Strange title for sure. I already had found that Rachel Chandler's, burn candle at both ends friend--Dash Snow (July 27, 1981 – July 13, 2009) was related to Uma Thurman. Uma if you recall, had a long term on/off again relationship with Andre Balazs, 'Hip Hotelier' including Standard Hotels (child trafficking Inn to the stars).

Dashiell "Dash" Snow's grandfather, Robert Thurman, is also Uma Thurman's father. He's a highly acclaimed Professor of Buddhism.

In the course of reading about the connected familial relationships in Rachel Chandler's circle of friends, I found this curious blog about Robert Thurman and Uma's mother, Nena von Schlebrügge and the Tibetan Book of the Dead titled The Tibetan-Nordic-Fashion-Huldra-LSD Aliens Connection (Uma Thurman is from Venus - Part 2). I'm not interested in the drug induced aliens that the author cleverly, with humor, points out, but in the finding that Robert Thurman wasn't the only one interested in what I guess I'll refer to as the occult/esoteric side of Buddhism.

Keep in mind as you read, that Uma's mother, a psychiatrist, was previously married to a MKULTRA CIA LSD asset Timothy Leary (that takes you down Charlie Manson road and all that), but it turns out that Leary too, was into The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Here's the article, but visit the site for fun pics and important info about Uma's grandmother.

Last year I suggested, based on a collection of weird anecdotal evidence and proniac ravings that Uma Thurman was the daughter of a fantastic Nordic alien hybrid, and thus 1/12 or so alien hybrid herself. Uma's mom is also a famous beauty --Nena von Schlebrügge --a fashion model / psychic inspiration, whose husband prior to Buddhist scholar and Dali Lama close pal Robert Thurman was 60s acid guru Timothy Leary. Anecdotal proniac investigation sometimes pays off, and a whole interrelated network of Buddhism, psychedelics, UFOs, 1930s Germanic Himalayan expeditions, Tibetan scientific post-death investigations, ESP, and Charles Mingus emerges. Sweet!

First, examine this D.A. Pennebaker short film chronicling the wedding of Leary and Schlebrügge, "You're Nobody til Somebody Loves You" that includes some "lonely piano" music by jazz great Charles Mingus (which in itself confirms my feeling listening to "Black Saint and the Sinner Lady," that Mingus is Duke Ellington on an acid trip muppet melt-down). Writes Pennebaker:

"This movie is something of a mystery. Timothy Leary was getting married to a model named Nena Von Schlebrugge up in Millbrook, New York at the Hitchcock house, where Leary had been carrying on his hallucinogenic revelries for the past year or so after leaving Harvard. It was rumored that this was going to be the wedding of the season, the wedding of Mr. And Mrs. Swing as Cab Calloway put it. " - D.A. Pennebaker (PH Films)

Now you might think offhand that Timothy Leary (who Nena married in 1964) and Thurman (who Nena married in 1967) have nothing in common, but they actually do -- they have one thing especially in common, The Tibetan Book of the Dead!

From Leary's "The Psychedelic Experience" - avail. online at Erowid:

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is ostensibly a book describing the experiences to be expected at the moment of death, during an intermediate phase lasting forty-nine (seven times seven) days, and during rebirth into another bodily frame. This however is merely the exoteric framework which the Tibetan Buddhists used to cloak their mystical teachings. The language and symbolism of death rituals of Bonism, the traditional pre-Buddhist Tibetan religion, were skillfully blended with Buddhist conceptions. The esoteric meaning, as it has been interpreted in this manual, is that it is death of the ego and rebirth that is described, not of the body. Lama Govinda indicates this clearly in his introduction when he writes: "It is a book for the living as well as the dying." The book's esoteric meaning is often concealed beneath many layers of symbolism. It was not intended for general reading. It was designed to be understood only by one who was to be initiated personally by a guru into the Buddhist mystical doctrines, into the pre-mortem-death- rebirth experience. These doctrines have been kept a closely guarded secret for many centuries, for fear that naive or careless application would do harm. In translating such an esoteric text, therefore, there are two steps: one, the rendering of the original text into English; and two, the practical interpretation of the text for its uses. In publishing this practical interpretation for use in the psychedelic drug session, we are in a sense breaking with the tradition of secrecy and thus contravening the teachings of the lama-gurus.

