Watch the whole movie with its jaw-dropping intro here.
Ever wonder what a remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark might look like if Indiana Jones was portrayed by a square-jawed, straight-to-video stud with the acting chops of a tree stump?
Well, I hadn't either until I'd come across The Curse of King Tut's Tomb (2006) in a drugstore DVD bargain bin. This masterpiece of cheese was originally a Hallmark Channel (aka "Hausfrau Heaven") mini-series, which just goes to show how fragile our reality consensus has become.
The first 8 minutes of this film alone will make your head spin- King Tut was not a boy-king who ascended the throne when the disgraced Akhenaten was deposed, he was an immortal demigod sent by Ra to battle Set and his army of suspiciously Lovecraftian demons. The special effects might not leave you breathless, but the crypto-Masonic theology of it all certainly will.
In addition to hitting us with some hardcore pseudo-Egyptian occultism, we also get a good dose of trailer park-level conspiracy theory in the form of the Hellfire Council, an Illuminati stand-in comprised of the usual gang of cartoon English bad guys, including Jonathan Hyde (playing "Morgan Sinclair"), Simon Callow and the grand-daddy of them all, Malcolm McDowell.
What is odd to the point of suspicion is that the action is filmed in India and uses Indian actors in place of Egyptians. There's something quasi-racist about this, as if no one can tell one brown-skinned race from another. It's incredibly distracting, but certainly ties into the India Rising memes we saw come to full flower at the Academy Awards. After all, Hinduism is the closest thing we have to the ancient Egyptian traditions today, and it's still being practiced by hundreds of millions of people.
Outside of the Brits, the acting isn't quite Shakespearean. Casper Van Dien (who plays blatant Indiana Jones knockoff "Danny Fremont") and co-star Leonor Varela (as Dr. Azeila Barakat, a clear analog of Rachel Weisz's character in The Mummy movies) are easy on the eyes, but you might find yourself wishing talkies were never invented.
Leonor as Cleopatra as Isis as Ceres
But the two leads certainly synch well to current memes- Van Dien was in Verhoeven's quasi-fascist wank-fest cover version of Robert A Heinlein's Starship Troopers, and Verela was easily the hottest Cleopatra ever in the 1999 miniseries of the same name. McDowell is imbued with all those Kubrick synchs from Clockwork Orange and has been in all sorts of semiotically-loaded genre fodder (most recently Bolt).
It's directed by Russell Mulcahy of Highlander fame. Incidentally, Mulcahy also directed the straight-to-video sequel of the Scorpion King, 1998's Tale of the Mummy and Resident Evil: Extinction, so Egypto-resonant genre fluff seems to be a specialty of his. The screenplay, such as it is, is written by David Titcher, who brought us the similarly-themed Librarian TV movies, which starred the miscast Noah Wyle.
But since I'm not convinced we aren't living in a Philip K. Dick simulacrum of reality, where extradimensional entities are using symbolically-resonant pop culture to send us premonitions of the future encoded in a deep variety of dream-logic language, The Curse of King Tut's Tomb could well be part of the "Amun Rising" meme we are seeing embodied in our president. I'm on record as claiming that Obama is not the new Akhenaten (Bush held that honor) but in fact the new Tutankhamun, and this film offers a tantalizing clue. Or not.
Leonor Varela's character is Azelia Barakat and our last Obama freakout culminated in the above image of Barack-Cat. Yeah, it's pretty lame, but so is this movie. But it does all clock in at 170 pot-boiling minutes, so that counts for something, right?
If any of you guys have some downtime and want to dig into the synchs on this stinker, please do so. I'm pretty busy this weekend but my Spidey-sense tells me there's more afoot in this flick. I'd also recommend any serious Synch-o-nauts pick up the DVD for closer inspection.
Part Two of the gabfest between Aeolus Kephas and myself is now up here. Here are Aeolus' notes for the show:
Part Two of the Wind/Sun debate: AK and CK discuss the code of the superhero, myths as blueprints, Watchman - Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan as antichrist and Christ? - Lex Luthor & Dr. Doom, how villains see themselves as world saviors, living by synchronicity, identifying with the archetypes, C.G. Jung, the visionary of our times, the dangers of superhuman potential outside the realm of the archetypes, Stan Lee comics as moral instruction for kids, CK's upbringing, CK's work at Secret Sun, seeking agendas behind the symbols, an autobiographical process, Terence McKenna's Ufo as eschaton, a future event casting ripples into the present, CK's gut feeling on what's coming down the pike, the space program and space-born economy, the war on terror, new rulings as preparation for mass panic in a "contact situation," entering a new paradigm, alien pageants, government systems as experimental models, evolving beyond physical reality, the dangers of exploring the occult realms, the need to integrate our shadow nature, Jung & Crowley as parallel streams of gnosis, CK's opus magnus and latest book, back into the rabbit hole.
When I was writing Our Gods Wear Spandex I kept an 8x10 photo of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman on my wall to act as my muse. I think she did a marvelous job of it. And sure enough Lynda Carter was on the front page of Yahoo! today.
The 6x9 room where I spend all of my waking hours, circa October 2006
The new U2 album came today, as did the new Wonder Woman animated DVD. I'd been waiting for it since I was interviewed for the bonus documentaries along with a host of scholars and comics luminaries (even the Mighty Hef). It was pretty tough for a relative novice, sitting in an uncomfortable chair for 5 hours under hot lights while you answer a barrage of questions.
But the questions were excellent ones, and the producers and director were extremely cool guys and very keyed into their mythology. And longtime readers of this blog know what a DC Tooniverse and Bruce Timm maniac I am, so it was well worth the trouble.
As my work progresses, though, I rapidly find myself losing interest in the acceptable narratives on mythology. Jung found himself in a similar situation when he was my age. He saw the future in the neopagan underground centered around Bohemian hotspots like Ascona, and used that inspiration to develop his idea on the archetypes.
But having researched this material for more than 20 years and written about it nearly every day for the past five years, I feel myself being pulled even out of the relative safety of Jung's most radical concepts. It's like a tidal pull, and having spent my youth in the ocean I don't use that phrase lightly. Listening to myself on the DVD I felt as if I and the others were reading a eulogy for something that is very much alive, though still not yet realized.
It's strange having found my entire life so immersed in these archetypes and these myths and superheroes and all of the rest of it. But it's also tremendously hard work. While Aeolus and I were preparing for our Skype-a-thon he asked how I would describe myself and my work. And after much reflection I answered, "I'm a slave to the gods."
UPDATE: Thuthie reminds us that Beyonce is itching to play Diana Prince. While no one will ever, ever replace Lynda Carter, I endorse this casting decision, seeing that her body is one of the great wonders of nature. Interesting that Beyonce's married name is also Carter. The key to making the film work would be a great Steve Trevor. I nominate George Clooney, if he's not allergic to superhero movies after the Batnipple fiasco. Too bad they didn't make a WW movie ten years ago because Catherine Zeta Jones was born for that role.
I try not to think too much about Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana, which isn't always easy when her face is everywhere you look. But this image did catch my eye (thanks to Ben at Pseudo-Occult Media). Are we to believe that this image was spontaneous, or is it being circulated in order to gauge the effect of negative attention towards their superstar from the conspiracy audience, primed to spot owl imagery through Bohemian Grove and dollar bill "exposés?"
Or could this be a subconscious identification of Miley with Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of music, sex and war? It sounds crazy but so much of what we see surrounding this girl seems like a provocation to me. We're also seeing sexually provocative pictures of this child being put into the media through "leaked" photos and staged events for the paparazzi. Is this meant to gauge the public's tolerance for adolescent sexuality?
UPDATE: Secret Sun readers are my eyes and ears! One reader points this out in the Wiki-link:
Inanna's name is commonly derived from Nin-anna "Queen of Heaven"... In some traditions Inanna was said to be a granddaughter of the creator goddess Nammu or Namma. These difficulties have led some early Assyriologists to suggest that Inanna may have been originally a Proto-Euphratean goddess, possibly related to the Hurrian mother goddess Hannahannah, accepted only latterly into the Sumerian pantheon, an idea supported by her youthfulness, and that, unlike the other Sumerian divinities, she at first had no sphere of responsibilities..
Inanna comes from Hannahannah? Perfect. Folks, that is what we call a hit. Now, back to our regularly scheduled program...
And then there is the theme of dual identity, that is central conceit of her TV show as well as the central conceit of her persona- she is known equally as Miley Cyrus or Hannah Montana. And the "best of both worlds" meme is driven into young psyches by her theme song. Is it preparing them for cybernetics, bisexuality, dual citizenship, hybridization, schizophrenia? All of the above? Or are we ourselves the "best of both worlds," Earth and somewhere else?
Both of Miley/Hannah's surnames are related to the Sun. The state of Montana uses the rising sun (Harpocrates yet again) in its official seal. We also see the waterfall, which is used in the Masonic second degree tracing board, as well as the statue of Crypto-Mithras at Rockefeller Plaza.
Her surname Cyrus has interesting origins as well. From behindthename.com - From Κυρος (Kyros), the Greek form of the Persian name Kûrush, which may mean "far sighted" or may be related to the Persian word khur "sun". It's also the name of Cyrus the Great, the only non-Jew to be called a messiah in the Bible.
Cyrus was commonly pictured as having wings, and there is a statue in his honor in Sydney Olympic Park, of all places. Cyrus was believed to have been crucified like Jesus and beheaded like the Baptist, and as a martyr, his tomb still stands in modern day Iran.
And surprise of surprises, Cyrus is a hero to the Freemasons, and many lodges are named in his honor. I'm almost given to wonder if Cyrus was something a little bit more than human, given the wings and all. And I also wonder why most people have never heard of this crucial historical figure (I'm sure 9 out of 10 Freemasons would have no idea why Cyrus was so important either).
It makes you wonder if Cyrus is in fact that family's original name altogether.
Perhaps there are two levels of understanding here- the blatant obvious themes of sexuality and duality fed to the masses, and the deeper, symbolic meanings meant for the initiates. Certainly the same can be said for much of our pop culture these days.
In that light, I should mention that Aeolus Kephas had asked if I felt that I was somehow complicit in this process, and if this blog somehow played into the "Revelation of the Method." I'm not sure I answered that question to his or my satisfaction so let me take another stab at it.
First of all, there is no such thing as "Revelation of the Method," it's a speculative concept coined by a extreme-right conspiracy theorist and has no basis in esoteric history or doctrine. Second, I have no interest in talking to people who automatically identify ancient mythological symbols with conspiracy or evil (nor does Aeolus himself, for that matter). I'm talking to open-minded people who are looking for a deeper narrative in all of this.
All I can do is muddle on and try to figure out if our pop culture is in fact the result of repressed genetic memories of a hybrid race trapped in a cosmic foster home. That's a gross oversimplification of a realization so mind-numbingly huge we can't even begin to wrap our heads around it. It could change how we look at history, science, religion, psychology, consciousness, everything.
And as the archives here show, it wasn't until I truly took that concept "Siriusly" that the floodgates truly opened. Since then this blog has very much become a kind of automatic writing, believe it.
Postscript: Aeolus tells me that the second half of the interview should be up tomorrow. I think the second hour is even juicier than the first. I'm going to bug him for another hour at some point in time.
UPDATE II: Reader Jay A points out that Hannah Montana's hometown is called Crowley Corners. You can't make this stuff up.
UPDATE III: Edits made as to minimize misinterpretation, willful or otherwise.
UPDATE IV: Apparently, the frieze of Inanna we saw up top is actually of uncertain provenance, and is identified in the British Museum as also possibly Ishtar or the storm demon Lilitu, who became Lilith 2500 years later in the Bible. How interesting then that we see Lily Allen as LILY ALIEN on the cover of Spin (again, cheers to Ben S and a reader) seeing that the frieze also pictured two large felines. Note the predictable checkerboard and "Utu."
On Friday we looked at the strange synchs between U2 and Harpocrates, in the form of the album covers for Boy and War (and in the incarnation of a young boy named Peter Rowan) and the lyrics of "The Three Sunrises."
Now, all of this could be the result of Bono's close relationship with Gavin Friday, the flamboyant leader of goth pioneers The Virgin Prunes, who toyed with occult imagery. The Harpocrates imagery could be the result of some kind of subconscious transference, since I really can't imagine that Bono was boning up on his Crowley (at least not at that point). But we also have to consider that these archetypes were expressing themselves in ways contrary to the intention of the band and their designers.
There is one more fascinating synch I'd like to touch on in this vein, and that's the U2 song, "Stranger in a Strange Land." Bono claimed the song was inspired by an encounter he had with a boy across the Berlin Wall. The title itself comes from a Robert Heinlein novel which had a cult following in the 60s. If Bono was a Heinlein fan in U2's early days, he wouldn't be alone. According to a retrospective in the LA Times:
...Heinlein’s following shows up in unexpected places: He’s the hero of numerous astronauts, Silicon Valley types and those seeking to privatize space travel. He isn’t just their favorite writer; he set them on their life’s course. He generated public enthusiasm for the space race, inspired the genre called “military science fiction.” Tom Clancy, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and countless libertarians are fans. A crater on Mars is named for him.
