
The Surveyor-General did, "entirely." Now, Graham, in his later democratic days, had taken a keen interest in these and his questioning quickened. Certain casual phrases that had fallen from the old man with whom he had talked in the darkness recurred to him. The Surveyor-General, in effect, endorsed the old man's words. "We have abolished Cram," he said, a phrase Graham was beginning to interpret as the abolition of all sustained work. The Surveyor-General became sentimental. "We try and make the elementary schools very pleasant for the little children. They will have to work so soon. Just a few simple principles -- obedience -- industry."
"You teach them very little?"
"Why should we? It only leads to trouble and discontent. We amuse them. Even as it is -- there are troubles -- agitations. Where the labourers get the ideas, one cannot tell. They tell one another. There are socialistic dreams -- anarchy even! Agitators will get to work among them. I take it -- I have always taken it -- that my foremost duty is to fight against popular discontent. Why should people be made unhappy?"
Essentially this is precisely the policy that has been employed in the West, or at the very least in the UK and America. Teach the lower-class kids a load of nonsense to humour them and include just enough useful information to ensure they can at least fulfil the most basic employment duties whilst discrediting any child or any one else for that matter who speaks out, or appears to work out how the world really works.
Chapter 16:
This was the part of the book which originally made me go back and re-read this novel. It might seem the most unimportant part of the story, but to me this following passage has a very compelling resemblance of the proposed intentions of the UN's agenda 21 or Sustainable Development programme.That gradual passage of town into country through an extensive sponge of suburbs, which was so characteristic a feature of the great cities of the nineteenth century, existed no longer. Nothing remained of it but a waste of ruins here, variegated and dense with thickets of the heterogeneous growths that had once adorned the gardens of the belt, interspersed among levelled brown patches of sown ground, and verdant stretches of winter greens. The latter even spread among the vestiges of houses. But for the most part the reefs and skerries of ruins, the wreckage of suburban villas, stood among their streets and roads, queer islands amidst the levelled expanses of green and brown, abandoned indeed by the inhabitants years since, but too substantial, it seemed', to be cleared out of the way of the wholesale horticultural mechanisms of the time.
The vegetation of this waste undulated and frothed amidst the countless cells of crumbling house walls, and broke along the foot of the city wall in a surf of bramble and holly and ivy and teazle and tall grasses. Here and there gaudy pleasure palaces towered amidst the puny remains of Victorian times, and cable ways slanted to them from the city. That winter day they seemed deserted. Deserted, too, were the artificial gardens among the ruins. The city limits were indeed as sharply defined as in the ancient days when the gates were shut at nightfall and the robber foreman prowled to the very walls. A huge semi-circular throat poured out a vigorous traffic upon the Eadhamite Bath Road. So the first prospect of the world beyond the city flashed on Graham, and dwindled. And when at last he could look vertically downward again, he saw below him the vegetable fields of the Thames valley -- innumerable minute oblongs of ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewage ditches.
Essentially it is speaking of a world where everybody has been forced to live in a huge walled city states with the countryside abandoned save for some automated agricultural robots. It's not too dissimilar from the various futurist ideas and plans that are being proposed to "save the planet".
Chapter 18:
In this chapter, Graham is approached by a young woman who begins to tell him just how bad life is for the average working class citizen:She turned a flushed face upon him, moving suddenly. "Your days were the days of freedom. Yes -- I have thought. I have been made to think, for my life -- has not been happy. Men are no longer free -- no greater, no better than the men of your time. That is not all. This city -- is a prison. Every city now is a prison. Mammon grips the key in his hand. Myriads, countless myriads, toil from the cradle to the grave. Is that right? Is that to be -- for ever? Yes, far worse than in your time. All about us, beneath us, sorrow and pain. All the shallow delight of such life as you find about you, is separated by just a little from a life of wretchedness beyond any telling Yes, the poor know it -- they know they suffer. These countless multitudes who faced death for you two nights since -- ! You owe your life to them."
Up until this point the reader has been lead to assume that the every day person lives a fantastic life when compared with Victorian living standards, even if they are being taken advantage of by the ruling elite, but this girl turns this view on its head.
