Wingmakers

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The WingMakers website is claimed to be the first public expression of the efforts of a group known as the Lyricus Teaching Order. The webmaster of the WingMakers website, Mark Hempel, has described the current WingMakers website as an effort in modern myth making. The WingMakers site and "franchise" has been viewed as either an online religion, a form of immersive entertainment with strong similarities to the alternate reality game genre, or the commercialization and corruption of an earlier form of the website [1] whose teachings focused largely on moving beyond the hierarchical paradigm and finding the deepest wisdom within ourselves. [2]

Some of the "modern myth" material at the current WingMakers website can be read as derivative, yet engaging science fiction, suggesting that some humans are incarnations of special "expanded souls" that are here to "guide" humans into the future. The most obvious inspiration of the current website's novel is The X-Files (the Greys are mentioned), and to a lesser extent, Star Wars. Ambiguity about whether or not the material is fictional in nature could also be seen as similar to the storytelling approach used by the film The Blair Witch Project.

These WingMakers are described as part of an intelligent design by which the creator of our universe is spreading its consciousness through the entire universe. Other content at the current WingMakers website deals with issues such as humanity working towards discovery of the "The Grand Portal," a posited future event in which scientists discover irrefutable, conclusive evidence of the existence of the human soul.

The person who has stepped forward claiming to be the creator of the WingMakers materials identifies himself only as "James". Webmaster Marc Hempel maintains that James does not seek to have contacts with people in the manner typical of a cult leader. The website states that James does not even have an email address. In documents at the current WingMakers website directly attributed to "James", he states that the purpose of the WingMakers website is to help people participate in the scientific discovery of the nature of the human soul. This would tend to suggest that Marc Hempel and whichever other parties are responsible for the website in its current form do not have as a goal the establishment of a cult, but rather perhaps simply the cultivation of income via the site's material.

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[edit] WingMakers art, music, poetry

The WingMakers website provides a multimedia experience with art, music and poetry. The site's artwork has a pseudo-indigenous feel and bears a remarkable resemblance to the style of a web-presenced turn-of-the-21st-century artist. Its musical tracks are decidedly contemporary new-age in instrumental composition and style, raising doubts about the idea that time-travelers from the future are the source for the material at the WingMakers website. Material at the WingMakers website tries to counter such doubt by claiming that the presented material is a translation of information from elsewhere in the galaxy to a form suitable for humans. There has been online speculation that Mark Hempel is the source of all of the material at the WingMakers website.

[edit] History and Interpretation

When the WingMakers website first appeared in late 1998, [3] it was presented to the public as revealing a government conspiracy to hide evidence of the WingMakers that had been found at an archeological site in New Mexico. There was much online debate about this conspiracy and many in the UFO-studies community decided it was a hoax. In 2001, a man named Mark Hempel appeared on the website claiming to be the webmaster and suggesting that the material be viewed as "modern myth".

Some observers claim that beginning in early 2001, the material on the WingMakers website was gradually changed, commercialized, and corrupted from its original purpose of looking for divine wisdom from within. [4] They point out that Mark Hempel, James, the Lyricus Teaching Order, and the "Grand Portal" were never part of the original website, [5] whose philosophy [6] clearly advocated moving beyond the hierarchical paradigm and teacher/student ordering of the universe. Others feel that this is just another religion that will be forgotten in a small number of years. Yet another opinion is that the WingMakers website represents a kind of New Age experiment in myth making and reality shifting. The current WingMakers website also functions as a community site by providing an online discussion forum [7].

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