Strangely enough, many occultists see Stranger as being a thinly-disguised, Crowley-influenced narrative. Indeed, according to Jack Parsons biographer George Pendle, Heinlein was quite close with Jack Parsons, the black magician whom Werner Von Braun claimed was the true father of the American space program. Parsons and Heinlein were members of a group of sci-fi writers and other assorted weirdos called the Manana Society, which met a Heinlein's home in Laurel Canyon.
The free love/mystery cult in the novel "The Church of All Worlds" strongly recalls Parson's OTO scene in Pasadena and was probably influenced by it. Considering that the messiah of the novel, Valentine Michael Smith*, is linked to the space program and Mars (Parsons' favorite character as a boy was John Carter of Mars), and is martyred at the novel's end, it seems that the book may very well have been an homage to Parsons himself, and not to Crowley as many have claimed.
What's interesting as well as that Heinlein predicted the rise of the Religious Right (including a sort of pumped-up version of the Westboro Baptist Church) as well as world government (admittedly a staple of sci-fi from the early 20s on). Speaking of Crowley, British metal legends Iron Maiden (led by Thelemite Bruce Dickinson) also recorded a song called "Stranger in a Strange Land."
A more problematic synch may be how the new U2 video seems sympatico with Heinlein's Starship Troopers, with its vision of world peace through the militarization of society. Heinlein also saw the military as the ideal venue for feminist advancement as well, and the "Get On Your Boots" video is chock full of militarized and masculinized women.
But working all of the memes out in the fictional, archetypal realm is one thing. It's another thing whenthis kind of authoritarian fetishism leaves the geek hothouse and is put into practice in the physical sphere. Here's another fascinating quote from the LA Times article on Heinlein:
(Heinlein) won admiration from Ronald Reagan, who enlisted his ideas in his “Star Wars” missile shield, and Charles Manson, who was captured with the novel “Stranger in a Strange Land” in his backpack. He predicted the European Union and invented the water bed.
And what do you get when you cross Ronald Reagan and Charles Manson? You get The Family, an authoritarian cult whose present leader openly admires Hitler, Lenin and Mao. Some obscure sect, you may ask? No, it's one of the most powerful pressure groups in America and runs the annual National Prayer Breakfast, which Bono spoke before in 2006.
How interesting and coincidental then that we hear reports that U2 are now hiding their money in a offshore tax shelter. Maybe it's all just a big misunderstanding. Or perhaps it's groups like the Family where Crowley's authoritarian teachings go from being the province of brilliant yet ultimately marginal weirdos like Jack Parsons (who is controversial even within OTO circles) to become part of the State. Certainly we've seen the same control techniques used by 70s cults and 80s New Age groups being imported whole cloth into the megachurch movement of the 90s.
It all just keeps getting bigger and bigger, doesn't it? I think I should watch that new U2 video again. Incidentally, U2 will be performing at Fordham University on Monday morning to promote their new album.
*The more I see the name "Valentine" in these contexts, the more convinced I become it is a reference to the Gnostic sage Valentinus, not St. Valentine. Note that the Church recently remarked on Valentine's obscurity in relation to the holiday named for him.
I had a mind-bending Skype-a-thon last week with Aeolus Kephas of the Stormy Weather podast and the first of two installments is up now. Here is Aeolus' description of the gabfest:
The Wind God takes on Captain Solar: a two-hour, two-part chat with Chris Knowles, covering superhero archetypes, Watchmen and the narrative of simulated alien invasion, AK's dreams and the similarities between DNA coded language and the comic book format, Jack Kirby's The Eternals, Gnosticism and anamnesia, Graham Hancock and "junk DNA," CK and AK's childhood fever dreams, the little people and shamanic initiation, CK's take on psychedelics, reality as a language or moebius strip, comics and hieroglyphs, apocalypse and revealing the Other within, corporate religion's "armageddon narrative," the difference between inner discovery and external revelation, the tabla rasa of the unknown, projecting the shadow, Jung and the dawn of the flying saucer age, The X-Men and the demonization of the Other, the negation of the self as narcisissism, mysticism vs animism, are human beings non-native to Earth & programmed to go against nature?, panspermia and the imperative to leave the planet, intervention theory, the virus of civilization, opposing agendas of DNA, the space program, Earth as Great Mother/Whore, the ultimate seed-pod "taking all comers," the incompatibility of the human organism with space colonization, the end of the age of messiahs.
Check it out here. And bookmark Aeolus' Stormy Weather blog here.
Andre over at the must-read Alien Project posted the trailer to The Battle for Terra, one of four big Hollywood movies this year in which we see humanity through the eyes of extraterrestrials. Or more accurately, children are presented with this tableau, since three out of four of these films are geared towards them.
I understand that conventional wisdom has it that we're all being prepared for some large-scale alien invasion hoax, but the psychology here is extremely interesting nonetheless. Human beings are the antagonists in these films, meaning children will clearly identify with the oppressed aliens.
These films are not generating a sense of fear ("the government will save you from the evil aliens") or a sense of worship towards aliens ("worship the aliens, they are our space brothers"), they are inspiring sympathy and compassion towards them. We are driven to identify with aliens and see them neither as a threat nor as divine.
This in no way fits the conventional psychological narrative presented by the ET-hoax theorists. It's beyond even what we saw in E.T. or Alien Nation, where the aliens remained distinctly other. These are the kinds of films you would make if you wanted children to sympathize with actual aliens. And to see it in four separate films certainly gets my agenda-decoding antennae up.
Reverse psychology? Well, I guess it's possible. But given the current climate there's no doubt in my mind such a gambit would sail straight over most people's heads. The fact is that the propaganda I've discerned is mind-numbingly literal and repetitive, as if those producing it are convinced their audiences are low-grade morons. Having worked in the media and in advertising I can tell you with utter confidence that that is the case.
u2 pose by an obelisk in the publicity photo for their new album
Well, ubiquitous Irish rockers U2 have a new album coming out (on 3/3) called No Line on the Horizon.It's shaping up to be a big year for U2- we heard their new single "Get On Your Boots" in an ad for the NFL(im) in the recent Templar Bowl and just before that we also saw them play at the Obama Inauguration on the first day of the month of Aquarius. How interesting that they are front and center in this semiotic chain reaction of a year.
I'm fascinated by the title because, like Michael Tsarion, I've always taken the word "horizon" to mean "Horus Zone." Horus is identified with the horizons in his Re-Horahkty incarnation, and it is also my strong belief that the Greek horae is derived from Horus.
And then there's this video. You know all that crazy sh*t I've been yapping about for a year and change now? There it all is. The stars, astronauts, the gods, the goddesses, androgyny, pyramids, militarism, and on and on and on. Again, 2009 is the Year of You Gotta Be Frickin' Kidding Me, and this video is no exception. Do these guys still claim to be Christians? Fascinating.
Following that line, U2 are Irish Protestants who attended the Mount Temple School in Dublin.* And Mount Temple recalls the Temple Mount, which served as the headquarters of the Knights Templar during the Crusades.
U2's school days were a bit shizophrenic- they fell in with a Charismatic prayer group called Shalom (led by a British missionary named Chris Rowe) and were mentored/inspired by a flamboyant transvestite named Gavin Friday, who later formed Goth legends, the Virgin Prunes.
And sure enough, Friday would call on Horus (Heru in the Egyptian) in this 1983 performance video to grant him "the secret longings of my heart." Would this have any effect on his best friend Bono, as did the Friday-tribute persona of MacPhisto? First, a history lesson...
Few people remember this today but U2 found themselves embroiled in controversy in the early days for using a naked boy named Peter Rowan on their record covers. Island Records forced the band to change the cover of their first albumBoy in order to avoid controversy in the US. However, Rowan reappeared on the cover of their breakthrough LP War, although his torso was mostly cropped. One wonders though- the connection with Boy is self-evident, but what does this boy have to do with "War?"
Could there be another inspiration lurking behind this imagery, one not of a sexual nature? Call me crazy, but the "Boy" can't help but remind me of The Book of the Law, with its "crowned and conquering child." Crowley defined him as Ra-Hoor-Khuit, more commonly known as Harpocrates (Horus the Child). In light of Rowan's appearance on the cover of the War LP, it's instructive to note that Crowley quoted Horus as saying "Now let it be first understood that I am a god of War and of Vengeance."
Leaving aside Crowley's somewhat unique interpretation of the ancient myths, it should be remembered that Harpocrates was seen as the embodiment of the rising sun in the Egyptian mystery tradition. We've certainly seen the rising sun manifest itself repeatedly in the media lately, but there can't possibly be any explicit reference to Harpocrates in any U2 songs, can there? Sure, we have the boy and war, but that's taking things a step too far, surely.
Not really. U2 cut a track for their Unforgettable Fire LP called "The Three Sunrises," that began with this verse:
Spirit of the rising sun lift me up Hold me there and never let me fall Love me till I die, my heart won't wait Soon I will be down in this love song
U2, The Three Sunrises
Now, I'm sure a lot of people would argue that this could be a reference to Jesus, but there's nothing in the lyrics to support that. Harpocrates was worshipped as the "spirit of the rising sun" exactly as the lyric reads. Coincidence? Maybe, but it's worth noting that The Unforgettable Fire had an interesting album cover- an ancient castle drenched in sunlight.
Well, fascinating stuff, but I didn't feel the need to pull the trigger on these Horus synchs until that whacked-out video crossed my screen. Maybe all that hobnobbing with Tony Blair and the gang at Davos is rubbing off on them.
Certainly a self-described group of Christians couldn't possibly have intended any of this consciously, but by the same token Crowley always claimed that Liber Al was a work of automatic writing.
And then again, there is MacPhisto...
UPDATE: Reader Tommy wins catch of the night with his observation that U2 corresponds to "Utu,"the Sumerian sun god. * Another MT alum was the Irish poet Christopher Nolan, not to be confused with the cinematic sorcerer of the same name.
UPDATE: Did you know the Knights Templar have been recognized as an NGO by the United Nations? The Rosslyn Templars link reports that "The UN has given the Templars "special consultative status" on peace talks in the Middle East, as they continue to carry out work in Jerusalem, where the order was founded in 1152."
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — Staff at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium in California say the trickster who flooded their offices with sea water was armed. Eight-armed, to be exact. They blame the soaking they discovered Tuesday morning on the aquarium's resident two-spotted octopus, a tiny female known for being curious and gregarious with visitors. The octopus apparently tugged on a valve and that allowed hundreds of gallons of water to overflow its tank. Aquarium spokeswoman Randi Parent says no sea life was harmed by the flood, but the brand new, ecologically designed floors might be damaged by the water.
The portent hue delivers messages of certain colors I see into his eyes now, I understand the meaning I reach up to the sky, to those unseen, the chosen few I spread my will between the two Big Ox laughing, portent hue, the same †
As NASA prepares to hunt for Earth-like planets in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy, there's new buzz that "Star Trek's" vision of a universe full of life may not be that far-fetched.
Pointy-eared aliens traveling at light speed are staying firmly in science fiction, but scientists are offering fresh insights into the possible existence of inhabited worlds and intelligent civilizations in space.
There may be 100 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, or one for every sun-type star in the galaxy, said Alan Boss, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institution and author of the new book "The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets."
This is not news. Why is that a headline today?
LOVE AT FIRST SPRITE
Well, there has been so much strange activity above our heads lately that the guardians of enlightenment feel the need to pull the old "natural explanation" non-explanations out of mothballs and feed them to credulous clock-punchers in the media.
The latest non-explanation are "sprites", balls of light formed in the upper atmosphere following electrical storms:
Mysterious UFO sightings may go hand in hand with a puzzling natural phenomenon known as sprites — flashes high in the atmosphere triggered by thunderstorms.
Researchers have detected the flashes between 35 and 80 miles (56-129 km) from the ground, far above the 7 to 10 miles (11-16 km) where usual lightning occurs. Sprites can take the form of fast-paced balls of electricity, although previous footage has suggested streaks or tendrils. - Yahoo
All well and good, but wait- here come the psychological control techniques. This time this extremely rare occurrence (the article cites a 20 year-old photograph of this phenomenon) can miraculously explain the tens of thousands of UFO reports every year:
The cause or function of the flashes remains murky, but Price suggested that they could explain some of the UFO reports which have cropped up over the years. That might provide some solace for UFO enthusiasts disappointed by human-caused hoaxes in the past.
Translation: "There there, disillusioned UFO nuts. Curl up with a photo of high-altitude electrical phenomena. You'll feel better, I promise."
If sprites "go hand in hand" with UFO sightings, where is the data showing a correspondence? Where are the photos of sprites taken in areas where UFOs have been reported? Which UFO reports have been proven conclusively to be sprites? Pilots and astronauts don't seem to confuse these things with aircraft, so how is this news?
The burden of proof is never on these people. These questions are never asked by these reporters, who simply put a veneer of objectivity on press releases from extremely unobjective parties. And then they whine that no one trusts the media anymore. The arrogance is stultifying.
There's a link to another article called "Top 10 Alien Encounters Debunked." I'm not sure who the audience is for this puffery, but it reads like a litany of the psychological control techniques that the Amazing One and his pedantic ilk have perfected over the years.
The piece throws in every trick in the book; from ridicule to dismissal to baseless assumption to guilt by association. I can't see the point of it, other than trying to keep wavering young acolytes on their knees at the altar of reductionism.