She continues:
"You come," she said, "from the days when this new tyranny of the cities was scarcely beginning. It is a tyranny -- a tyranny. In your days the feudal war lords had gone, and the new lordship of wealth had still to come. Half the men in the world still lived out upon the free countryside. The cities had still to devour them. I have heard the stories out of the old books -- there was nobility! Common men led lives of love and faithfulness then -- they did a thousand things. And you -- you come from that time."
Again, in the grand scheme of things, things probably were best for people in the 1910's up until the 1950's, if of course you take out the two world wars. When you consider the stereotypical lifestyle of a late Victorian age farm labourer with a working class man from the 2000s onwards, the difference is astounding. Yes the poor man from Victorian times might have worked bloody hard for his pittance of a wage, but there was community, freedom. In the past you generally had everything you needed, nowadays we have everything we want, yet very little of what we need.
"They are the slaves -- your slaves. They are the slaves of the Labour Company you own."
"The Labour Company! In some way -- that is familiar. Ah! now I remember. I saw it when I was wandering about the city, after the lights returned, great fronts of buildings coloured pale blue. Do you really mean -- ?"
"Yes. How can I explain it to you? Of course the blue uniform struck you. Nearly a third of our people wear it -- more assume it now every day. This Labour Company has grown imperceptibly."
"What is this Labour Company?" asked Graham.
"In the old times, how did you manage with starving people?"
"There was the workhouse -- which the parishes maintained."
"Workhouse! Yes -- there was something. In our history lessons. I remember now. The Labour Company ousted the workhouse. It grew -- partly -- out of something -- you, perhaps, may remember it -- an emotional religious organisation called the Salvation Army -- that became a business company. In the first place it was almost a charity. To save people from workhouse rigours. Now I come to think of it, it was one of the earliest properties your Trustees acquired. They bought the Salvation Army and reconstructed it as this. The idea in the first place was to give work to starving homeless people."
"Yes."
"Nowadays there are no workhouses, no refuges and charities, nothing but that Company. Its offices are everywhere. That blue is its colour. And any man, woman or child who comes to be hungry and weary and with neither home nor friend nor resort, must go to the Company in the end -- or seek some way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means -- for the poor there is no easy death. And at any hour in the day or night there is food, shelter and a blue uniform for all comers -- that is the first condition of the Company s incorporation -- and in return for a day's shelter the Company extracts a day's work, and then returns the visitor's proper clothing and sends him or her out again."
"Yes?"
"Perhaps that does not seem so terrible to you. In your days men starved in your streets. That was bad. But they died -- men. These people in blue -- . The proverb runs: 'Blue canvas once and ever.' The Company trades in their labour, and it has taken care to assure itself of the supply. People come to it starving and helpless -- they eat and sleep for a night and day, they -work for a day, and at the end of the day they go out again. If they have worked well they have a penny or so -- enough for a theatre or a cheap dancing place, or a kinematograph story, or a dinner or a bet. They wander about after that is spent. Begging is prevented by the police of the ways. Besides, no one gives. They come back again the next day or the day after -- brought back by the same incapacity that brought them first. At last their proper clothing wears out, or their rags get so shabby that they are ashamed. Then they must work for months to get fresh. If they want fresh. A great number of children are born under the Company's care. The mother owes them a month thereafter -- the children they cherish and educate until they are fourteen, and they pay two years' service. You may be sure these children are educated for the blue canvas. And so it is the Company works."
The last few paragraphs at first glimpse appear to be nothing like the kind of society we now find ourselves in but actually in a roundabout way we sort of are. If we are to accept that the people in power have engineered the minimum wage and social welfare in such a way as to keep society in check, rather than the state taking up the noble role of protector you come to the conclusion that our own homes and our jobs have become a in-part a kind of sophisticated workhouse. Minimum wage is slavery, a type of slavery that no longer requires the shackles or slaver accommodation. A slave works best if they are lead to believe they are free.
Chapter 19:
Chapter nineteen is where we realise Graham has made a mistake in being a useful idiot for Ostrog's coup d'etat.Graham confronts Ostrog, the figure who is now pretty much single-handedly running the world in Grahams name, to confront him about why nothing has been done so far about the terrible working and living conditions of the general population.
"Must the world go this way?" said Graham, with his emotions at the speaking point. "Must it indeed go in this way? Have all our hopes been vain?"
"What do you mean?" said Ostrog. "Hopes?"
"I came from a democratic age. And I find an aristocratic tyranny!"
