Who or what is Daniel Charles Barker? The regular interpretation is that he is a hyperstitional character formed by various individuals in the days of the CCRU . Barker as such qualifies as either a chaos magickal egregore/free floating quasi conscious pneuminous accretion (as I might call it) or a purely psychological construct that various people either choose to play the game of treating as real (or actually believe him to be real). The former option is the strong-magickal interpretation whilst the latter the weak psychological. Either of these gives him a kind of reality that can exert hyperstitional effects, it is just that in the strong version the effects are potentially ontologically altering, whereas in the weak all alterations/synchronicities are reduced to a solid world reality interpretation. The difference between the two ontologies is notoriously impossible to tell, hence the phrase agnostic disjunction, which refers exactly to the arbitrary nature of any choice between them.

There is another possible interpretation that we might consider concerning Barker’s reality. This concerns the Mandela effect. The explanation here would be that various of us have in fact been in a reality in which Barker was real and can recall the various papers etc. that he wrote. However the subset between the Barker reality and this one was relatively small. So when the Barker reality pulled away leaving on this small contingent behind the reports about his work seemed wild, preposterous and worth only serious treatment at the level of ‘hyperstition’.

This is a possibility and it does though maybe suggest a clue for the means by which we might gain more insight into his/its nature. Barker’s work of decoding anorganic semiotics is a hint at a way in which we might be able to trace information about him. The Mandela effect version and the strong accretion explanation might both work with this method.Consider that in the Mandela effect version Barker was real and is still potentially alive -in an alternative reality. So because this reality was in contact with his at some point, it shows that contact between worlds is possible.

Similarly the egregore version of Barker’s existence entails that he was accreted out of pneuma by CCRU individuals and as such has an autonomous existence. There are two further theses behind this explanation: i) is that Barker is just a product of the various conscious/unconscious minds at the time. ii) is that Barker is an egregore interface bolted onto a previously existing non-physical entity that may not have been human formed. There are insinuations of an ‘entity’ in the CCRU writings. These intimations supply a suggestion that ii) is the more likely thesis. Furthermore ii) could also be seen as an explanation for the Mandela explanation. The idea being that the collision between Barker’s reality and this one was in fact orchestrated by the entity. In this version too Barker is a front for the machinations of the ‘entity’.

Both these explanations constitute versions of strong reality alteration -from the perspective of a single solid reality. Neither can be cogently ontologically mapped, but all we need to note here are the necessary features. The Mandela version entails the coming together of worlds in physically seamless blends that only leave historical oddities as evidence to its happening -no one ever sees the worlds coming together or coming apart. The egregore version allows for the ability to create chaos magickal (pneuminous) entities that exist independently of their creators and that potentially there exist non-physical entities with their own agenda, capable of using human made egregores as fronts.

The Mandela effect thesis does not entail that anorganic semiotics (magickal schizoanalysis) is a fruitful pursuit, but it does allow it to seem at least possible -given that it entails multiple realities shifting together and apart. If something like Barker’s theories were true then anorganic semiotic traces of him are potentially detectable through the mesh of conceptual substance (pneuminous accretions) i.e. conceptual axes that spanned across dimensions, which could be peeled back to reveal deeper (on that axis) states.The decoding thesis is certainly weaker with regards to the Mandela version, yet still is worth considering in relation to it.

The entity-accretion thesis (either as i or ii) most certainly does entail such a possibility. Barker’s geotraumatic traces theory can simply be extracted from the physical and noted to necessarily (under magickal conditions) apply to the conceptual (pneuminous accretive). The concept accretes over time. Etymological layers are in there whether we have the ability to detect them or not. The decoding of signs related to such beings necessarily leads us in the right direction -they cannot help but be related. Hence it is through this means that we must approach the matter, so that hopefully we can discern something of the Barker beings purpose or origin -either as a rogue accretion or (more likely) a front for a hidden and pre-existing entity. The difficulty will be discerning the meanings of the signs sufficiently well as to decode the Barker-accretions activities.

