Monday, January 26, 2009

AstroGnostic: Witch Mountain and King Scorpion


Those dogs look like a major issue

Escape to Witch Mountain is one of the touchstones from my childhood. Though hopelessly dated and unbearably cheesy today, it introduced a generation of miserable latchkey kids in the 70s to a whole host of esoteric concepts- telekinesis, UFOology, Sirius symbolism (the alien kids in the film hail from a binary star system) and the very Gnostic idea that we are higher beings trapped in a fallen world.*


 Indeed, the novel and the film are inherently Gnostic; in order to find the way to escape this world (with its callousness, greed and sadism) and return to their people, Tony and Tia must remember their true identities. And, of course, you probably know where my thinking pertaining to Gnosticism is going.

 

Which brings us to the latest installment in the Witch Mountain saga. Disney is releasing a new entry in the franchise in March called Race to Witch Mountain, starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. It's fascinating to me that Johnson is playing a cab driver in this film, of all things. I can't think of many other actors less appropriate for that profession, but it's the symbols we're after here.

 Jake has done a lot of work on Masonic "checker" symbolism pertaining to the use of taxicabs in films, and that gives us a good jumping off point here, since the very name "The Rock" has a certain Masonic resonance.** 

 And like our new president, the Rock is biracial and has strong familial links to Hawaii. We recently looked at yet another Hawaiian hybrid, Keanu Reeves, in another remake of a UFO classic, and the trailer to the new Witch Mountain resonates with the The Day the Earth Stood Still remake both symbolically and visually. 

 In Witch Mountain however, the Rock plays a different role. His mission is to bring the aliens (obviously of the "Aryan" variety) to Witch Mountain while being pursued by a Man-in-Black, played by the brilliant Irish actor Ciaran Hinds (aka "Best-Caesar-Ever"). 

 Seeing that The Rock is about as believable as a cab driver as Megan Fox, what are his qualifications for this particular role? 

Well, regular Secret Sun readers, familiar with the Egypt-Alien mythos that is coming to define our age, will surely realize that its The Rock's portrayal of the Pre-Dynastic Horus King in The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King that make him the natural choice for this franchise.º

 
The Scorpion King is a mysterious character in the history of early Dynastic Egypt. It's thought that he may have actually been Hor-Aha ("Horus the Warrior"), the son of Narmer †, or even that Narmer and Hor-Aha and Menes and the Scorpion King may all have been the same person:
The only other evidences to date of the existence of a King Scorpion come from small serekhs found on vases. Serekhs were the enclosing devices within which the early names of Kings were written. A serekh of Scorpion may occur on a wine jar from Minshat Abu Amar, though this inscription has also been read as being that of "Aha," the later First Dynasty King who may have been the same king known by Manetho as Menes.. 
Some Egyptologists hold that Menes and Narmer are the same person; some hold that Menes is the same person as Hor-Aha and that he inherited an already-unified Egypt from Narmer; others hold that Narmer began the process of unification but either did not succeed or succeeded only partially, leaving it to Menes to complete...''
Whatever the case may be, according to Ancient Egyptian historians, all of the aforementioned individuals ruled in the period folllowing the end of the rule of the gods. And who was the last god to rule Egypt? 

Horus.

  Indeed, whoever the Scorpion King actually was, as ruler of Egypt his true name was Horus Scorpion, and he was seen to be the natural heir of the god. Which is fascinating since in Witch Mountain, the Scorpion King is following the directions given to him by his young alien friends. 

Which brings us back to some old friends...
The "Followers of Horus" were a group of beings who were closely connected with Osiris, and having "followed" him in this world they passed after him into the Other World, where they became his ministrants and messengers, partaking of his immortal nature, and sharing his life. 
EA Wallis Budge, The Liturgy of Funerary Offerings
I've written repeatedly about the indelible link (via esoteric Masonry) between Ancient Egypt and Ancient Astronauts in the context of the Shemsu Hor. We've looked at Hancock and Bauval's theories that the Shemsu Hor sought to create a mirror of Heaven in order that they may follow Horus on his path through outer space to Osiris and Isis, in the constellations of Orion and Canis Major, respectively. 

OK, and this has what to do with The Rock? 

 Again; in Race to Witch Mountain, what we have here is The Rock - who previously portrayed an incarnation of Horus- ushering alien siblings back to their home in the stars. Did I mention that Isis and Osiris were themselves siblings? 

 So, on one level- the exoteric, surface level- Race to Witch Mountain is just a Disney kids movie with an ex-wrestler in the lead role. 

On the esoteric, symbolic level, Race to Witch Mountain is consonant with nearly everything we've been looking at here on The Secret Sun over the past year. Most certainly the rise of Barack Obama, whose transition chief John Podesta is a believer in the UFO phenomenon. 

 POST-SCRIPT: Speaking of scorpions and royalty, there was this item in the news over the weekend:
Woman Spends 33 Days With 5000 Scorpions To Break Own Record 
PATTAYA, Thailand -- Kanchana Ketkaew lived in a glass box, surrounded by thousands of scorpions. The 39-year-old spent 33 days with 5000 of the arachnid 
MyFox Phila(e)delphia
This might be an opportune time to remind ourselves that there were 33 Dynasties in pre-Alexandrian Egypt...



NOTES:
* Strangely, I filed Escape to Witch Mountain away in my own memory, though it would surface in extremely vivid dreams I had as a teenager about telekinesis. And I unconsciously nicked the Winnebago chase across California for a unsold screenplay a friend and I had actually submitted to Disney in early 2001. 

Work on the project was interrupted, seeing that my writing partner lived a block away from the World Trade Center. But it wouldn't be until my harrowing ride to Esalen in June that memories of the film were kicked loose, since the original Disney film was filmed around Route 1 and Big Sur. And a reader brought the film up when we were mulling over the Stairway to Sirius symbolism during the election. 

 **The trailer gives us some strong links to The X-Files semiotic universe, certainly via the alien bounty hunter and the presence of the luscious Carla Gugino, former star of TV's most egregious X-Files knockoff, Threshold. 

† We looked at Narmer in the context of Disney's Oannes Brothers and sure enough, the young New Jerseyeans dropped in on Sasha and Malia Obama during the inaugural festivities. 

 º Here's a synopsis of The Scorpion King: In an ancient time, predating the pyramids, the evil king Memnon (Brand)is using the psychic powers of his sorceress Cassandra (Hu) to fortell his great victories. In a last ditch effort to stop Memnon from taking over the world, the leaders of the remaining free tribes hire the assassin Mathayus (The Rock) to kill the sorceress. But Mathayus ends up getting much more than he bargained for. Now with the help of the trickster Arpid, tribal leader Balthazar (Duncan) and an unexpected ally, it's up to Mathayus to fufill his destiny and become the great Scorpion King.- ruinedendings. com