THE ORBITAL TAUROCTONY
Sadly, the heavens will be a little less crowded now that the Taurus rocket failed to reach orbit for the NASA Orbiting Carbon Observatory. A grave disappointment to all on this, the first day of the ancient Roman month Mercedonius.
Interesting coincidence there. But as we will soon see, Mithraism has a lot to do with astronauts, only not the modern variety.
Speaking of NASA, they just released an amazing photo of the Orion Nebula taken by the Hubble telescope the day after the Oscars (and the same day of the reopening of the Baghdad museum). Orion, eh? Fascinating. Check it out here.
Yes Virginia, there is a major space race going on, and of a scale never before seen despite whatever is happening in the economy. So much so that a new venture capital firm called "eSpace: The Center for Space Entrepreneurship" has been created to help aspiring inventors get their proposals ready for NASA. You can check out their site here.
North Korea has announced that it is preparing to launch a rocket carrying a communications satellite. It did not give a date for the launch, but said it would mark a great step forward for the communist state.
"On Feb. 24th, there's going to be a quadruple transit of Saturn's moons," says Keith Noll of the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute. "Titan, Mimas, Dione and Enceladus will pass directly in front of Saturn and we'll see their silhouettes crossing Saturn's cloudtops—all four at the same time."
Transits like these are rare. "They only happen every 14 to 15 years when the orbits of Saturn's moons are nearly edge-on to Earth," says Noll. In 1995-96, the last time the geometry was right, Hubble photographed two (Titan and Tethys) and three (Mimas, Enceladus, Dione) moons transiting Saturn. This will be the first time the great telescope captures four.
Remember that just last week a major program to explore the moons of Jupiter and Saturn was announced. Echoing the florid language in that announcement, Noll tells us that "Hard science can be beautiful."
Italians are increasingly asking the question as to what is going on in their skies. Last year more UFO sightings were recorded in Italy than any year prior and this is catching the attention of the media. The Vatican has recently warmed up to the idea of life on other planets which begs the question as to whether Rome knows more about the topic than they are giving away.
Now an Air Force chief is conceding that aliens might be behind UFO incidents. In the last few weeks a number of high profile media outlets ran stories on UFOs. ‘055 News ‘noted that the Italian Air Force has recorded 38 sightings of UFOs since 2001. In 2008 alone three sightings of interest were seen by the Air Force or picked up on their radars.
NASA's performance since the Apollo programme has been "lacklustre" and the agency needs "serious reform or significant organisational overhaul," Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin and colleagues say in a draft paper released on Monday.
The draft paper, posted to the National Space Society blog, outlines a plan to replace George W Bush's 2004 Vision for Space Exploration, which called for returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020, with a plan that focuses on sending astronauts first to new targets, such as asteroids.
As long as we’re still pondering human origins, we may as well entertain the idea that our ancestor microbes came from Mars. And Jay Melosh, a planetary scientist from the University of Arizona in Tucson, is ready with a geologically plausible explanation.
Meteorites.
"Biological exchange between the planets of our solar system seem not only possible, but inevitable," because of meteorite exchanges between the planets, Melosh said. "Life could have originated on the planet Mars and then traveled to Earth."
Strange floating objects and eerie bright lights were among the record number of Unidentified Flying Objects that Canadians spotted in the sky in 2008, according to Winnipeg-based Ufology Research.
The volunteer group of a half-dozen researchers said Canadians made a total of 1,004 UFO sightings in 2008 — up more than 25 per cent from the previous year and the highest number in the 20 years Ufology has been keeping track.
"It's astonishing to me that we had such a dramatic increase," spokesman Chris Rutkowski said.
"It could be an indication that there's actually something up there seen in greater numbers than ever before, it could be that there are perhaps more military flights, it could be … that people are more able to access websites where they can report the UFOs."
*The Tauroctony is now believed to be a symbol of the passing of the Age of Taurus to the Age of Aries somewhere around 1875 BC. This puts lie to the argument put forward by Christian apologists that Mithraism was some late-period Roman invention. There is also mention of the Tauroctony in the Pyramid Texts from around 3000 BC. More on that in the future.
The Iraq Museum, which has stood at its present location since 1966, last year completed the renovation of its Islamic and Assyrian halls, thanks to a one-million-euro (1.1 million dollar) donation and technical help from Italy.
It is also displaying artefacts from the Sumerian and Babylonian eras, although only eight of its 26 halls have been opened in the initial phase. "Work in progress" signs stand outside the closed galleries.
The Babylon Gate at the Kodak Theatre - note Ashur, similar poses
US soldiers outside the Ishtar Gate reconstruction in Iraq
But there's another the Iraq project with a very interesting name in the works, as reported by News Daily:
"The Future of Babylon" project launched last month seeks to "map the current conditions of Babylon and develop a master plan for its conservation, study and tourism," the WMF says.
Officials say preserving Babylon, a relic of a time and place that gave birth to such milestones of civilization as agriculture, writing, codified law and the wheel, is crucial.
"It's extremely important. When people say this (region) is the cradle of civilization, that's certainly true of Babylon," Lisa Ackerman, WMF vice-president, told Reuters in a telephone interview. "It's a culture that had a profound impact on what we think of as modern civilization."
Oh yes, it surely did. Here is a quick sketch of the significance of the Babylon Gate aka the Ishtar Gate, which itself is a symbol of restoration:
King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon dedicated the great Ishtar Gate to the goddess Ishtar. It was the main entrance into Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar II performed elaborate building projects in Babylon around 604-562 BC. His goal was to beautify his capital. He restored the temple of Marduk, the chief god, and also built himself a magnificent palace with the famous Hanging Gardens, which was reported by the Greek historian Herodotus to have been one of the wonders of the world.- bible-history.com
So what we are seeing now is a restoration of a restoration of a restoration of a restoration. Just as Nebuchadnezzar restored the Gateway of the Gods, so too is Iraq restoring what was lost to them. (Remember that Iraq is presently the beneficiary of countless billions of US tax dollars as well).
The word "restoration" itself offers some clues. From dictionary.com, we have "restoration" defined as:
to bring back into existence, use, or the like; reestablish: to restore order.
to bring back to a former, original, or normal condition, as a building, statue, or painting.
to put back to a former place, or to a former position, rank, etc.: to restore the king to his throne.
In essence, restoration means the reversal of the effects of time.
We saw the themes of restoration in Dark City, with John Murdoch ("Oannes Marduk"), who in effect restored the oceans (identified with Oannes) and the Sun (identified with Marduk) to the abducted humans of the prison planet who were being experimented upon by an alien race. Note that Marduk and Ishtar are the equivalents of Horus and Hathor in the Babylonian religion.
John Murdoch is both Osiris and Horus as he enters the gateway of the gods (which no human was permitted to go through) and meets Jennifer Connelly rising from the surf like Aphrodite. The aliens called her "Emma," but her new name is Anna.
So what does this have to do with anything, you might ask. Well, although Slumdog Millionaire got the lion's share of the awards Sunday night, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button did quite nicely for itself. The two make an interesting pair. Slumdog is about the use of technology to restore a relationship and find one's destiny. Benjamin Button is about the reversal of time.
The two themes are not unrelated here on The Secret Sun.
I'm getting a damn laptop. I had the brilliant idea to live-blog the Oscars even though my TV and my computer are in separate parts of the house. Well, even so it was a blast for all involved and I got some much-needed exercise. If you haven't already, please check the Oscar Blog at The Solar Satellite- there's a ton of information on hand from several guests and myself.
One of the breakthrough posts for this blog was the Oscar/Babylon Gate piece, and sure enough we saw the Gate in full view during the red carpet preshow. Or at least with certain people. We saw the Gate with Penelope Cruz, who went on to win Best Supporting Actress...
And also with Ka-Hathor-Te Winslet, who won for The Reader. Was this some kind of signal to us, or just a coincidence? I don't recall seeing it with other interviewees. Whatever.
I won't even try to piece together all of the little symbols and synchs into a coherent narrative, at least not yet. In truth, we're going to be seeing so much more of them as we proceed into this year, that chasing them all will become nearly impossible. Though I must say, hearing Steve Martin and Tina Fey bust out some astronaut theology was pretty interesting.
The night belonged to Danny Boyle and Slumdog Millionaire (which stars the impossibly beautiful Freida Pinto). In the endless rising of Sirius, many in the Synchrosphere have noted that the film syncs quite nicely with the Dog Star, and our "mutt" President. Certainly the incredible success of the film is not unrelated to this emerging archetype. Note the point-in-circle pedestal motif we saw in Denver.
The triumph of Slumdog is not only fascinating for the Sirius meme. Danny Boyle directed a film in 2007 called Sunshine, in which a bunch of Calvin Klein underwear models astronauts travel through space in an attempt to reignite the Sun using a nuclear reactor. It's one of those films whose commercial potential seems questionable, but whose symbolic/ritual value is limitless.
And sure enough, he went from that little-seen movie to Slumdog Millionaire. Maybe, certain sun worshippers were grateful for this little resurrection. After Boyle won for Best Director we flashed to the Renaissance Hotel logo. Interesting.
Other memes stood out- there was a overabundance of women in red, reminding us of the "Lady in Red" from The Matrix and the Scarlet Woman from Revelations 17. Beyonce Knowles again played the Lady in Red in an excruciating medley of show tunes that had me wondering if this was the Oscars or the Tonys. At the end, Wolverine shouted out "musicals are back!" Please God, no.
We talked recently about the masculinization of women and sure enough we saw it in the big production number. Men in top hats, bow ties and canes were joined by women in top hats, bow ties and canes. The troupe was composed of perfomers from High School Musical and Mamma Mia!, and included the adorable Vanessa Hudgens and Mr. 17 himself, Zac Efron.
Of course, the descending goddess motif has been in the mix here lately with Rihanna and Leona Lewis, but with male dancers reminding of Freemasons with their top hats, the descending goddesses brought me back to the Stairway to Sirius icon. How's about you?
Finally, Mr. Horus J. Hancock hosted a bunch of presentations for SFX awards. Personally, I would have chosen him over Hugh JackDeMolayMan for host. He seemed a lot more natural and comfortable- and intelligible. Jackman's hyperventilating and Aussie brogue made him indecipherable at times. At other times, he disappeared into the background. Totally awesome at Wolverine, not so awesome at hosting- or singing.
Mr. Hancock wore a strange lapel pin of a cross crosslet, an obscure icon that most people have forgotten. Most people except me, since the crosslet is used in the Knowles family's coat of arms.
So aside from that little personal synch and Beyonce Knowles and Christopher Nolan, I was almost starting to wonder if Smith and the Oscar producers were screwing around to get back at me for the Babylon Gate thing and the Hancock stuff. But when you gaze into the Synch, the Synch often winks back at you.
Now, if you all will excuse me, I need a bit of rest.
UPDATE: Be sure to check out Loren Coleman's site for some more Oscar analysis, including the strange 007 synchs throughout the night.
UPDATE II: At around 2130 EST, we saw Ben Stiller and Natalie ("birth") Portman present. Stiller was riffing on Joaquin Phoenix's meltdown routine and it was another award for Slumdog. Right after this award, we had a MasterCard ad where a Boston Terrier sojourns across the country back to his family (see ads here). MasterCard's logo is a dual, conjoined sun. Strangey reminds us that Portman's next film is 17 Pictures of Isabel. ("Isis-Ba'al") So we have the Phoenix, the Dogstar, the dual sun, birth, Isis and 17 all in the space of a few minutes in the middle of the broadcast. Interesting.
UPDATE III: Speaking of 17, the add for Knowing came on at 2017 EST during the broadcast. And then there's this juxtaposition over at iMDB...
Do you see a descending UFO and Heavenly Beam? No? Do those stars remind you of the Rider-Waite Star trump? No? Well, then maybe you should get over to the Solar Satellite, where I'll be blogging the Oscars tonight. Hope to see you there.
Only Secret Sun readers could appreciate the full significance of this video clip. This is from Valentine's Day, which synchs quite nicely with the androgyny memes in Eternal Sunshine. Mason's green color scheme puts the icing on the cake.
Well, we've seen a lot of Martin Landau (John the Baptist, X-Files, Ed Wood) recently, and we've also seen an avalanche of space-based stories in the press. So, naturally, that got me thinking about Space: 1999, a British Star Trek knockoff which Landau starred in with fellow Mission: Impossible alum Barbara Bain.* Par for the course, Space: 1999 premiered in the US on October 17, 1975.
The underlying storyline of Space: 1999 centered on the plight of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha following a calamity on 13 September 1999.A huge nuclear waste dump on the far side of the Moon detonates in a massive thermonuclear explosion...(which) causes the Moon to be sent hurtling out of Earth's orbit and into deep space at colossal speed, stranding the 311 crew members, in effect becoming the "spaceship" on which the protagonists travel...
Of course if you take away two days and add two years to that date, the premise of Space:1999 takes on a much higher resonance.
Space:1999 was created Gerry Anderson and his wife Sylvia. We've looked Anderson in relation to The Thunderbirds, the disturbingly-surreal 60s puppetoon that not only foreshadowed 9/11, it also did the old Egypt/aliens routine as well. But Reader PJ also reminded us that Anderson also created The Terrahawks,which resonates one of the titles of the President Obam opus.
