Mark Romel

This is that most unusual of things … a philosophical and spiritual novel, a katabasis and nekyia, venturing into the Land of the Dead, into the accursed world, into Capernaum. This is an exploration of Pandemonium, the city of all the demons. This is a journey to the magical Mistletoe world of Doggerland, the once and future realm. It is a Red Book, a chronicle of a descent into madness. It dispenses with many novelistic conventions in order to reach the heart of darkness.

The Mistletoe Murders is a psychological and philosophical murder mystery drawing upon the great Arthurian tales, cast in a Nietzschean light.

Heaven is on the far side of hell. To get there, you must travel through your nightmares. You must confront the profoundest archetypes. Those we have chosen are those of the world of King Arthur.

You feel compelled. To do what? To bridge the gap. What gap? The Information Gap. You need to know why the world seems increasingly unreal. You need to know why the reality principle is fading before your eyes.

What will human beings do when they realize they are in the Matrix, but there is no red pill to let them out? We stand on the verge of the ultimate wars of the human race - the Unreality Wars, the Hyperreality Wars. These wars constitute the true Apocalypse. They are the wars to wipe out truth and meaning once and for all. As Baudrillard said, "We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning."

"DC: Washington is being taken over by DC: Comics." - Salman Rushdie

The world is increasingly understood as a comic story, involving superheroes and supervillains. Confusingly, they are often one and the same. Donald Trump is the superhero for conservatives and the supervillain for liberals. Heroes and villains are now shapeshifters. They no longer reflect a common narrative. Their heroism or villainy depends on where you stand in the culture wars.

Next time you go to watch a superhero movie, imagine what it would be like if the superhero kept "flickering" into his opposite - the supervillain. Would you be able to follow the story? Whom would you be rooting for? Wouldn't the plot be all over the place? You wouldn't understand anyone's motivation. The story would be pure chaos.

"Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness." - Blaise Pascal

Crazy people get locked up. Their madness is easy to detect. They have drastically disordered thoughts. It's as if their dream content is leaking into their daytime reality. They don't make sense. They can't keep it together. They're incoherent. They can't interact meaningfully with others. They have lost touch with reality.

False Awakening: A convincing dream about awakening from sleep, when in reality you are still asleep.

Wake up!

What is the most sinister world you can imagine, the worst of all possible worlds? It's the one where all of the people are endarkened but believe themselves enlightened. None of them wants to change because they think they are perfect. They exist forever in this benighted condition, doing nothing to discover the Truth of reality, to find the answers to existence, to see the real light rather than the fake light.

Our world is full of the fake enlightened, the phony awakened, the fraudulent "lightworkers". The so-called light they perceive is "darkness visible", i.e. Satanic light, the light of hell.

You build your lifestyle around your identity. Your identity is your fate. You are what you do, and you do what you do because of your identity. What you do constitutes your lifestyle. Most people are so busy with their lifestyle that they fail to consider whether or not their lifestyle is helping them or hindering them. You optimize yourself through having an optimal lifestyle, but how do you decide what lifestyle is best? Most people drift into lazy, easy, convenient lifestyles - acceptable to their peer group - that guarantee they will fail in life.

It's finally happening. Reality is disintegrating. The Age of Nihilism is dawning. Fake news, post-truth, post-facts, alternative facts, "everyone has their own truth", the Dunning-Kruger effect, Mythos, hyperreality, hyporeality, virtual reality, virtual irreality, simulation, simulacra, the copy without the original, the map that precedes the territory, the authentic fake. Whom will you believe? Whom will you trust? Who is telling the truth? Who is lying to you?

It's time to explore the Unreal city, the Unreal world. Soon enough, humanity itself will be Unreal.

It takes a fool to participate in a race he cannot win, a race which he is guaranteed to lose. The race of life is designed to ensure you fail ... unless you belong to the privileged elite. This is a race in which it is not the fastest runners who win, but those who, thanks to inheritance, are brazenly, arrogantly and obnoxiously placed right in front of the finishing line. They need only take a step to win. They could fall over and still win. It takes a fool all right to support this mad game, and that's exactly what the system produces: fools in their countless legions, all of whom believe themselves inside dopesters who know it all. They are the foot soldiers of the Dumbocracy, the Idiocracy, the Moronarchy. They are all slavish followers of Freedumb.

"Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." - Matthew 6:24

What is Mammon? It's the demon or devil of wealth and materialism, opposed to spirituality and "holy poverty". Or it's wealth itself, regarded as a false idol of worship and devotion, as an evil, seductive and debasing influence. The Cave of Mammon is the abode of the deity of wealth, full of the most desirable objects in the world, all the wealth that anyone could want.

Mammon can corrupt anyone, even the Muses, the goddesses of the arts. Poor artists are vain and can be bought. It's easy. Everyone has their price. Mammon knows each person's "number", the price for which they will sell their soul.

Matthew (6:24) was wrong. You can serve God and Mammon, if Mammon IS your God, which he invariably is.

Imagine the Spirit of America as the Fisher King - the Maimed King - of the medieval Arthurian romances. The King is charged with preserving the Holy Grail (American greatness). But the King has been wounded in the genitals and rendered impotent. The power of the Grail is the only thing that keeps him alive. He cannot move. He is unable to perform his tasks. His kingdom suffers just as he does. His impotence stretches across all the land, affecting its fertility, devastating it and turning it into a barren wasteland. The Wounded King reigns over a cursed land.

Is that not America today? It is a divided, bitter, angry land, full of warring factions. It has no unity. It does not know which direction to go in. It has lost its way. It no longer knows the path.