Obam the Hawk, Earth Akhet...and David Bowie?

The previous post was getting too huge but there is still so much to explore here. The walls are crumbling, people, and the hidden architecture is being revealed. It's staggering, even to an old symbol junkie like myself. I'm wondering if I'll ever get any work done if this keeps up.

Let's start with a Eartha Kitt/David Bowie reference:

The memory of Eartha's biography Thursday's Child provided David Bowie a title for his lead single and opening track of Hours. As Bowie revealed in VH1 Storytellers, "When I was about 14, Eartha Kitt and D. H. Lawrence were some of my favorite bedtime reading." The title was also a song that was sung by Eartha.

First of all, I think the "Hours" title was a typo that didn't get caught at the CD plant. Try this:

That's better. Now, let's take a look at the cover of Horus Hours. I flipped it because it seemed that was a printing mistake, too:

Now, this is bugging me; where have we seen that all-male recreation of La Pieta before?

Oh, right. That's it. Now, we've been looking at astro-Gnosticism lately. It's worth noting that Bowie's first film role was as an alien in the astro-Gnostic cult film The Man Who Fell to Earth and that his ex-wife Angela also claims that Bowie himself is an alien. She may be right. Journalist Rob Leggatt wrote of the making of that film:

"Tabloid rumours of rock star weirdness emerged almost as soon as the six-week New Mexico shoot began. Bowie it was said, spent his spare time locked in a trailer scouring his library of 1,500 mystical books, consorting both with then wife Angie and heiress Sabrina Guinness and listening to 'Young Americans' played backward on a special turntable which made the recording sound like a Tibetan chant. 

The film's New Mexico location, a hot spot for UFO activity, fuelled the madness. 'You could look up into the sky,' remembers the film's writer Paul Mayersburg, 'and see strange things every day.' Bowie, still a year away from his extended detox in Berlin, claimed several sightings."

In 1995, Bowie said of the 70s cocaine/occult years, "My overriding interest was in cabbala and Crowleyism. That whole dark and rather fearsome never-world of the wrong side of the brain. ... More recently, I've been interested in the Gnostics."

I

 bet. The back cover of Horus Hours could very well be a representation of the tripartite demiurge Yaldaboath that we looked at in the recent Star Trek post. Remember one of his three identities was Samael, "god of the blind." 

 The snake reminds us that Orphite Gnostics believed that the serpent in the garden of Eden (who is never identified) was actually Christ, come to free Adam and Eve from Yaldaboath. We looked at that myth when Kirby incorporated it into a kiddie comic called Devil Dinosaur.

Alexandria- what a fascinating name

Bowie is also married to the supermodel Iman, who was born in Somalia, home of the Sirius Star pirates. She also played an androgynous, shape-shifting alien in one of the Star Trek films. 

Speaking of models turned actress, Bowie sang the title song to the film Cat People, which starred Nastassja Kinski as a literal cat-woman. Synchs galore- Kinski married an Egyptian filmmaker named Ibrahim Moussa before shacking up with Quincy Jones,with whom she has a daughter named Kenya (and where does the Obama family come from?). "Cat People" was also sung by Tina Turner, another singer with a troubled history like Kitt.

Kinski and Jones

Following Cat People, Bowie starred with Ka-Hathor-Ein Deneuve in The Hunger, an Egyptian/extraterrestrial/bisexual/vampire love story written by alien contactee Whitley Strieber. Deneuve's character in The Hunger was named Miriam, which comes from Meresamun meaning "Beloved of Amun..."

...which is also the name of the Ancient Egyptian diva appearing in an exhibit at the University of Chicago, where Barack Obama taught law (and just a stone's throw from where the Obamas lived in Hyde Park).

Eartha Kitt with husband Bill McDonald and daughter

Back to Eartha Kitt, there's a planned biopic in the works. Who's been tapped for the lead...?

...the ravishing Miss Beyonce Knowles (no relation- Beyonce also performed with Tina Turner at last year's Grammies).

Now that she’s portrayed Etta James in the upcoming film, Cadillac Records, Beyonce has set her sights on another legend: Eartha Kitt. ABC News reports that Beyonce will star as the legendary singer-actress most known for her role as Catwoman. Two years ago, Eartha Kitt approved of Beyonce portraying her, and told PageSix.com it’s about time she get her own movie saying, “My life has been so damned interesting.”- TVOne

Oddly, Eartha Kitt was mentioned appropos of nothing in a recent news story concerning a feud between Beyonce and Etta James over Obama's inaugural festivities. Which I suppose brings it all full circle. Only this stuff never, ever ends. Egyptian aliens, shape-shifters, chimeras, interracial romances; all denoting duality, hybridization. Why do we tell ourselves these stories? 

 UPDATE: Andre from Alien Project reminds us that Beyonce has taken on an alter-persona in Sasha Fierce, following in the footsteps of Bowie with Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, etc.

Beyonce explains "I have someone else that takes over when it's time for me to work and when I'm on stage, this alter ego that I've created that kind of protects me and who I really am."

Hmm, kind of sounds like a walk-in. It just occurred to me that all actors are essentially dissociative personalities, probably most pop stars as well. Which explains a lot. 

UPDATE II: Wow, I should pay more attention to the pop scene. Actually, I shouldn't. But although I knew she was rocking the Witchblade meme in "Single Ladies," I hadn't realized that Beyonce was rocking the androgyny meme as well.  

UPDATE III: What an interesting graphic that the New York Times is using to symbolize Obama's first 100 days. 

 UPDATE IV: Yacarete points us to Iman's appearance in this old Jacko vid (though that's not Nefertiti). Note the cats at the beginning. 

UPDATE V: Ed reminds us that Beyonce was "Foxy Cleopatra" in Austin Powers: Goldmember. 

UPDATE VI: Here's some true blue Synchronicty for you- I just tracked down the video for Bowie's "Thursday's Child" and it was uploaded by a user in Poitiers, France. The vid does a sort of mopey variation on the Harpo mirror routine from Duck Soup that David Duchovny and Michael McKean recreated in the "Dreamland" two-parter on The X-Files. 

Which reminds me, Mimi Rogers was in the first Austin Powers film.