The credit sequence for the second season of Space:1999 also features the shape-shifting alien Maya, who appeared on the second season of the show. Of course, Maya is the Buddhist term for "illusion," but was also the name of King Tut's treasurer.
The three forms we see Maya take in the credits are of a dog (corresponding to Sirius), a hawk (corresponding to Horus), and a Tiger (corresponding to Sekhmet). †
Maya was played by Catherine Schell (aka Ka-Hathor-Ein Shell), who was born into the aristocracy of what was once Austria-Hungary, which was ruled by the Hapsburg-Lorraine Dynasty. Read this fascinating passage from her biography:
Born in Budapest, Hungary, her true name is Katherina Freiin Schell von Bauschlott, the scion of a once wealthy German patrician family. Her father, the Baron Paul Schell von Bauschlott, was a well-respected diplomat until the Nazis confiscated their estates during WWII, while her mother was Countess Katharina Maria Etelka Georgina Elisabeth Teleki de Szék. Her family was living in poverty until 1948 when they sought asylum in Vienna and Salzburg as the communist regime began to take hold in Hungary.
Like Heidi Klum, Schell is of German extraction. Like the Hearsts, she is of an aristocratic background.
33rd Degree Scottish Rite Mason Manly P. Hall believed that the "double-headed eagle, or Phoenix, foreshadows the ultimate androgynous state of the human creature." So yet again we see the rebirth and androgyny memes that run all throughout all of this.
Maya even shape-shifted into a Reptilian!
In that light, note that Maya takes on both male and female forms. Although I've not seen this acknowledged, it seems possible that Goth goddess Siouxsie (who has taken on both male and female lovers) was influenced by Maya's distinctive look.
Bringing it all back to first principles, Siouxsie explored alien and cosmic themes with her former duo with Budgie, The Creatures (particularly on the Boomerang** album). The Creatures also released an album released an album called Anima Animus, based on the Jungian concept of unconscious androgyny (Tool did the same three years prior with AEnima, relased 9/17/96).
So what does all of this mean? Well, it gets to the core of what this blog is about. The Secret Sun is ultimately about the power of symbols and archetypes to break out of the world of Forms and form a latticework of connections in the world in which we live. These particular connections simply point to a microcosm of a greater state, which Jung and others call Numinosity, which essentially describes the psychic connection of the individual to the Transcendent.
Archetypes, so far as we can observe and experience them at all, manifest themselves only through their ability to organize images and ideas, and this will always be an unconscious process which cannot be detected until afterward.
UPDATE
Well, no sooner did this lunar-themed post go up than did the DC police announce a suspect in the 2001 slaying of Congressional internChandra Levy, who had a relationship with US Rep Gary Condit of Ceres, CA. (kudos to Loren Coleman for the tip)
Ceres is the Roman name of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture whose daughter was taken to the Underworld.
Exactly two years later, Bonesman Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln for the Mission Accomplished fiasco.
UPDATE 2005 EST: This is odd, Strangey points out that CNN is reporting that previous suspect Ingmar Guandique will be charged. Interesting name for an El Salvadoran, derived from Yngvi, a title for Freyr, the Norse equivalent of Osiris.
The most famous Ingmar was Ingmar Bergman, who directed the 1960 film Jungfrukällan (Virgin Spring) about a father who brutally avenges the murder of his daughter in a forest. The murdered daughter was played by Birgitta Pettersson born 1/7/39.
Jungfrukällan was remade by Wes Craven as Last House on the Left(in which a girl is murdered on her 17th birthday), which itself is being remade and released on 3/13/09, the same day as Race to Witch Mountain.
NOTES
†The dog, the cat and the hawk are also represented in a popular votive statue that features Horus, Anubis and Sekhmet.
*Downard saw some significance in the name "Baine" in KingKill 33. See if you can figure it out. ** Boomerang was released 11/6/89 - 11+6 and 8+9 both equal 17. Anima Animus was released 2/15/99 2+15=17. The Creatures first album feast made it to number 17 in the UK album charts.The Creatures last single, "Godzilla," was released 10/13/03. 10+1+3+0+3=17.
Abstract: Two Seen from Space posts in five days? Science fiction is the new reality...
Reaction Engines Ltd. is yet another of the constellation of corporations popping up seemingly out of nowhere and producing science fiction spacecraft. They've developed the Skylon (no, not Cylon) yet another of the new vehicles meant to shuttle people back and forth from orbit. Read this:
"The Holy Grail to transform the economics of getting into space is to use a truly reusable spaceplane capable of taking off from an airport and climbing directly into space, delivering its satellite payload and automatically returning safely to Earth,” said Alan Bond, Managing Director of Reaction Engines.
Fascinating language. These are heady days for the space industry, and the libidos seem to running wild. I use "libido" in the Jungian sense, but I can't help but look at all of this hardware with anything but a Freudian eye. (By the way, Reaction Engines also makes the SATAN engine).
Seventeen
Interesting conjunction of articles here from the Beeb science section. Sheesh, I thought there was a global depression on, and yet we are seeing billions spent on space programs of marginal benefit to ordinary people. What's the big rush?
The ESA is building a "space truck" to supply the ISiS, and we looked earlier at the massive Jupiter/Saturn programs going on. I can't ask it enough- why is this so compelling to our governments all of a sudden? It's too bad Arthur C. Clarke is no longer with us. Maybe he knew.
The visual connection to the Danton discovery is fascinating, tying into the memes of new discovery pertaining to water, which is driving the Jovian satellite program. And there's this little factoid, telling us that the Danton "was attacked by Germany's U-64 submarine at 1317 on 18 March, 1917." Hmmm...
But it's worth taking a second look at that gas giant article, since there is some unexpectedly florid language being thrown around. The very idea of visiting these lunar systems has clearly excited the libidos of some of these scientists as well:
On the subject of the Galilean satellites, Dr Blanc added: "They are fascinating. They are coupled; they are in resonance.
"While Ganymede is doing one turn around Jupiter, Europa is doing two turns; and Io is doing four orbits. And in this motion they keep eccentricity; they excite each other.And there is a lot of tidal interaction which heats the internal bodies of those satellites."
But the planetary scientist, who is a principal investigator on the Cassini-Huygens mission to the Saturnian system, added: "My heart belongs to Titan."
To Jung, libido was psychic energy. To Freud it was sexual energy. Six of one, half-dozen of the other. Libido is life. Life is energy, period. In this light, I recommend that everyone head over to The Stygian Port to read Violator's new magnum opus on the symbolism of sacred sexuality, "Opening the Stargate."
If we are hearing about all of these projects now, that means that they have been in development for a very long time. NASA reportedly operates on a $17 billion dollar budget (surprise, surprise) but I can't imagine that covers all of the hardware we are seeing going up.
Here's an interesting question for you to consider: what if our mammoth "defense" budgets haven't really all been spent on armaments but on what we are seeing unfold today? And who would know the difference?
UPDATE: Yahoo, of course.
UPDATE II: Talk about pushing a meme- Lynnertic points us to this story, showing the cosmic copulation of the Sun and Earth...
On Feb. 10 (JST), the lunar explorer "KAGUYA" successfully took an image of the moment when the Earth looked like a diamond ring by its onboard high definition camera. The moment came when a penumbral lunar eclipse occurred and the view of the Sun from the KAGUYA was mostly covered by the Earth, thus the earth looked like a diamond ring. This is the first time that this phenomenon was shot from the Moon.
UPDATE III:Speaking of "seen from space," StrangeEye caught this ad- I'm speechless:
Note that it opens on the ESB obelisk and then goes to its counterpart the Eiffel Tower. "Hugh Jackman" reminds me of Hugh De Payens and Jacques De Molay, the first and last Grand Masters of the Knights Templar.
Continuing the magazine meme, I stumbled on a site that I'm not sure if I didn't hallucinate into existence, a la The Lathe of Heaven.
I'm probably a lot older than a lot of you guys, so bear with me if my 70s nostalgia bores you. But if you want to know where all the Secret Sun magic comes from, it comes from being a nearly-feral latchkey kid at a time when the local newsstand was like a Renaissance mystery school, filled with texts on UFOs, Astrology, witchcraft, conspiracy theory and lots and lots of sex. And that was just the comic books!
BadMags.com is a tribute to that era and though it's primarily porn-oriented, it's an awesome time capsule of a time when high weirdness was dripping into the mainstream via bottom-drawer sleaze magazines that bored kids hungry for kicks gobbled up like Fritos. A caveat though, BadMags.com is so NSFW it's not even funny.
So much so that I'll just put up some of the great Myron Fass alien mags. These might be the greatest magazine headlines in human history, my favorite being "Beware: Polyester Fabrics are driving you insane!"Bill Deagle is a piker compared to these old classics.
Now do you understand?
I've mentioned this before, but my local temple of initiation- where I got all my forbidden texts as well as my sugar fixes- was called "Valles' News."
Included are the RQ-3 Darkstar (Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet), the U2, the SR-71 Blackbird (17 reversed), P-791 (=17) which had its inaugural flight in Palmdale ("Phoenix Valley"), Calif., F-117A Nighthawk (Size: 107 ft long; 56-ft wingspan) and the B-2 Spirit (Size: 69 ft long; 172-ft wingspan).
So much traffic above our heads, and so much interesting symbolism floating around in our heads.
UPDATE II: Lynnertic found this interesting press release, dated February 17, 2009, stating "NASA MISSION TO SEEK WATER ICE ON MOON HEADS TO FLORIDA FOR LAUNCH":
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, known as LCROSS, is enroute from Northrop Grumman's facility in Redondo Beach, Calif., to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in preparation for a spring launch.
"LCROSS." Doubly fascinating.
UPDATE III: How the hell did I miss this? NASA's Phoenix lander may have captured the first images of liquid water on Mars - droplets that apparently splashed onto the spacecraft's leg during landing, according to some members of the Phoenix team. UPDATE IV: StrangeEye reports on Michelle Obama and the Festival of Min.
USNews & World Report whips up some fresh Masonic recruitment propaganda under the dodge of a "Mysteries of History" collectors edition. Ostensibly, it's a look at secret societies throughout history, but the Freemasons get the lion's share of the page-count (and the front and back cover, as well).
With only the slightest veneer of objectivity, Secret Societies includes some very helpful primers for prospective Freemies, including a two-page spread explaining all of the symbols used in the tracing boards. There are also articles on some of the other branches of the Masonic network, including the Templars, Assassins, Rosicrucians, Illuminati, Opus Dei, Scientologists and Skull and Bones, but any controversies concerning the Freemies are glossed over and generally dismissed as the province of cranks. There are some articles on cults and the like, but most of what's covered is old hat in the extreme.
In short, Secret Societies is strictly Snoozeville, Sammy.
Less so is this cover of German GQ, featuring a naked (and obviously uncomfortable) Heidi Klum wearing a giant red Q as a crown. This repeats the motif from the poster for 17 Again, seeing that Q is the 17th letter of alphabet. Note the asterisk (Sirius) and red plus signs resonating Templar crosses.
Thinking about secret societies and sexy socialites reminded me of Patty Hearst, the publishing heiress who was kidnapped by some absurd agent-provocateur operation/political cult called the Symbionese Liberation Army in the early 70s and morphed into the gun-totin' bank robber known as "Tania."
Even as a kid I got "Tania" mixed up with Madame Hydra, and not just because of the logos. The whole thing just gave off that vibe (maybe whoever was [allegedly] running the SLA op was a big Steranko fan). The Madame was a villian in Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, Marvel's answer to the James Bond craze of the 60s. She was leader of HYDRA, one of Jack Kirby's many super-secret societies.
It's interesting to note that one of the banks the SLA knocked off was a Crocker branch, which ties us back to the recent Karen Carpenter/Klaatu extravaganza. Patty was also lucky enough to escape a siege that shut the SLA down for good:
The next day, May 17th, 1974, a two-hour gun battle between the SLA and the LA police ignited a fire that fatally trapped six "soldiers" in their cramped East 54th Street hideout. Nine thousand rounds were fired when 500 cops descended on the house, and the drama was televised, similar to the Waco fiasco in which the David Koresh cult would be killed two decades later.
Hearst was then "deprogrammed" and went back to being a socialite (she also breeds French Bulldogs) and is living happily ever after. Today, Patty's doe-eyed daughter Lydia has joined Heidi Klum in the supermodel universe. Which brings us to our next magazine cover...
In which Lydia appears as a blonde Bond girl on the cover of GQ with the chav Bond, Daniel Craig. 007 was also the codename of master occultist John Dee when in the service of the first Queen Elizabeth.
Like Heidi, Lydia has done her own nude cover, in which she's trussed up in some bizarre rhinestone-studded bondage apparatus. Anyone familiar with her mother's story will find this image bizarre (to say the least) seeing that she was reportedly bound and gagged for several days after her abduction by Cinque and the SLA. Note the "Cin" in cinema while "ema" is almost invisible. Interesting.
We all know that the fashion industry is sociopathic and misogynistic, but why would Lydia consent to such an image, in light of her mother's ordeal?
As F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, "The rich are different."
Postscript: Well, you gotta love Synchronicity. I was just poking around the New York Post website and what do I see but some game feature called "Scandalous Socialites" with a video of Lydia Hearst...
UPDATE: Since I wrote this before I saw the SpongeBob Masonic Fiesta, I'm happy to note what David reminded us of- that the Hydra logo is actually a Cephalopod.
