If you woke up this morning with Queen Elizabeth II as your head of state then you probably have an opinion about rugby.

Or if you woke up this morning in a country we have repeatedly trounced in battle (France) then you also probably have a rugby opinion.

Kiwis, Australians, English, French, Welsh, Saffas. Ask any of them.

And you know what? I usually do have an opinion about the rugby.

I was trained by a World Cup winning wallaby as a kid (this is back when Australians were actually good at the game), I’ve been in teams that have won two grand finals, One of my cousins is a wallaby, the All Blacks were a client of mine for two years, I used to do set-ups at Eden Park every day for almost a year and I’ve been in the All Blacks changing room (that was rather fun). My family is Anglo-Scot-Irish-French-Kiwi-Australian… and those are just the passports we can muster amongst the living.

So yeah. It’s not that surprising that the topic came up among other Antipodeans at a party near Regent’s Park during the most recent Rugby World Cup and led to a spirited conversation.

Granted, mine isn’t an expert opinion -far from it- but I like to think that maybe it shouldn’t be immediately discounted. Now, naturally, I’m just trying to have some party chat rather than reveal to a bunch of mostly-strangers that I’m completely insane which means I didn’t mention all that previous rugby stuff.

I did, however, show up with my male partner.

God help straight boys if a gay guy has an opinion about sport that extends beyond critiquing the teams’ uniform. So they listened and we conversed and it was general big party fun. But by the end of the conversation the loudest of them is referring to me as “rugby pundit.”

Hmmm.

So I guess this point is largely for the laydeez and the gays out there. (Not saying it doesn’t happen to other groups but if/when we ever meet it will be immediately apparent as to why I can’t confidently speak to the personal experience of Asians or black people.) It reminds me of that hilarious line in season two of 30 Rock where Jack says “I like it when a woman has ambition. It’s like seeing a dog wearing clothes.”

The loudest guy in the group is actually the little brother of one of my closest friends. She spent more than a decade dating women before permanently taking the train back to boystown. Those two are the closest I have ever seen two adult siblings. In no way is he actually homophobic. And yet the fact that I have an opinion about rugby rather than ribbons leaves him faintly bemused… like seeing a dog wearing clothes.

And you know what’s so insidious about it? When you try to explain to a husband/brother/boyfriend/father why it upsets you because you know why they said it that way… but without a trail of evidence to point to… it just simply does not compute. You sound crazy rather than righteous.

My wrongness is legendary. I don’t mind being wrong which is good because that’s usually the case. I definitely don’t need to be right but I do demand to be heard. Dismiss my opinions if they’re wrong and I’m fine. But dismiss my opinions because you don’t think I should be listened to and I will come at your neck with a fork.

Which brings us -as you have probably guessed- back to the whisky rant.

Why a map?

What follows is a list of -to my mind- reasonably qualified opinions. They’re allowed to be wrong. Some earlier versions of them have indeed proved to be so… For instance, opinions relating to Pleistocene civilisations have certainly been scaled back over the last fifteen years as more accurate information regarding the last stage of the Younger Dryas event and better modelling of ancestral DNA has come to light.

Whilst they are allowed to be wrong, I am not satisfied that enough has been done to dimiss them.

And that’s about as close as any chaos magician should come to statements of belief. Any and all of these will be blown away like dandelion heads the moment I feel they have been ‘heard’ and refuted. Also, each will have an entire post devoted to them over the course of this series should you wish to get into more detail about any particular point. (You know who you are.)

Why is this a ‘map’ of forbidden places? Why not just a list of articles of faith?

For personal reasons.

Because the beginning point of the rant, the failed booty call from fifteen years ago, is the map that -for better or worse- sits at the current centre of pseudohistory’s quest for Pleistocene civilisations… the Piri Reis map. (Apologies for the extremely camp video explanation.) Copied in Portugal from older maps obtained from who knows where (it’s right next door so I have some ideas), it demonstrates an understanding of longitude we only recently obtained and potentially shows the outline of Antarctica centuries before it was ‘discovered’.

Yes, the reactionary theory is that the so-called ‘Antarctic’ parts are actually just South America stretched around to fit on the skin which may be the case.