"Well, -- but you are the chief tyrant."
Graham shook his head.
"Well," said Ostrog, "take the general question. It is the way that change has always travelled. Aristocracy, the prevalence of the best -- the suffering and extinction of the unfit, and so to better things."
"But aristocracy! those people I met --"
"Oh! not those!" said Ostrog. "But for the most part they go to their death. Vice and pleasure! They have no children. That sort of stuff will die out. If the world keeps to one road, that is, if there is no turning back. An easy road to excess, convenient Euthanasia for the pleasure seekers singed in the flame, that is the way to improve the race!"
This above pretty much highlights the opinion and world view of the self proclaimed 'elite', and the social darwinists Wells had rubbed shoulders with. Perhaps this chapter reflects a kind of duality of Wells' character.
The author's own idea on this subject is rather difficult to ascertain, in other works such as The Time Machine is has been suggested that the story was actually speaking out against the ideas of 'selfish' eugenic thinking. Putting this chapter into perspective with the earlier notions of 'dreaming' and of different states of consciousness, it is not too radical to believe that this conversation is actually an internal debate within the authors head, perhaps Graham represents Wells more idealistic self.
The conversation between Ostrog and Graham continues:
"Don't you trouble about these things," he said. Everything will be settled in a few days now. The Crowd is a huge foolish beast. What if it does not die out? Even if it does not die, it can still be tamed and driven. I have no sympathy with servile men. You heard those people shouting and singing two nights ago. They were taught that song. If you had taken any man there in cold blood and asked why he shouted, he could not have told you. They think they are shouting for you, that they are loyal and devoted to you. Just then they were ready to slaughter the Council. To-day -- they are already murmuring against those who have overthrown the Council."
"No, no," said Graham. "They shouted because their lives were dreary, without joy or pride, and because in me -- in me -- they hoped."
"And what was their hope? What is their hope? What right have they to hope? They work ill and they want the reward of those who work well. The hope of mankind -- what is it? That some day the Over-man may come, that some day the inferior, the weak and the bestial may be subdued or eliminated. Subdued if not eliminated. The world is no place for the bad, the stupid, the enervated. Their duty -- it's a fine duty too! -- is to die. The death of the failure! That is the path by which the beast rose to manhood, by which man goes on to higher things."
Ostrog took a pace, seemed to think, and turned on Graham. "I can imagine how this great world state of ours seems to a Victorian Englishman. You regret all the old forms of representative government -- their spectres still haunt the world, the voting councils and parliaments and all that eighteenth century tomfoolery You feel moved against our Pleasure Cities. I might have thought of that, -- had I not been busy. But you will learn better. The people are mad with envy -- they would be in sympathy with you. Even in the streets now, they clamour to destroy the Pleasure Cities. But the Pleasure Cities are the excretory organs of the State, attractive places that year after year draw together all that is weak and vicious, all that is lascivious and lazy, all the easy roguery of the world, to a graceful destruction. They go there, they have their time, they die childless, all the pretty silly lascivious women die childless, and mankind is the better. If the people were sane they would not envy the rich their way of death. And you would emancipate the silly brainless workers that we have enslaved, and try to make their lives easy and pleasant again. Just as they have sunk to what they are fit for. "He smiled a smile that irritated Graham oddly. "You will learn better. I know those ideas; in my boyhood I read your Shelley and dreamt of Liberty. There is no liberty, save wisdom and self control. Liberty is within -- not without. It is each man's own affair. Suppose -- which is impossible -- that these swarming yelping fools in blue get the upper hand of us, what then? They will only fall to other masters. So long as there are sheep Nature will insist on beasts of prey. It would mean but a few hundred years' delay. The coming of the aristocrat is fatal and assured. The end will be the Over-man -- for all the mad protests of humanity. Let them revolt, let them win and kill me and my like. Others will arise -- other masters. The end will be the same."
At the same time Ostrog is preparing for civil unrest directed at himself this time after he has done nothing to change the status-quo for ordinary people (not that he had ever intended to.) What is interesting is that he intends on bringing in the yellow and black clad 'negro police' to quell the next rebellion.
Graham, the more deliberately judicial for the stirring emotions he felt, asked if there had been any fighting. "A little," said Ostrog. "In one quarter only. But the Senegalese division of our African agricultural police -- the Consolidated African Companies have a very well drilled police -- was ready, and so were the aeroplanes. We expected a little trouble in the continental cities, and in America. But things are very quiet in America. They are satisfied with the overthrow of the Council For the time."