UPDATE II: Speaking of the damned rites of Chthulu, here's this news item:
HARTFORD, Conn. — Geronimo's descendants have sued Skull and Bones _ the secret society at Yale University linked to presidents and other powerful figures _ claiming that its members stole the remains of the legendary Apache leader decades ago and have kept them ever since.
Since there is so much going on these days, I've started a sister blog called The Solar Satellite. This blog will give The Secret Sun a little breathing room and keep popular posts above the fold as to not discourage conversation (or burn us all out). The Solar Satellite will feature in-depth articles and data dumps, but also some of the lighter fare that the Secret Sun had before the elections.
But first, the heavy stuff. We'll kick it off with a look at Phi Beta Kappa, which some researchers have called "The American Illuminati." Be sure to click the links- there is a lot of information to be processed.
NOTE: The Memestream post will be back up at Midnight. I apologize for the error.
UPDATE II: We've talked so much about Osiris but it's important to remember that 17 is also linked to Aquarius in the Tarot, in that the 17th Trump pictures the water-bearer. Derek Gilbert notes that there was a conjunction of Mars and Jupiter in Aquarius yesterday. Remember also that Aquarius is actually Ganymede, Jupiter's male lover. In in fact there is a belief that this conjunction was the start of the Age of Aquarius, that would go a long way in explaining what I see as the dominant memes of our future- androgyny (particularly the masculinization of women) and militaristic mysticism. Much more on that in the weeks to come.
UPDATE III: Well, will wonders never cease? This story went up today on the Beeb: "Jupiter in space agencies' sights." There's an interview with Michel Blanc included. How long is it? 5 minutes and 17 seconds, of course! Guess which Jovian moon they picture?
Ganymede.
UPDATE IV: Let's take another look at that Jupiter story timecode, 05:17. 17 is the Star (Aquarius) trump in the Tarot and 5 is the Heirophant. But it's known by another name, according to the wiki:
Often referred to in older decks as "The Pope", and occasionally as "Jupiter."
“On the Great Seal of the United States, which is found on the dollar bill, they included these words in Latin: ‘novus ordo seclorum’ – ‘a new order for the centuries. Imagine their vision. They were certain of the success of our new nation, not just for years, or for decades, but for centuries.
This is not the first time Pelosi has invoked the "New Order" phrase. Here is it at her inauguration as Speaker in 2007.
Our founders envisioned a new America driven by optimism, opportunity, and strength. So confident were they in the America they were advancing, they put on the seal, the great seal of the United States, 'novus ordo seclorum' -- a new order for the centuries.
I wonder if Pelosi also met with the new Templar Grand Master. Does he have an office yet?
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for a new world order based on new ideas, saying the era of tyranny has come to a dead-end.
In an exclusive interview with Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), Ahmadinejad noted that it is time to propose new ideologies for running the world.
He said the time of tyrannical regimes is over and arrogant powers can no longer proceed with business as usual since their capitalism-based economies are collapsing.
SpongeBob wants to attend a secret society when he learns that Squidward is a member. However, it's only for octopi. Despite this, SpongeBob is determined to get in and goes to drastic measures to do so. -TV.com
UPDATE: The missus found another Masonic SpongeBob episode here.
UPDATE: From the Wiki:
The series is set in the Pacific Ocean, in the fictional city of Bikini Bottom and on the surrounding lagoon floor. The pilot episode first aired in the United States on Nickelodeon after the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards on May 1, 1999. The "official" series premiere followed on July 17, 1999, with the second episode, "Bubblestand/Ripped Pants."
From the wiki on 17: "Seventeen is the 7th prime number. The next prime is nineteen, with which it forms a twin prime. 17 is the sum of the first four primes."
UPDATE II: Speaking of Wiki, this was on the front page today:
NOTE: The Memestream post will be back up later. I didn't mean to post it after the wild day we had.
UPDATE: Diederick reminds us of the SpongeBob movie, Atlantis Squarepantis, which features none other than David Bowie as Lord Royal Highness. In this clip, Squidward initiates SpongeBob and Patrick into the mysteries of Atlantis in what looks like a Masonic lodge.
Spongebob & Patrick: By the all seeing eye, ye are worthy. We are not. Squidward: What are you two idiots doing? Patrick: Secret ritual. Spongebob: To inaugurate you as president. Squidward: Me? President of Bikini Bottom? I knew the people would come to their senses. Patrick: No, silly. Not the president of Bikini Bottom. Even better. Squidward: Better? Spongebob: You're the president of 'The Secret Royal Order of the Good Neighbor Lodge'.
Don't you think the blue and gold chairs go well with the rug?
Today is February 17th and today Barack Obama will be in Denver signing the "Stimulus Package" into law. He's chosen a very strange venue to do so:
The bill-signing, an unusual event outside of Washington, will be Tuesday at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science in City Park... "This is like a dream," said George Sparks, director of the museum."- Denver Post
Funny, neither Sparks nor the Secret Service know why the museum was selected. Not to worry; while Obama is at the museum perhaps he'll make time to check out these exhibits:
Ancient Egyptian religion and NAZCA NASA, eh? How odd. Where have we seen that combo before? Here's a map to the museum if you'd like to visit there on your summer vacation. If you're coming from the west, just turn on to the Denver City Park driveway from 17th Ave. The museum is on 2001 Colorado Blvd. Take some time to check out the Denver Airport while you're there.
UPDATE II: Always the Sun, Dept.- Several readers informed me that the media is reporting that this site was chosen for its rooftop solar array. I guess getting power from the Sun is part of the "Green" agenda (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
UPDATE III: Loren Coleman brings some more museumy weirdness to The Copycat Effect.
UPDATE IV: Don't forget the Denver flag, or the seal...
UPDATE V: For an excellent analysis of the Astrotheological origins of 17, readthis excerpt from Echoes of the Ancient Skies: The Astronomy of Lost Civilizations.
The company, founded in 2007, currently has 175 employees. Without the stimulus, Noronha said, AVA Solar is on track to create 420 new jobs by the end of this year.
AVA Solar currently operates on $175 million in U.S.-based private venture capital. In 2007 the company also received $3 million in seed money from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The target for transition to micro USB -- which is smaller than the more commonly used mini USB connector but has already been adopted in a few handsets, including the BlackBerry Storm -- is to have "the majority of all new mobile phone models" supporting the new connector by January 1, 2012. As well, the chargers are set to be designed to use half as much power while operating on standby.
WASHINGTON — Defense and congressional officials say President Barack Obama has approved an increase in U.S. forces for the flagging war in Afghanistan. The Obama administration is expected to announce on Tuesday or Wednesday that it will send one additional Army brigade and an unknown number of Marines to Afghanistan this spring. One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the total is about 17,000 troops.
Wow, quite a day for coincidences, isn't it?
UPDATE XI: And the hits just keep a-comin'! Check out the comments section for more synchitude.
UPDATE XII: On this date in 1965 JPL's Ranger 8 lunar probe was sent to scout the landing site for Apollo 11. Time of launch? 17:05:00 UTC. Perhaps to commemorate the 365th anniversary of the death of Giordano Bruno?
"This mission has been designed very carefully, such that a null result is as important as finding planets," said Michael Bicay, director of science at the US space agency's Ames Research Center in California. Bicay was speaking at the Astrotech Space Operations plant in Titusville, Florida, where the telescope, named Kepler, is being prepared for launch.
Ames again. Check out the story's time-stamp: 17:47 GMT, Tuesday, 17 February 2009. Astrotech is in an interesting neighborhood:
Take Grissom Parkway to White Drive to Chaffe Drive to Shepherd Drive.
DETROIT – General Motors Corp., presenting a dire outlook for the future, said Tuesday it may need $30 billion in total government financing to weather the economic downturn and would cut 47,000 jobs worldwide and shutter five more U.S. factories in a massive restructuring plan.
The automaker is already surviving on $13.4 billion in federal loans and said in a plan submitted to the Treasury Department that it would seek an additional $16.6 billion if economic conditions worsen, but it could achieve profitability in two years and fully repay its loans by 2017.
2017. 47-30=17. 13+4=17. Round 16.6 to the nearest natural number and you get?
UPDATE XVI: Apropos of absolutely nothing, it was revealed today that actor Terrance Howard was arrested for domestic abuse 8 years ago. The date? 9/17/01. His birthday? March 11.
And please remember to check the comments for much, much more.
UPDATE XVII: Derek Gilbert checks in with two crucial tidbits:
Today is a rare exact conjunction of Jupiter and Mars in Aquarius, the first since 1973. The next one won’t be for another 24 years. (Astrologers have already declared that we’ve now officially entered the Age of Aquarius.)
At exactly 3:17 Eastern, President Obama, new protagonist of the Camelot mythos, made reference to John F. Kennedy. March 17th — 3/17 — is the traditional date of Osiris’ death. JFK is an analog of Osiris, the “dying god”.
NASA has been involved in searching for extra-terrestrial life along numerous avenues for decades, including the Viking mission to Mars in the 1970s and its recent missions to the red planet which have searched for signs of habitability there. NASA also funds an Astrobiology Institute, which partners with hundreds of researchers world-wide who study of the origins, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.
That's fascinating. What do they know that they aren't telling us?
Dr Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Science said many of these worlds could be inhabited by simple lifeforms. But, based on the limited numbers of planets found so far, Dr Boss has estimated that each Sun-like star has on average one "Earth-like" planet.
"Not only are they probably habitable but they probably are also going to be inhabited," Dr Boss told BBC News. "But I think that most likely the nearby 'Earths' are going to be inhabited with things which are perhaps more common to what Earth was like three or four billion years ago." That means bacterial lifeforms. - BBC
He sounds very confident about that. But who's going to be seeding those lifeforms on these planets?
ITEM: Singularity=Disclosure Dept.- Damn, if that S don't look like a "crucified serpent."
SU's logo also kind of made me think of this quote:
He was robed from head to foot in blue and gold, and around his forehead was coiled a snake of precious metal, set with jewelled eyes that gave out flashes of light.
ITEM: Cultural Conditioning Dept.- Reader Ned Sonntag gave me the heads-up on this news story:
The present looks bleak for the fashion industry, so designers at Fashion Week have a solution: the future. Space-age materials and clothes with jutting hips and shoulders made a Jetsons-like splash on Saturday at New York Fashion Week.
Even Barbie, celebrating her 50th birthday, got in on the act. A fashion show with 50 designs inspired by the doll closed with a series of futuristic dresses including a white Calvin Klein dress with cut-out shoulders. Heidi Klum sat in the front row, looking a bit like the plastic muse. - Salon
ITEM: Yahoo reports on the new Aptera 2e, a "Space Age" vehicle that "looks to change the world, three wheels at a time." And it weighs how much? Yes, 1700 pounds. There are those numbers again.
ITEM: Hmm.... "North Korea has asserted its right to a "space programme"- BBC
ITEM: From Heavens-Above.com
At 16:56 UTC on Feb. 10th, Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 collided over northern Siberia. Many hundreds of pieces of debris are expected to result, and many are already being tracked.
33, 22, 51 (3x17). Fascinating numbers there. If you want to get really crazy with the numbers, the timecode is 16:56 UTC. 1+6=7 and 5+6=11. 7x11=77, which is Iridium's atomic number. Could someone be trying to tell us something? (btw, 7 divded by 11 is .0636363636363).
As inquiries began, naval sources said it was a millions-to-one unlucky chance both subs were in the same patch of sea. Warships have sonar gear which locates submarines by sound waves.
What are the odds of two unthinkable collisions of ultra-high tech vehicles within a week? One might even suspect that this hardware is being deliberately targeted (there was also a near-collision between an RAF plane and another aircraft in York recently). For those of us who suspect players in human affairs as yet unknown, this lends weight to the argument that perhaps we are moving towards an event that will change the world as we know it forever.
UPDATE: Ed mentioned the Texas fireball story in the comments and I had considered putting it in originally. But I really don't know what to make of it. There's seems to be an effort to sow confusion about its origins, which seems a little dodgy to me. You guys have probably seen it by now- let me know what you think of it.
From the all-time classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space- a UFO (actually a hubcap) zooms by the old Mocambo nightclub on the Sunset Strip. Who's the headliner? Eartha Kitt.
What are the odds?
UPDATE: Or the odds of this- Plan 9 was Bela Lugosi's last movie. He was replaced by a guy who held a cape in front of his face the whole movie. The actor's name? Tom Mason ("Masonic Twin"). And Jason reminds us that Lugosi was brilliantly portrayed by Martin "Oannes" Landau in the must-see biopic, Ed Wood.
UPDATE II: Speaking of cat-woman divas, here's the same conjunction from the Olympics that we see in the Rihanna video- the young diva Leona Lewis on a pedestal and the Crowleyean rocker Jimmy Page. As much as I love Pagey and the mighty Zep, I must ask myself- what the hell does this have to do with the Olympics? Note the green sun motif and the obigatory checkerboard (yawn) at the beginning of the video. My question is this- why did the Brits chose to present themselves as street rowdies to the world?
"Whole Lotta Love" was the song that Jeff Buckley was singing when he went down to the Sirens in Memphis. Cheers to Suky for the link. UPDATE III: Oh boy- "Rihanna row 'sparked by Chris Brown flirting with Leona Lewis'"
Fascinating- not only is Rihanna encased in an illuminated pyramid for this superior rock arrangement of "Umbrella" she's also dressed as Isis. Not the obvious Egyptian version, but the veiled Isis who conquered the Roman Empire. Note how she descends to stage level, much like an Elizabethan deux ex machina.
