Philip K. Dick was thoroughly convinced that we live in The Matrix. He was also absolutely certain we have the means to crash it, absolutely positive the mechanism was of all things—this will astonish you—the sacrament of the Eucharist. We must however, he believed, first jailbreak the Eucharist—remove the restrictions imposed on the sacrament by the Church—in order to hack into its power.
Dick uses his novel VALIS to lay out in detail how he
came to recognize the true nature of reality and the role
the Eucharist can play in our transforming the world.
Strangely, stodgy Victorian occultist Arthur E. Waite, the co-designer of the Rider-Waite tarot deck, was likewise thoroughly convinced both that we live in The Matrix and that the way to crash it is through the Eucharist. Some eighty years before Dick, he too came to the conclusion that we need to jailbreak the Eucharist to hack into its power. Surprisingly he went even a step further than Dick. Waite believed once we hack into the Eucharist, we need to hack the Eucharist itself—modify it, recode it—to get it to work properly, the way it was meant to work—which is certainly not the way the Church ever intended it to work or ever even conceived it might work. Astonishingly, beyond the traditional Eucharist, Waite asserted, is an ‘Arch-Natural’ Eucharist, as he called it, a ‘super’ Eucharist. But despite his efforts Waite ultimately confessed he’d failed to uncover the secret hack that recodes the Eucharist, that transmutes it into its ‘Arch-Natural’ form.
Waite lays out his endeavor to unravel the secret in
his treatise The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal.
So we face a tantalizing conundrum:
Both Philip K. Dick and Arthur E. Waite agree the Eucharist is the ‘technology,’ so to speak, that we need to crash the Matrix, and both agree we need to jailbreak it to hack into its power, but:
- Dick missed the final step—namely, we have to hack the Eucharist itself to get it to work the way it was meant to work—while
- Waite recognized the final step but, try as he might, failed in his quest to discover the hack needed accomplish it.
Jail-break (v.), to remove restrictions imposed by the
manufacturer. In this case, the restrictions imposed
on the Eucharist by the Church.
Luckily Dick, even though he was a step behind Waite, discovered a couple of vital clues to help us out of the impasse, clues Waite knew nothing about. ‘Discover,’ to be honest, isn’t nearly a strong enough word; nor is ‘clue.’ What Dick encountered were revelations. What drove him to write his novel VALIS was in fact a need to recount an actual experience he’d had in real life in which he’d
witnessed a benign power which had invaded this world. No other term fitted it: the benign power, whatever it was, had invaded this world, like a champion ready to do battle. That terrified
VALIS, pp. 70f. Dick’s emphasis.
him, Dick confesses
but it also excited his joy because he understood what it meant. Help had come.
VALIS, p. 71.
So, the divine invades, breaks in ready to do battle with The Matrix to free us—that’s the first revelation. But, Dick tells us, inexplicably
In a startling response to the crisis,
—by ‘crisis’ he means the fact that we realize we’re trapped in the Matrix, but we’re clueless about how to extricate ourselves—inexplicably in response to our crisis
the true God mimics the universe,
—God mimics the Matrix!—
the very region he has invaded: he takes on the likeness of sticks and trees and beer cans in gutters…
VALIS, p. 74.
That inexplicable response, however, is the second revelation: the divine, ‘startlingly,’ doesn’t appear in the heavens in a blaze of glory but remains camouflaged. The divine inexplicably blends in. It mimics other things, like some insects mimic
other insects—poisonous ones—or twigs and the like.
VALIS, p. 71.
Moreover, Dick says, it mimics
not just objects but what objects do.
VALIS, p. 72.
The camouflage, the mimicry means that indeed help has come, indeed a champion stands ready to do battle, but for its own mysterious reasons it remains cloaked.
Why?
What if, Dick asks,
What if it could only be detected if it wanted to be detected?
VALIS, p. 71.
He asks the question precisely because his whole point in writing VALIS is to make clear that the benign power for equally mysterious reasons sometimes does indeed want to be detected. Dick himself, as I said, had an experience in real life in which, he was convinced, the divine
had advanced out of its camouflaged state to disclose itself
VALIS, p. 71.
to him. Yet he was certain he
had seen it—not because there was anything special about him—but because it had wanted him to see it.
VALIS, p. 71.
Again, why?
What if it had wanted him to see it simply so he could announce the terrifying, the joyful tidings that—
.
Hack the Eucharist | Crash the Matrix 