"Why should you expect trouble?" asked Graham abruptly.
"There is a lot of discontent -- social discontent."
"The Labour Company?"
"You are learning," said Ostrog with a touch of surprise. "Yes. It is chiefly the discontent with the Labour Company. It was that discontent supplied the motive force of this overthrow -- that and your awakening."
"Yes?"
Ostrog smiled. He became explicit. "We had to stir up their discontent, we had to revive the old ideals of universal happiness -- all men equal -- all men happy -- no luxury that everyone may not share -- ideas that have slumbered for two hundred years. You know that? We had to revive these ideals, impossible as they are -- in order to overthrow the Council. And now --"
"Well?"
"Our revolution is accomplished, and the Council is overthrown, and people whom we have stirred up remain surging. There was scarcely enough fighting . . . We made promises, of course. It is extraordinary how violently and rapidly this vague out-of-date humanitarianism has revived and spread. We who sowed the seed even, have been astonished. In Paris, as I say -- we have had to call in a little external help."
"And here?"
"There is trouble. Multitudes will not go back to work. There is a general strike. Half the factories are empty and the people are swarming in the Ways. They are talking of a Commune. Men in silk and satin have been insulted in the streets. The blue canvas is expecting all sorts of things from you.... Of course there is no need for you to trouble. We are setting the Babble Machines to work with counter suggestions in the cause of law and order. We must keep the grip tight; that is all."
Graham thought. He perceived a way of asserting himself. But he spoke with restraint.
"Even to the pitch of bringing a negro police," he said.
"They are useful," said Ostrog. "They are fine loyal brutes, with no wash of ideas in their heads -- such as our rabble has. The Council should have had them as police of the Ways, and things might have been different.
After this long conversation, Graham tries to assert his power as 'king' of the world by demanding the negroes stay out of London.
"I have been thinking about these negroes. I don't believe the people intend any hostility to me, and, after all, I am the Master. I do not want any negroes brought to London. It is an archaic prejudice perhaps, but I have peculiar feelings about Europeans and the subject races. Even about Paris --"
Ostrog stood watching him from under his drooping brows." I am not bringing negroes to London," he said slowly." But if --"
"You are not to bring armed negroes to London, whatever happens," said Graham. "In that matter I am quite decided."
Ostrog, after a pause, decided not to speak, and bowed deferentially.
Chapter 20 - 23:
Towards the end of the novel, Graham decides that he ought to help the working class people and goes out to live with the lower-classes in disguise to find out their struggles. It is only towards the end that Graham realises that Ostrog uses Graham's absence as a way to try and overthrow and take ultimate power by use of the negroid police.
He rushes back to the hall of Atlas to confront Ostrog:
They had scarcely advanced ten paces from the curtain before a little panel to the left of the Atlas rolled up, and Ostrog, accompanied by Lincoln and followed by two black and yellow clad negroes, appeared crossing the remote corner of the hall, towards a second panel that was raised and open. "Ostrog," shouted Graham, and at the sound of his voice the little party turned astonished.
Ostrog said something to Lincoln and advanced alone.
Graham was the first to speak. His voice was loud and dictatorial. "What is this I hear?" he asked. "Are you bringing negroes here -- to keep the people down?"
"It is none too soon," said Ostrog. "They have been getting out of hand more and more, since the revolt. I under-estimated --"
"Do you mean that these infernal negroes are on the way?"
"On the way. As it is, you have seen the people -- outside?"
"No wonder! But -- after what was said. You have taken too much on yourself, Ostrog."
Ostrog said nothing, but drew nearer.
"These negroes must not come to London," said Graham. "I am Master and they shall not come."
Ostrog glanced at Lincoln, who at once came towards them with his two attendants close behind him. "Why not?" asked Ostrog.
"White men must be mastered by white men. Besides --"
"The negroes are only an instrument."
"But that is not the question. I am the Master. I mean to be the Master. And I tell you these negroes shall not come."
"The people --"
"I believe in the people."
"Because you are an anachronism. You are a man out of the Past -- an accident. You are Owner perhaps of half the property in the world. But you are not Master. You do not know enough to be Master."