This Black Madonna has been in the news concerning her alleged beating at the hand's of Chris (Ka-Horus) Brown. Note that her injuries were mainly on her face (ie., her head). From the Encylopedia of Myths:
When Horus became a young man, he fought his uncle Set. But Isis took pity on Set and allowed him to escape. Angry at his mother, Horus cut off her head. Thoth, the god of magic and wisdom, changed the severed head into a cow's head and reattached it to Isis's body. Some ancient statues and paintings of the goddess show her with a cow's head, and she is often linked to the goddess Hathor.
UPDATE: It seems this version of "Umbrellas" is a bit of a mash-up with this song by British new wave revivalists The Klaxons. And as a reader informs us, The Klaxons are big fans of wicked ol' Uncle Al, and incorporate some of his writings into their lyrics.
UPDATE II: Asa the Comic makes You Tube's front page with his riffs on the Chris Brown/Rihanna fiasco.
UPDATE III: Rihanna's name is a variation on "Rhiannon." From the wiki:
In the Mabinogion of Welsh mythology Rhiannon is the horse goddess reminiscent of Epona from Gaulish religion. Rhiannon was a daughter of Hefeydd the Old. She was married to Pwyll, and later, Manawydan.
From the wiki on the Fleetwood Mac song of the same name (released almost exactly 33 years before the Chris Brown incident):
Nicks discovered Rhiannon through a novel called Triad, by Mary Leader. The novel is about a woman named Branwen, who is possessed by another woman named Rhiannon. There is mention of the Welsh myth of Rhiannon in the novel, but the characters in the novel bear little resemblance to their mythological namesakes.
After writing the song, Nicks learned that Rhiannon was a Welsh goddess, and was amazed that the haunting song lyrics applied to the Welsh Rhiannon as well....
Nicks avoided wearing black clothing for "about two years" in an effort to distance herself from the witchcraft and dark arts associations surrounding her as a result of the lyrics to "Rhiannon" giving fans the wrong impression.
UPDATE IV: You gotta love the Collective Unconscious. Some YouTube goofball did a parody of Rihanna's "Take a Bow" called "Don't Have a Cow."
UPDATE V: RihannIsis makes Yahoo's front page.
UPDATE VI: Chris Brown is top story on CNN.com. Did you know this incident took place near Hancock Park?
UPDATE VIII: Reader Andy Christ points out three lights bearing a strange resemblance to Orion's Belt appeared in the window behind Obama during his speech at the NBA All-Star Game. John Legend performed a song entitled "If You're Out There" which has no obvious weirdness in the lyrical content, but he did perform a little cosmic ditty called "So High" at the 2006 game. Sample verse:
Maybe later we can go up to the moon Or sail among the stars before the night is through And when morning comes we'll see the sun is not so far And we can't get much closer to God than where we are
Abstract: Behind the current financial crisis may be a secret war, in which symbols are a potent weapon. Take nothing at face value. The smallest details have a habit of unlocking some very big doors...
Is it just me or does it seem as if there is a massive and well-coordinated propaganda war being waged on the entire global banking system? Even The New York Times is calling the biggest banks "Dead Men Walking," and Arianna Huffington is screaming that the banks are "zombies" that should be "killed off." And we just saw the nation's top bankers getting called in for a spanking in Congress. Given this general anti-banker media blitz, it's pretty clear who's being set up to take the fall for the economic downturn.
Into all of this finger-pointing comes The International, an anti-bank propaganda film starring King Arthur himself, Clive Owen. I know that the bank is based on the BCCI, but I'm not interested in the plot per se, I'm interested in its release date.
Whether true or not, the subliminal message being sent seems to be that the Templars are back. Which is fascinating at this point in time, seeing how they were the creators of the modern banking system in Europe:
The chief legacy of the Templars was the banking system that they developed. In addition to making loans to individuals and governments, the Templars established complex systems for the transportation of wealth to and from the Holy Land...The Templars' banking system became the foundation for the banking systems developed by merchants during the Renaissance.
Though the Knights were not revived as a religious institution after their dissolution, the order was later incorporated into the York rite of the Masonic order.
What it all means is beyond me, but the symbolism and the timing of it all is fascinating. And that's what The Secret Sun is all about.
It's also about aliens. The Vatican has become surprisingly interested in aliens over the past decade, and several high-ranking officials there have become virtual ET cheerleaders since... well, since around the time that they "absolved" the Templars.
And shockingly, a Vatican astronomer is taking the pro side against a NAZCA NASA astrobiologist at a debate on aliens next week:
The Vatican is to go head to head with Nasa over the possibility of life existing anywhere else in the Universe except Earth.
The discussion is actually likely to be rather convivial when Lynn Rothschild, astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center, debates the topic with the Vatican Observatory's director emeritus George Coyne at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco next week. The chat is happening under the florid banner of Are We Alone? The Dance of the Fertile Universe.- The Register
How fascinating, the Vatican vs. a "Rothschild" on the subject of ETs. Though this Rothschild (no relation to the New Jersey-born plutocrat) seems like little more than a sacrificial nerd in the larger production- the thesis/antithesis charade between NASA and the Vatican.
More Secret Sun crazy talk?
Well, remember this: Ames is the new home of Ray Kurzweil's Singularity University, which we looked at last week. I wondered then if "singularity" was somehow related to "disclosure" and the semiotics- hell, the very existence- of this little debate doesn't exactly dissuade me from that suspicion.
And as a reader helpfully reminded us, Kurtzweil (played by Space:1999's Martin Landau) was the name of the whistle-blower in the X-Files feature film, which launched the AAT meme the series would follow from that point on. And as we looked at more recently, Landau played John the Baptist in Salome, which featured none other than Earth Akhet in the title role. And we all know Chris Carter's birthday by now.
I know there are all sorts of legends and myths out there about the Templars, and I don't believe most of them either. But neither do I buy the orthodox history of the Order, either. Not for a second. And I can't shake the fact that the distinctive Templar cross long predates the birth of Christ, and was identified with the sun god Shamash.
In an earlier post, we saw what we call the Templar cross worn by the Assyrian king Shamshi, the husband of the real-life Semiramis. And the Roman historian Diodorus Siculus claimed that Semiramis was actually the daughter of a fish goddess, which brings us back to Oannes and the Persian Gulf and all of the rest of it.
Which in turn ties back to John the Baptist and to the Templars (who worshipped John the Baptist as Bapomet) which in turn takes us back to Ten Thirteen Productions (who did their own take on Salome in episode 3.17 of Millennium) and The X-Files.
Who we'll allow to have the last word, via Dr. Barnes...
UPDATE: Shekinah Again. See the Yahoo headline- "The recovery plan: shock & awe for a shaken nation." UPDATE II: Andre reminds us that the Sirius XM bankruptcy issue that we looked at last week is coming to a climax on Tuesday the 17th.Why is this pertinent?Their name reads to me as Sirius 10/13, which reminds me of the fact that ill-fated, pseudo-Templar cult the "Order of the Solar Temple" worshipped the star Sirius:
Jouret's more advanced members believed that he was a Knight Templar in a previous life and that he would lead his followers to a planet orbiting Sirius. The Solar Temple founder also believed that he was a third reincarnation of Jesus Christ, or at least that is the image he put forth to the rank and file member. The beliefs of the Solar Temple, which changed from time to time, seemed to be a blending of neo-Templarism, New Age philosophy, Christianity and survivalist paranoia. The cult taught that life was an illusion and that followers would be reborn on a planet revolving around the Dog Star Sirius.- TemplarHistory.com
Just another cult, right? So why do we see this same symbolism in a major corporation? Especially one that seems to be doomed as well, though not quite as dramatically. From HuffPost:
Financially strapped Sirius XM Radio Inc. said Friday that it could file for bankruptcy as early as Tuesday if it cannot successfully negotiate with the holders of its debt. While the satellite radio company said it has exchanged $172.5 million of debt maturing in December for new debt due in 2011, it still has about $175 million coming due this Sunday.
There's some bad blood at work here, involving Sirius' CEO and EchoStar CEO Charlie Ergen:
In 2004, when Karmazin was head of Viacom Inc. and in a dispute with Ergen over the fees Dish had to pay to carry Viacom channels, Dish published Karmazin's home number and told subscribers to call him.
This time, Karmazin is in a much weaker position, with Sirius' debt coming due that the company is not in good shape to repay. In total, Sirius has about $3.3 billion in debt maturing between now and 2014.
What fascinating numbers. For some bizarre reason, Karmazin thought Howard Stern was worth $100 million a year, which is yet another example of the hypercapitalist madness that is destroying the American economy. But there are even deeper parallels at work here.
The now-defunct Solar Temple was actually an imposter group, which became the flash point in a bitter struggle. There was a powerful, pre-existing secret society with political ties among the European far right called the Sovereign Order of the S0lar Temple (OSTS):
OSTS'origins date back to the so called "Arginy Renaissance", a mystical experience of June 12, 1952*, when French esoteric author Jacques Breyer (1922-1996) and two companions were contacted by secret "Masters of the Temple" and asked to establish a "Templar Renaissance". The "Renaissance" eventually materialized -- after many years of esoteric activity by Breyer and his friends -- into the OSTS, established on June 24, 1966 and incorporated under Monaco law in 1967.- cesnur
The OSTS practiced a form of sex magick and included Princess Grace of Monaco as an initiate. This powerful group were probably none too pleased when a new Solar Templar order appeared in 1984, led by Luc Jouret, especially when journalists later confused the two and claimed Kelly was in Jouret's sect:
The faction who recognized Luc Jouret (1947-1994) as Grand Master did not have the legal right to use the name ORT and eventually re-incorporated under a succession of names leading to "Order of the Solar Temple"...What is clear is that in 1982 Di Mambro, although he knew Marsan, was not authorized to initiate anybody into Marsan's OSTS, and certainly cannot initiate Princess Grace into the not yet existing OTS.
James Ratte pointed out that Yahoo posted a handy primer on 13 numerology yesterday, but no mention of the Templars. Interesting.
Reader Jay alerted us that modern-day Templar wannabes Blackwater announced on Friday that they were changing their name to "Xe." Interesting timing for that move, huh?Note that the X was sacred to the Mithraists, very much the spiritual forefathers of Blackwater.
* Don't forget there was a major UFO flap in that summer of '52.
Abstract: Hit after hit after hit. My head is going to explode.
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.
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.
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.
Deneuve's character in The Hunger was named Miriam, which comes fromMeresamun 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. Check out the videos here.
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.
The man called Obam (Sidney Poitier) struggles with the increasingly hostile forces facing each other in a colonial African country. The African natives want their land and lives back from the British colonists. Obam's motives are questioned by his own people, in particular his brother Kanda (Clifton Macklin). With the help of his wife Renee (Eartha Kitt) and missionary Bruce Craig (John McIntire), will he be able to get things under control before the country self-destructs?
Filmed on location in Africa, Mark of the Hawk stars Sidney Poitier as a London-educated African who returns to his homeland to take a political post. Poitier's brother Clinton Macklin is in charge of a rebel organization, determine to topple the white-dominated government. Poitier must choose between seeking out racial equality through peaceful means, or casting his lot with Macklin: it is (at least in this film) a struggle of Right against Right. Eartha Kitt is top-billed, but her role is decidedly secondary to Poitier's. Released in Britain as Accused, Mark of the Hawk has been retitled Shaka Zulu on video, though it should not be confused with the 1985 TV miniseries of the same name.- All Movie
Eartha Kitt (born 1/17/27) plays "Renee," meaning "rebirth." which is the name of the play everyone was gathered for tonight. The rebirth of the Earth under Obama the Hawk? Might explain the guy from Falcon Crest playing Lincoln...
UPDATE: Oh, how can I be so slow? Eartha Kitt- Earth Akhet.
From the Wiki: "Akhet- In Ancient Egyptian, the place where the sun rises and sets; often translated as "horizon" or "mountain of light". It is included in names like "Akhet Khufu" (Ancient Egyptian name for the Great Pyramid) and Akhetaten."
Note in this image and the one above Obam is "wearing the Sun as a crown." This is a very subtle motif to keep an eye out for. See it with Obama here.
Obam and Obama
The Sun, Obam, the Hawk. I need a glass of water.
Bonus Factoid: Eartha Kitt played Salome in an early TV production of the Wilde play. She was born in North, South Carolina which is on the 33rd parallel (and Route 178). It's a suburb of Columbia, which needs no explanation.
Horus from Atlantis Ceremony in Dubai
Bonus Factoid II: Djimon Hounshou played African rebel Cinque in Amistad as well as Horus in the film Stargate. On the androgyne tip, Hounshou is the new CK underwear model. Unisex perfume CK One is back this year, which we will look at in a further post. Honshou will be voicing T'Challa in the upcoming Black Panther cartoon.
Bonus Factoid III: Today is the 40th anniversary of the death Mark of the Hawk screenwriter Lloyd Young.