Leary's adaptation of the TBOTD stresses ego death rather than real death, and makes the esoteric accessible (though the Buddhist scholars may have been right to worry about careless application, i.e. Altamont, Manson, etc).

"I’m not a real guru, I’m an academic professor. I may be what they call a kalyanamitra, a spiritual friend of some of these people, offering advice now and then if I’m asked. But I don’t try to take up the role of serious guru. In fact, part of choosing the professor’s or the academic’s life pattern has to do precisely with avoiding getting into the guru game with people. If I had stayed a monk, I would have had to have disciples, which gets you involved in the complications of being a guru, having people develop various kinds of transference toward you and dependencies on you, and I didn’t think that was healthy for them or for me. I was helped in the decision, of course, by my wife Nena, who always insisted on maintaining that I not get deluded about there being anything exceptional about me! She’s been a great spiritual friend of mine, and had the foresight to encourage me to pursue more mainstream academic pursuits. We’re on a pilgrimage together as much as possible." - Thurman in interview for HiLowBrow

The author brings up Uma's maternal grandmother, who posed for a famous statue (see her wiki page if you like) but also he showed another one that is very intriguing when we consider some of the artists/photographers that we've been covering lately. Anyway..he says regarding (L) Skogsrå - Axel Ebbe, 1913 / 1930. Axel Ebbes konsthall, Trelleborg, Sweden:

"The girl to the right is Uma Thurman’s grandmother Birgit Holmquist, married Von Schleebrügge. The sculpture was originally made in 1913, but the artist changed the girl’s face in 1930 and used Uma Thurman’s grandmother Birgit as his model. Birgit later married a German baron in Berlin, but left Germany for Mexico during the war. Uma’s mother Nena Schlebrügge was born in Mexico City, and became a model like her mother, not for art but for fashion. Birgit returned to Germany in later years; she wanted to be buried in her hometown Trelleborg, so that’s where she rests now.

"A “skogsrå” (“rå” is pronounced “raw” and means watcher, “skogs” means “connected to/from to the forest”. Watcher of the forest, in other words) is both a beautiful wood nymph and an ugly hag at the same time. She lures people into the forest with her beautiful looks, and when they are too deep in to find their way back, she turns her back at them and then she looks just like a tree trunk. The charmed one is lost, deep in the forest. The skogsrå or huldra is mainly a trickster, not so much a demon. She can have sex with humans if she wants to, and if she does, they become silent and withdrawn afterwards, because then she has their soul. The skogsrå is also the ruler of all the animals in the forest. "(Source: The curator of the museum Axel Ebbes konsthall and genealogists Bo Lindwall & Gert Påhlsson.)

Surely we can link the creature represented by this statue to both common reports of alien abductions (just using the parlance of their time, long before the events of 1947), and the TBOTD since the description of the huldra matches descriptions of certain kinds of ghost-demons along the way to reincarnation (through the Sidpa Bardo) that come on like beautiful, inviting women writhing in sexual invitation, and when you get close enough to their sexual heat, they ensnare you and become ancient crones, then devouring fiends, rending your soul and/or ensnaring you into the matrix for prompt reincarnation.

On the psychedelic plane, seeing writhing sexual figures in flames or in the passing shadows on the wall is common, and perhaps represents a less immersive version of this lesson, this parable for age and death, the way the invitation to life is always in the process of corrupting itself. Von Schlebrügge is perhaps the princess of this process, at least in a symbolic capacity, and one can perhaps divulge from this that she is an immortal with a soul stretching back to her aeons as Isis herself.

Okaaay...but I'm sticking with the LSD induced MKULTRA states perpetuated by the CIA created by former Nazi scientist war criminals explanation.

Next con't "The "Good" Swastika"