He glanced at Lincoln again. "I know now what you think -- I can guess something of what you mean to do. Even now it is not too late to warn you. You
dream of human equality -- of a socialistic order -- you have all those worn-out dreams of the nineteenth century fresh and vivid in your mind, and you would rule this age that you do not understand."
"Listen!" said Graham. "You can hear it -- a sound like the sea. Not voices -- but a voice. Do you altogether understand?"
"We taught them that," said Ostrog.
"Perhaps. Can you teach them to forget it? But enough of this! These negroes must not come."
There was a pause and Ostrog looked him in the eyes.
"They will," he said.
"I forbid it," said Graham.
"They have started."
"I will not have it."
"No," said Ostrog. "Sorry as I am to follow the method of the Council -- . For your own good -- you must not side with disorder. And now that you are here -- . It was kind of you to come here."
Lincoln laid his hand on Graham's shoulder. Abruptly Graham realized the enormity of his blunder in coming to the Council House. He turned towards the curtains that separated the hall from the antechamber. The clutching hand of Asano intervened. In another moment Lincoln had grasped Graham's cloak.
Betrayed, there is a scuffle and eventually Ostrog gets away on an aircraft - the novel ends with Graham in pursuit of Ostrog in his own aircraft which he crashes, killing Graham. If my theory on this story of Graham and Ostrog being different dualities inside Wells psyche, the survivor is the eugenicist elitist Wells, and not the humanist Victorian we came to respect throughout the novel - but we'll never know for certain given that he's not around to ask! Maybe he's just an overrated author that couldn't write a proper ending (a charge that could be said of most of Wells' work.)
But what I find most interesting is that in the last parts of this story the dictator Ostrog instigates class warfare to influence power changes, and then later uses ethnic minorities to quell the majority.
Now I'm not suggesting that Western nations are going to start hiring black mercenaries to defend the elite, but think what multiculturalism has done in Western society and how it has completely destroyed our sovereignty, our culture and our ability to form meaningful networks. When Ostrog says that the negroes are "just a tool", I think this can be absolutely applied to forced mass-migration which has brought about a horrendous state of atomisation. The resulting fragmenting of society has prevented and continues to prevent working class unity, and will continue to do so.
Look at the comments made in America by Bernie Sanders just a few weeks ago, riling up hatred against the white majority to gain the loyal vote of the non-whites.
Whilst they have the slaves all sitting at home blaming each other for the various ailments in society, those who ultimately stand to benefit from the situation get away scot-free.
Now think back to when we saw Jupiter in the hall of Atlas, an occult representation of high consciousness, human attainment and kingship. This was when Graham had been formally recognised as King, but at that point he was completely unaware that he was being betrayed and lied to by Ostrog who he had trusted.
Putting this all together I would say that Wells saw that the best way of ensuring future development of "the council's" push towards global domination is for the people to follow gullible or easily controlled front men. In truth it seems there was not much difference in terms of policy between the original council of twelve or Ostrog in the story, except that the people allowed themselves through Ostrog to be duped into believing that they had a choice - but this is a good analogy for the current political paradigm across the world: Two party states, marching inexorably towards global federalisation and domination by a global corporate cliché.
This novel has pretty much summed up everything about the modern world, whether or not the occult links at the beginning have any merit or not.
Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed reading this, I am aware that I've probably made a few mistakes here and there but I think you'll agree that this is extremely heavy going and a lot of information to take in.
Please leave any comments, I'd be really interested to know peoples feedback.
Ongoing Research
I suspect that the intriguing points raised at the beginning of this story are just scraping the surface regarding the possible links to authors, political activists, occultists and the British deep state, and I shall continue to look into other possible links on this blog.
One more interesting synchronicity regarding this whole thing is that the Boscastle witchcraft museum started by Cecil Williamson was sold to a Mr. Graham King back in the 90s. Maybe I'm looking for connections where there are none, but that seems incredibly wyrd to say the least!
One more interesting synchronicity regarding this whole thing is that the Boscastle witchcraft museum started by Cecil Williamson was sold to a Mr. Graham King back in the 90s. Maybe I'm looking for connections where there are none, but that seems incredibly wyrd to say the least!
Sources
1. Aleister Crowley's 'Confessions' [Chapter 50, Page 404]
- ISBN-10: 0140191895
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