You betcha! says "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, who was in Washington Wednesday night for the Ford's Theatre reopening celebration where both he and screen legend Sidney Poitier were being honored with the Ford Theatre Society's Lincoln medal in a ceremony attended by President Barack Obama, a Lincoln aficionado. (click here for context)
UPDATE III:
UPDATE IV:
Eartha Mae Keith aka Eartha Kitt aka Earth Akhet (Earth's Horizon) aka the Catwoman.
The Great Sphinx was known to the Hellenes as Harmarchis, or "Horus in the Horizon," or simply "Guardian of the Horizon." Now, remember the horizon and the Sunrise in the Obama logo. The Egyptian rendering was Hor-em-akhet, who was also known as the "Chief Overseer of Craftsmen."
For my money, "Eartha Mae Kitt" is certainly at least as close to Hor-Em-Akhet as is Harmarchis, etymologically speaking.
Speaking of Craftsmen, here is a Sphinx on the stairway of the Grand Lodge of Utah.
UPDATE (1305 EST): This link between the cat (Kitt) and the Horizon (akhet) needs a bit of further elucidation:
Graham Hancock explains in Heaven’s Mirror that, “computer simulations show that in 10,500 BC the constellation of Leo housed the sun on the spring equinox - i.e. an hour before dawn in that epoch Leo would have reclined due east along the horizon in the place where the sun would soon rise. This means that the lion-bodied Sphinx, with its due-east orientation, would have gazed directly on that morning at the one constellation in the sky that might reasonably be regarded as its own celestial counterpart.”
In other words, Hancock and Bauval believe the Sphinx was built to greet the Sun (Horus the Hawk) on the Horizon ("Horus- Zone") as it rose in the constellation of Leo, ie in the Aeon of Leo. Hancock and Bauval believe this was the work of the Shemsu Hor, who were pointing to the Zep Tepi, the Time of the Rule of the Gods.
As a Synchromystic mirror of that we have Obam the Hawk (identified with the Sun in the poster art) married to Earth-Akhet ("Earth's Horizon") who was also the Cat-Woman, ie the Sphinx.
Does anyone really think some dopey screenwriter dreamed that all up for some toss-away B picture?
UPDATE 1512 EST: That bubbling sound you're hearing are just my brains boiling...
OK, here we have essentially a symbolic representation of the Sphinx facing Obam as the Sun, who is Horus the Hawk. Eartha's orientation is not square with Obam the Sun, which corresponds to the present orientation of the Sphinx to the sunrise.
And yet another title for this story (the fourth by my count), Terror of the Hawk. What do the Arabs today call the Great Sphinx? Abū al-Hūl, or "Father of Terror." And what is the the Latin word for Earth? Terra.
Here is an Egyptian rendering of the same iconography, with the androgynous, alien-like Pharaoh Akhenaten facing his androgynous god the Aten, whose full name is Ra-Horus-Aten.
Here is Ra-Horakhty, crowned with the Sun. This is the source of the icon we looked at earlier.
UPDATE V: Speaking of Masonry, Poitier's most recent acting role was as "The Last Bricklayer in America." He is also a Knight Commander of the British Empire.
UPDATE VI: The bulk of the interrogations of the Knights Templar took place at Poitiers, France.
UPDATE XI: OK, so we've been doing the astro-gnostic bit, equating ancient Gnostic myth with ancient astronaut theory. And last night's play at the Ford Theater was called Birth and Rebirth.
“What liberates us is the knowledge of who we were, what we became; where we were, whereinto we have been thrown; whereto we speed, wherefrom we are redeemed; what birth is, and what rebirth.”
Hmm, maybe that was the real St. Valentine.
UPDATE XII: Oh dear God- did someone say birth? (Click at your own peril).
UPDATE XIII: HuffPost has a slideshow jam-packed with applicable synchromystic resonance.
UPDATE XIV: Speaking of resonance, Joaquin Phoenix continued his (Kaufmanesque?) meltdown bit on Letterman last night. Speaking of Sphinxes, he plays a character named Leonard in his new film, Two Lovers.
UPDATE XV: Speaking of hawks, the red tail living in my backyard let it be known that he did not appreciate that ferocious windstorm today. I have a couple dozen big white oaks and it looked at times like one of them was going to come through the roof.
UPDATE XVI: In more Yahoo news that isn't news, we have a story on the (not) new, gay Batwoman aka Kate Kane aka Ka-Hathor-Ein Kane. Frank Miller's Catwoman was a prostitute who wore a crewcut, leathers and tanktops. She also shared a bed with a gal pal in Batman: Year One, but I'm not sure if she was gay or just a Frank Miller character.
UPDATE XVII: OK, this is getting crazy. Kudos to SoapFan (yet again, a regular reader) for the heads-up. Obama at the CAT factory in Peoria- "3:25 p.m.: Meeting with CAT workers at Building HH, 901 W. Washington Ave., East Peoria." Note pyramid in CAT logo.
"The president is planning stops in Denver and Phoenix on Tuesday and Wednesday. That comes on top of a whirlwind of travel this week: Obama was scheduled to be in Peoria, Ill., Thursday afternoon after visiting Indiana, Florida and Virginia earlier."-AP
XIX: I'm getting a cramp- another entry in the "why is this news now?" category.
XX: Here's more all-Egypt-all-the-time news on CNN- a puff-piece about the Meresamun ("Beloved of Amun") display right in the shadow of the old Obama residence. The new Akhenaten? Maybe. But the symbols certainly seem to be pointing to Obama as the new Tutankhamun.
XXI: Irish writer Hugh Leonard dies. Born John Keyes Byrne. You come across lots of pseudonyms in this kind of research.
RANT: The genius of all of this is you can't explain it to laypeople without sounding completely insane. And to make matters a million times worse, I'm becoming more and more convinced that the sheer volume and complexity of all of this is way beyond the scope of mere human agency.
I apologize to all my conspiracy friends, but we really have to part company on this point. I'm not saying there's not a boatload of intentional symbolic mischief out there, but that is just a very small piece of the puzzle.
UPDATE: Elluminati has an interesting update on "Sol" Sender and Logogate. Terry is on the case as well.
UPDATE II: "CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Two big communications satellites collided in the first-ever crash of two intact spacecraft in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds and posing a slight risk to the international space station." Follow the link and see if a certain number leaps out at you.
Click to enlarge.
UPDATE III: Is David Icke the new online editor at the Beeb? Are we supposed to take away that Obie is half-African, half-reptilian? That mummy story is two days old. Why is it a top headline? Surely not because today was the Feast Day of Osiris in Ancient Egypt. Surely.
UPDATE IV: Secret Sun readers come through again. Tonight:
WASHINGTON — Presidential present and past intersected again Wednesday night when President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama joined stars in honoring one of his inspirations: Abraham Lincoln.
The Ford's Theatre Society held a star-studded reopening to celebrate the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth and award film greats George Lucas and Sidney Poitier with Lincoln Medals. The invitation-only ceremony was held at Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.
CBS News anchor Katie Couric and actors Kelsey Grammer, James Earl Jones, Ben Vereen, Jeffrey Wright and Audra McDonald gave a presentation of Birth and Rebirth, a tribute to Lincoln. David Selby (Falcon Crest's Richard Channing) portrayed Lincoln.
Darth Vader! The Beast! Falcon Crest! What hilarity!
Check out a reminder in the comments section about Osiris and Abydos as well.
UPDATE V: This just about says it all. From Dubai...
“I grew up on Star Trek. I believe in the final frontier.”- Barack Obama
ABSTRACT: As Star Trek makes its grand re-entry into the forefront of pop culture this year, it's a good time to take a look at the Gnostic themes in the franchise's long history, in particular the astro-Gnostic themes. It seems clear that this meme was hard-wired into the concept from the very beginning, and I'm certainly not the first to say so.
The green-skinned Orion (Osiris) slave girl
THE CAGE, or THE MENAGERIE, parts I and II
The show's unaired pilot, “The Cage,” is Gnostic to the bone. The Enterprise (NCC-1701) finds itself orbiting Talos IV, a planet run as a zoo-slash-laboratory by trio of androgynous aliens. The Talosians are telepaths, masters of illusion who use their powers to create alternate realities in order to observe the habits and rituals of primitive species like man (this theme would later be recycled for Dark City and in The Matrix films)
The Gnosticism in "The Cage" is decidely of the Caprocratian variety. The plot revolves around the Talosians' attempts to "interest" Captain Christopher Pike in Vina, a survivor of a downed spaceship called the Columbia played by the jaw-droppingly gorgeous Susan Oliver. Given that Gene Roddenberry was described by former associates as being completely sex-obsessed, we can safely assume that Pike's name is implicitly phallic and that "Vina" is short for "Vagina."
RETURN OF THE ARCHONS (spoilers galore)
Even more explicit Gnostic themes were also tackled in one of Roddenberry’s earliest Star Trek stories. “Return of the Archons” is essentially a Space Age update of the ancient Gnostic text, Hypostasis of the Archons. In this episode, the U.S.S. Enterprise is investigating the situation on Beta III, where the Federation ship the U.S.S. Archon disappeared over 100 years before.
The crew discover that Beta III is a prison planet inhabited by a cult-like population who refer to themselves as "The Body." Strangely, the people of Beta III seem to live in a world remarkably like late-19th Century America. Somewhere in the west, to be exact.
This puts us in the middle of the "Third Great Awakening," which saw the rise of Protestant sects such as the Pentecostals and the Jehovah's Witnesses. As with these sects, The Body preach and practice blissful submission to a totalizing paternal and corporate authority. In this case, the supreme being is called Landru, who uses hooded monks called the "Lawgivers" as his secret police. From the Star Trek wiki Memory Alpha:
The Body of Landru is the name inhabitants of Beta III used to describe all those under the control of Landru. Six thousand years ago, the original Landru built and programmed a mechanical replacement to carry on his work. This machine managed the affairs of the entire planetary population....
...to meet Landru's goals, his machine was given the ability to control the attitude and conduct of individuals, through a process called absorption. Once absorbed, a living being's individuality and free will were largely subordinated to the instructions and ideas supplied telepathically by Landru.
Landru allows the Body a regular festival called “the Red Hour,” in which they erupt into mayhem and violence (rape seems to be the most popular activity for the menfolk), not unlike the “Two Minute Hate” in George Orwell’s 1984. Or any given Calvinist precinct in the Old West on a Saturday night, for that matter. Interesting how "Return of the Archons" ties all of these various historical strands together. PURE, UNADULTERATED GNOSTIC THEOLOGY
Given the fact that this story began 6000 years ago, it's safe to assume that Landru and the Lawgivers are stand-ins for the Gnostic demiurge (meaning "creator of the people"), Yaldaboath and the Archons, the earthly rulers of Gnostic theology.
First, Landru as Yaldaboath:
Their chief is blind; because of his power and his ignorance and his arrogance he said, with his power, "It is I who am God; there is none apart from me." When he said this, he sinned against the entirety. And this speech got up to incorruptibility; then there was a voice that came forth from incorruptibility, saying, "You are mistaken, Samael" - which is, "god of the blind."
Hypostasis of the Archons
And the Lawgivers as Yaldaboath's enforcers have their parallel in Gnostic scripture:
"This is the first archon who took a great power from his mother. And he removed himself from her and moved away from the places in which he was born. He became strong and created for himself other aeons with a flame of luminous fire which (still) exists now. And he joined with his arrogance which is in him and begot authorities for himself.
As it happens, Landru neglected to program his computer with the gift of human wisdom (or perhaps, the gift of “Gnosis”) so it became a tyrannical force, ruling not by the spirit, but by a literalistic reading of Landru’s commands. Kirk shows Landru the error of its ways (saying "the fault is yours") and realizing it has harmed its subjects, Landru self-destructs. This closely parallels the fate of Yaldaboath in Gnostic theology.
And Zoe (Life), the daughter of Pistis Sophia, cried out and said to him, "You are mistaken, Sakla!" - for which the alternative name is Yaltabaoth. She breathed into his face, and her breath became a fiery angel for her; and that angel bound Yaldabaoth and cast him down into Tartaros below the abyss.
Hypostasis of the Archons
Spock notes that the Body now has no guidance - in other words, they are now blind.
Pretty heady stuff for TV. For a guy who ran around claiming to be a rationalist and an atheist, Roddenberry certainly toyed with some pretty heavy esoteric concepts (and kept some pretty strange company, as well). Moreover, the Nag Hammadi texts weren't widely circulated until well after Roddenberry wrote the early Trek scripts, so I'm a bit puzzled as to where he would accessed them, if in fact he'd done so.
ANCIENT ARCHON THEORY
I've been thinking a lot about Gnosticism and the myth of the Archons and how it may tie into Ancient Astronaut Theory. I'm not alone in that either. Writer John Lash also sees a connection the Archons with ETs, though he seems to reverse my more materialist equation:
The Nag Hammadi material contains reports of visionary experiences of the initiates, including first-hand encounters with inorganic beings called Archons. Gnostic teaching explains that these entities arose in the early stage of formation of the solar system, before the Earth was formed...
Interestingly, this Gnostic insight accords closely with the view of Jacques Vallee, who maintains that ET/cyborgs probably belong to the local planetary realm. Vallee also proposes that the ET/UFO enigma is a “spiritual control system,” a phenomenon that “behaves like a conditioning process.” (Messengers of Deception). This is exactly what Gnostics said about the Archons: they can affect our minds by subliminal conditioning techniques.