But riddle me this.

It’s part of an extensive, contemporaneous collection of maps that also show an island off the coast of Ireland called Hy-Brasil which has definitely not been above sea level for thousands of years. It also shows Bimini above sea level (which is intriguing for obvious reasons). The Reinal map of 1510 appears to show the west coast of India as it looked more than 15,000 years ago as well as islands which existed 11,500 years ago that are under water today. Oh, and based on the maps he took with him, Marco Polo thought India was one third bigger than it actually is and that Ceylon was connected to it… which was of course the case before the end of the Ice Age.

So yes… maybe that isn’t Antarctica on the Piri Reis map. Maybe it’s just a bent South America. But there are still these other jigsaw pieces we need to fit somewhere, if you please. And the difference between ‘dispute’ and ‘refute’ left to explain, I suppose.

That’s why this is a map and not a list. With a map, all we need to do is take it, charter a boat and go and see if Antarctica is actually there. If it is, yay me. If it isn’t, well I’ll just got about my business then. There’s some rugby punditry that needs attending to.

The Map of Forbidden Places

1.

Inadvertent ingestion of hallucinogens provided the first extra-human contact which has continued in various forms ever since. (See entire history of magic literally anywhere on earth.) It’s my contention that the fungal and vegetative components that enabled this first appeared as a result of changing climates, which provides an answer as to why it didn’t happen sooner.

2.

DNA quite possibly reveals clear evidence of intentionality in our construction. Regardless, we are at the ‘flat earth’ stage of understanding DNA so it is fucking ludicrous to make pompous claims that we know what is going on up in there.

3.

Ancient aliens were at least some of the first civilising gods, though the distinction between the two is largely irrelevant. As is their physical presence on earth (refer to the first point) but if they did show up in bodily form -which I’m on the fence about- we should probably cast Enki in the lead role. (Show me another four thousand year old first hand description of flying low over the earth, landing in marshes, getting out of your ship and then ordering your shipmate to check if the water is potable.)

4.

Further to point three: the universe is extremely crowded. The case for vastly ancient structures on the moon is fairly strong to anyone with even a cursory understanding of film technology. Though open to it, I remain to be convinced with regards to Mars, unlike Buzz Aldrin whom you should probably believe over me. However it shakes out, this seems to indicate that even the inhospitable corners of our solar system once held now long vanished civilisations. Sustained, inter-species, multidimensional contact continues (but I probably don’t need to tell you that).

5.

Universal flood myths are tumbled-down cultural memories of the dramatic upheaval associated with the end of the last Ice Age and subsequent sea level rise. (Even today most people live by the sea.) At least one culture, and likely more than three, reached levels of complexity we would consider comparable to the late Mayan period during the time between the Last Glacial Maximum and the end of the Pleistocene.

It will eventually emerge that a surprisingly large amount of land area experienced changes in climate were extremely rapid and destructive.

6.

The creation of art (see Alan Moore’s description of the relationship between art and magic) occasionally ‘tunes into’ future events, giving the impression that the artist is somehow “writing the future”. See Bob Wilson, Grant Morrison, Jack Kirby, Uri Geller, Arthur C Clarke, PKD and many more. This phenomenon has the unfortunate side effect of making the events seem less real and even totally fictional when they subsequently happen.

7.

Hermetico-Gnostic ideas constitute the “secret religion of Europe” and have tumbled down in an unbroken but hugely mutated “line” from where they coalesced in Alexandria. When you think about it, this is the only way it could reach us. In the rare instances of so-called direct descent of spiritual ideas such as the Catholic Church it’s still only ideas that are being transmitted. Ideas have no genetic material that can be “passed down” generationally… and besides, even genetic material mutates. There are no ancient witch cults or centuries-old secret societies. There are just ideas.

These Hermetico-Gnostic ideas sporadically reappear throughout western history (founding of the US, building of various cities, returning kings to thrones, founding of EU) in powerful circles to influence long-term policy objectives.

There are seven?

Shouldn’t a chaos magician be making lists of eight? Probably. But I have two responses to that. The first is there’s still one slot left on the whisky rant hard drive if you’re selling something. The second:

Who is the master who makes the grass green?