Where though should we begin? The most obvious place seems the name. The same problems that afflict us, afflict such beings. No matter what name it gives itself, it cannot help but reveal something about itself. Let us consider the name Daniel. It is of course one of the old Hebrew names and means something like ‘God is my Judge’. This seems to set the tone. It suggests that the Barker entity is working for a higher power -thus supporting the entity interface thesis. A simple gematric check on Daniel gives us a value of 79 and equivalences of ‘oil’ ‘link’ ‘qi’ and ‘godhead’. As an aside I personally cannot help but note a certain resonance of Kant through his use of the phrase ‘quid juris’ and the word God. It suggests the tension between the law of God and the Kantian impossibility of knowing it. Maybe ‘Daniel’ serves as a warning as to how limited such an enquiry as this can be. ‘Charles’ is equally enigmatic insofar as it seems to contain the historical duality of one the one hand meaning simply man and yet simultaneously it is a name of Kings -Charlemagne being possibly the most famous. As another aside, this bondsman/King relation cannot help put me in mind of the Hegelian master/slave dialectic phase. No doubt my philosophical propensity has enabled both these German idealist perceptions, however we must still note them in case they emerge as relevant later on. The Hebrew gematric value of Charles is 207 and simply for the synchronicity it is worth noting that on the gematric calculator I used, the highest placed equivalence for Charles is ‘God Sign’. Owing to matter with which we are dealing, we cannot ignore such instances no matter how slender and contingent they may seem.

Possibly the most obvious looking name clues is in the surname Barker. In the west, the surname has come to be the most necessary historical part of the name. Forenames may be repeated in families by tradition but surnames will still tend to survive as a matter of stronger custom. If this is true of Barker then it contains two powerful clues. The first is in the old meanings of Barker as an occupation. There are two of these. One is that of a tanner, that is someone who changes skin into leather. This has suspicious traces of geotrauma to it, for the leather is the transformed skin. It becomes leather by virtue of trauma. The palimpsest of the skin still exists in the leather. Skin is not the sign of the highest neurological development (that we know of) yet it is still an earlier one. The membrane is the condition of internal and external distinction -that we will refine so well ourselves over time. It is the primordial exoskeleton. Leather is an ancient artificial exoskeletal force that is still in use today -shoes/boots.

The other meaning of Barker is that of a person employed to attract people to entertainment acts by vocalizing (barking). The playful hyperstitional nature of Barker clearly resonates with this, yet an act of entertainment is not necessarily something fictitious. A famous fictional barker was the Tin Man in a musical stage version of the Wizard of Oz called ‘the Wiz’. The Tin Man was a barker for an amusement park which then closed (another quasi-occult linkage through the uncanny zonal appearance of abandoned amusement parks). More fascinating really though is the linkage to the Wizard of Oz itself. The film adaption of Oz is famously influential on many directors, not least David Lynch. Its resonance with things otherworldly does not need explaining here. The atomic number of Tin is 50 (in standard tellurian numerology that equals 5 -another clear hint of origin). We should note here that Barker as a barker re-emphasises the thesis of his working for another entity. He advertises the fun fair but he doesn’t run it

Possibly the most obvious clue from the name Barker is exactly what it sounds like. One who barks. And who or what barks? Dogs do of course. And what (in this territory) is the most famous dog significance? Clearly it is Sirius, the Dog Star. The accretive connections with 5, 23, UFOs and all manner of other paranormal phenomena were well mapped by Robert Anton Wilson in his Cosmic Trigger I. The word Barker is a clue in this sense that it tells us he is an emissary of the dog/Sirius accretion (again reinforcing thesis ii). This is confirmed by the fact the CCRU clearly made use of 23 Burroughs/Wilson type connections.

To be continued.

With thanks to Nick Land and Thomas Moynihan for pre-existing Barker research.