Revel-ation: Note on a definition

Revel-ation describes a process of substitution of revelation.

Let people let-off steam and your safety-valve might save you. A great way to defuse discontent is simulation by its apparent expression through spectacle that seems to toy with power-taboos. It was not Guy Debord who first understood this but medieval kings and queens. Ritualising dissent burns off excess and derails motive power. Illusory catharsis is an extra guarantee of perpetuation of power through pert pet artists. Saturnalia and Mardi Gras echo this thinking. It is not just a false revelation about power but a falsehood often about revelation itself.

The Office of the Revels became very important in the time of the Tudors. It was part of the Royal Household and as proximate to the monarch administratively as the Mint and Armoury, even if they are more obviously powerful. Entertainers were as important as making money and guns. They still are though we seem to think they are on our side, especially when they undermine tradition, especially dull old Catholicism or Christ. Most entertainers are licenced by the Crown or its decentralised equivalents today to give an impression of rebellion whilst validating the power-structure and undermining the genuine version. The entertainer gives the sense your cares are being attended to with great concern or that your consciousness is being expanded when it is shaped by power. The Battle for the Mind by William Sargant gave us a flavour of how our government thinks. That was then.

The process of revelation for Christians describes an explanation and orientation in a continuous series of divine disclosures. The Catholic process recognise private revelations like Marian Apparitions in intensely defined circumstances subject to scrutiny, leaving it up to the believer in the end. The mono-revolution aims to replace revelation of any type. It is ultimately focused on collapsing the world into a mortifying, mechanistic, materialist, disenchanted, dispirited control system.

I suggest a neologism called revel-ation. This is a breaking of revelation, a dividing thereof.

Revel-ation describes the process of presenting apparently revealing insights in a rebellious frame in order to preserve power, especially those observations which are ultimately calculated to undermine revelation.

It informs much contemporary propaganda, entertainment, music, comedy, art, scientism and even science, philosophy, politics, philosophy and sociology. Revel-ation appears to be revealing whilst it is primarily aimed at resisting God or a sense of the divine, genuine imagination and the idea we are special. It operates through apparent authority, platforming and alternative explanation. Its primary source was Elizabethan England. It also performs the function of subduing rebellion by presenting illusion or simulacrum thereof in context of a system intending to reduce the role of God. Thus revel-ation is revolutionary, working on countering hegemony of traditional apostolic interpretations. It took 3 periods of 500 years to create the Catholic system that led to the Reformation and another one to almost totally neutralise it. It took time. Revel-ation lets off steam, gives appearance of freedom and freedom to criticise.

The propaganda model of society was perfected by the Tudors and Elizabethans in their plundering, pillage, piracy and robbery of Catholicism and Catholic property that continued for centuries in Ireland. The key player was the Master of the Revels. They sanctioned theatrical performances. Copyright in its modern form came from censorship. Revel and rebels are etymologically related. The spaces sometimes occupied by monks became places of entertainment. Shakespeare dramatised royalty because he worked for them and with their permission. It was not free as people believe.

Today, as I will explain in a longer post, revel-ation is led by people like comedians. They appear to be rebellious divils whilst they parrot the message they are meant to. God is dead, Christ is irrelevant, Christianity is over, bad, mean, religion is ridiculous. Islam is implicitly above reproach. So revel-ation fits into the mono-revolution. That is how most big-platformed comedians are genuinely mono-revolutionary. They want to eradicate revelation by revel-ation, using the appearance of revolution based on ostensible reason and ridicule. While they do so, they redirect genuine societal discontent away from true power to destroy long-term truth with exaggeration, exploitation and amplification of short-term observations that may even seem reasonable (after a few drinks). They throw you off the scent. You are drawn into mockery and may do the dirty work of deconstruction to ensure technical power has no opponents or competitors. Revel-ation is an engineering sapping and zapping of tradition.