You have to admit, Lash's Archon theory certainly explains a lot, especially when you're looking at Synchromysticism and conspiracy theory. The more you look into all of it, the less you are able to assign human agency to it- or at least the familiar definition of human. I just can't shake the feeling that all of the big boys and fat cats are no less puppets than you or I, they just have better retirement plans.
I know this is unfashionable talk with the bullhorn set, but I'm seeing too many oxes being gored and too many sacred cows being sent to the slaughterhouse. I'm starting to wonder if there will be any banks or corporations left when this bloodletting is all over. Too many masters of the universe are home playing Wii and you can't help but wonder who's really steering this ship.
And how funny that Star Trek, with its vision of an interplanetary Masonic empire, should reemerge just as the hypercapitalist binge of the past 25 years is entering its teeth-grinding stage. Or emerge as a young Star Trek fan takes the highest office in the land, thanks in large part to a scandal involving a Star Trek superstar....
It all starts to make such terrible sense, if you're willing to make a leap or two.
Today's stop? The state where Gus Grissom died. Just a coincidence, surely.
Reminder: The Rock plays an astronaut in Planet 51.
Egypt, Egypt Everywhere Dept.: Coming today to Barack's old neighborhood, "The Life of Meresamun: A Temple Singer in Ancient Egypt," focuses on the life of a priestess-musician in Egypt in about the year 800 BC.
Bonus factoid: Octavian and Mark Antony avenged Caesar's death in 42 BC. Both Caesar and Antony were lovers with the last Pharaoh of Egypt, Cleopatra.
UPDATE: Reader Jay points out that Obama took 13 questions last night...
UPDATE II: The Flight 1549 saga grinds on when the pilots appear on Larry King tonight. Check out their giant winged sun disk chest-pins. Is that just in case you didn't get the message from the lapel pins?
UPDATE III: Aussies launch Operation Phoenix to hunt down Victoria arsonists.
However, many scholars believe that Set didn't become a villain in Egyptian mythology until he was adopted as the patron god of the Hyksos, the foreign occupiers of Lower Egypt who were expelled at the end of the Seventeenth Dynasty (which we recently looked at in relation to the Flight 1549 drama). In fact, "Horus-Set" was a binary god in some cult centers (see above).
It's interesting to note that both Sara and Seth are Biblical names as well, both of which etymologically point to other mythological figures: Saraswati (roughly the equivalent of Hathor, meaning "House of Horus") and Set, respectively. "Sara" also reminds us of Sarah Palin, the cougar queen/Sekhmet resonator.
THIRTEEN AND ELEVEN
In any event, I promised we'd look at the original Escape to Witch Mountain, so let's get into it. Here's a short synopsis from a Witch Mountain fan site:
Tony Malone, 13, and his sister Tia, 11, orphaned by the loss of their foster parents, live in a children's home. Their incredible psychic powers attract rich and powerful Aristotle Bolt, who has his assistant, Lucas Deranian, adopt them as wards to exploit them. Terrified, they escape with the aid of a new friend, Jason O' Day, in his camper. Jason agrees to help them find Stony Creek, a cryptic map in Tia's possession.
Pursued by Bolt, Deranian, and the police, the youngsters are jailed but once again escape. As time runs out, the children remember they are castaways from another planet and are soon led by one of their own kind, Uncle Bene, to a flying Saucer that blasts off for the sanctuary of Witch Mountain, leaving their captors below far behind.
Now, this is quite different from the novel. The Bolt character is a new creation and Jason O'Day (played by Eddie Albert) was "Father O'Day" in the novel. The novel took place on the East Coast (Witch Mountain was in the Blue Ridge Mountains) and the movie is filmed in the area around Monterey and Big Sur in California.
THE MEMENTO
The Witch Mountain stories essentially play like Gnostic parables. The two children are aliens who fell to Earth from their home planet in a binary star system (Sirius, surely), just as the Aeons fell from the Pleroma (meaning "the Fullness") in Gnostic theology.
Their one link to their true identity and their return to their extraterrestrial home is the "Star Case," which they don't understand how to use. Another synopsis, from Fantastic Fiction:
Some terrifying experience has blocked Tony and Tia's memory of the past. But because they have supernatural powers, they are sure that they come from another world---and that their people still exist somewhere. Then Tony and Tia find that they must escape from men who want to use their special powers for evil. They begin a desperate search to find their true home---which leads them to the strange and mysterious Witch Mountain.
The Star Case plotline is startlingly similar to the foundational Gnostic parable, The Hymn of the Pearl, in which a prince is given a pearl to take on his travels so that he might remember his true identity. Doubly so in light of the fact that the Escape novel portrays the world in which the alien children travel in similarly bleak terms to the Hymn:
But in some way other or another They found out that I was not their countryman, And they dealt with me treacherously, And gave their food to eat. I forget that I was a son of kings, And I served their king; And I forgot the pearl, For which my parents had sent me, And because of the burden of their oppressions I lay in a deep sleep. But all this things that befell me My parents perceived, and were grieved for me; And proclamation was made in our kingdom, That every one should come to our gate
The Star Case color-scheme in the film is identical to the classical blue-and-gold of Freemasonry. Which makes sense in context of the Masonic veneration of the Stairway to Sirius. But in the context of the film, it also points to a "lost secret" of Freemasonry, that has also been forgotten and/or corrupted in a quest for temporal power.
33rd Degree Mason Manly Palmer Hall addressed the motif of the blue and gold in the context of a hidden, inner reality in his tract The Lost Keys of Freemasonry or The Secret of Hiram Abiff. Hall identifies blue and gold with Sirius, the five-pointed star:
This is the Robe of Glory, the garment of Blue and Gold which, shining forth as a five-pointed star of light, heralds the birth of the Christ within. Man is then indeed a son of God, pouring forth from the depths of his own being the light rays which are the life of man. Striking hearts that have long been cold, this spiritual ray raises them from the dead. It is the living light which illuminates those still buried in the darkness of materiality. It is the power which raises by the strong grip of the lion's paw. It is the Great Light which, seeking forever the spark of itself within all living things, reawakens dead ideals and smothered aspirations with the power of the Master's Eternal Word.
Of course, the problem with secret societies is that they often devolve into power-seeking cliques, concerned only with material and temporal power. Though often necessary in oppressive societies, secrecy endows a sense of superiority and entitlement, which lends itself to an adversarial posture towards everyone outside of the group. Which brings us to the next major player in this drama...
THE ILLUMINIST
We first meet the film's villain, Aristotle Bolt, as he consults with Three Magi (literally). Notice that the floor beneath their feet is a Zodiac, and that they advise that the moon is in Aries.* This shot is crucial, since maps and stars form the basis of the drama.
Bolt is the classic conspiratorial archetype of an "Illuminist"- a wealthy and powerful aristocrat who dabbles in the occult in a quest for total control. It's interesting to note that his surname is the opposite of the novel's author, Alexander Key. "Bolt" represents control and "Key" represents freedom (note that Aristotle was Alexander the Great's tutor).
Bolt is tired of the Magi's song-and-dance, and at 00:13:33 his assistant Lucas Deranian brings him news that he has discovered two genuine psychics, Tony and Tia. Bolt has Deranian adopt the children from an orphanage and sets them up in his mansion (and yeah, the whole situation seems unbearably creepy in this day and age).
While in Bolt's custody, Tony and Tia discover that beneath the top plate of the Star Case is a map showing the location of Witch Mountain.** The two decide to escape and follow the map, even though their memories are not fully recovered.
This is probably the most important shot in the film. After seeing the two aliens discover a map beneath a depiction of a binary star, we see them facing a pack of dogs sent to prevent their escape. However, Tina can telepathically communicate with the dogs and she sends them after Bolt's goons. In other words, the dogs have allied themselves with Tony and Tia.
Following the stellar motifs established by Bolt and the Zodiac, could it be that Tony and Tia represent Sirius A and B, and that the dogs are the other stars in Canis Major? In light of the implied parapolitics of the story, it's interesting to note that Bolt shouts "those dogs will ruin all my plans!" during the escape.
J-A-S-O-N
The Masonic parallels continue when the kids meet Jason O'Day, a vacationing widower. Jason ultimately helps the kids reach Witch Mountain, but not before providing us with some (alleged) semiotic gems.
For instance, the name Jason ties into the captain of the Argonauts (which we'll be looking at again here soon) and the theories about the Jason Scholars, a mysterious group who may or may not actually exist. From a UFO conspiracy site:
The JASON Group is a scientific organization formed and hired by the JASON Society and the U.S. Government Founders of the JASON Group include members of the famous Manhattan Project, which brought together almost every leading physicist in the nation to build the atomic bomb during World War II. The group is made up mostly of theoretical physicists and is the most elite gathering of scientific minds in the United States. As of 1987 the membership included four Nobel Prize winners. Today JASON continues to offer scientific help the government cannot find anywhere else. They are probably the only group of scientists in the United States that know the true state of highest technology.
That certainly fits into parable here- could Jason O'Day represent this mysterious group of scientists? If anyone were to have contact with aliens from Sirius, it would be such a group. Perhaps this is a further clue...
Jason's "brother" is named Hiram, as in Hiram Abiff. Jason plans for the kids to hold up at Hiram's house, which is "two milesoutside of town, up the north road" (in Freemasonry, the North represents God's throne).
But when the three get there, Hiram isn't home (which coincides with the Empty Chair of the North in Masonic lodges). Semiotically, we're back to Hall's "secret of Hiram Abiff."
How about that?
SIRIUS PIECE OF REAL ESTATE
So, are we in fact looking at the same Stairway to Sirius symbolism again? Is The Rock resonating Barack Obama, who will "preside" over open contact with beings from Sirius? Maybe the filming locations offer us clues. From imdb.com:
Big Sur, California, USA Carmel, California, USA Felton, California, USA Menlo Park, California, USA Monterey Peninsula, California, USA Palo Alto, California, USA
Wow. Well, Menlo Park is the home to Google and Stanford Research Institute, which pioneered scientific research into the psychic abilities Tony and Tia possess. Palo Alto is the home to PARC (on 3333 Coyote Rd) which pioneered many of the computer innovations we take for granted today. And Big Sur is home to Esalen, which is no stranger to alien and UFO research itself.†
There are any number of high tech and fringe tech companies in this area, which makes it a fascinating place to film a story about marooned aliens, especially given my suspicions as to the source of it all. And those same companies have allowed all of us a peek behind the curtain as the literature of some of these secret societies is no longer locked in basements, but accessible in seconds. Though we mustn't fool ourselves into thinking we're getting anything more than a peek...
WHY NOW?
Ain't it something, that this deceptively juvenile mythos makes its big-budget return this year, of all years? What it ultimately means and where it's all going is still an open question. Let's return to the topic when the new film comes out.
In the meantime, anyone want to lay odds on some sort of disclosure event, whether real or manufactured, by the end of this year? UPDATE: The Rock's next role? As the Tooth Fairy. I kid you not.
UPDATE II: Thoth Pavel checks in with some indispensable information on the real-life Witch Mountain in the comments section.
NOTES
*Note that the Age of Aries saw the emergence of monotheism in Egypt and later in Israel, and that both Judaism and Islam follow a lunar calendar.
**Interesting crypto-etymology- Stony Creek has Masonic echoes and Misty Valley recalls the Mystery Religions.
†Jacques Vallee is closely associated with Esalen and the high-tech industries in this area. Check out Devin's excerpts from Vallee's Passport to Magoniahere and here.
Intelligent civilisations are out there and there could be thousands of them, according to an Edinburgh scientist. The discovery of more than 330 planets outside our solar system in recent years has helped refine the number of life forms that are likely to exist. The current research estimates that there are at least 361 intelligent civilisations in our Galaxy and possibly as many as 38,000.
Planet X would be the most significant addition to the solar system since the discovery of Pluto, the now notorious non-planet, in 1930. When the International Astronomical Union voted to downgrade Pluto to dwarf planet status in 2006, they established three criteria for a fully blown planet in our solar system: it must orbit the sun; its gravity must suffice to mould it into a near-spherical shape; and it must be massive enough to have ploughed its orbit clear of other bits and bobs. Pluto falls down on this third point. It is just one of many Kuiper belt objects (KBOs), icy bits of debris that pepper space from Neptune's orbit at 30 astronomical units out to around 50 AU, where 1 AU is the distance between Earth and the sun.
The smallest planet yet found outside the Solar System has been detected by a French space telescope. The rocky world is less than twice the size of Earth. Only a handful of planets have so far been found with a mass comparable to Earth, Venus, Mars or Mercury.
NASA and Google announced Monday the release of a new Mars mode in Google Earth that brings to everyone’s desktop a high-res, 3D view of the Red Planet. According to a NASA news release, the mode enables users “to fly virtually through enormous canyons and scale huge mountains on Mars that are much larger than any found on Earth.” Users can explore the planet through the eyes of Mars rovers and see satellite imagery from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and other probes.
Singularity University, which will be housed on the NASA Ames base near Mountain View and begin classes in June, is the brainchild of Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis. The two world-renowned scientists were expected to unveil their plans at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference beginning in Long Beach today.
The school hopes to attract students from a cross section of emerging disciplines - including nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology - to tackle huge issues facing humanity.
Interesting collaboration. Maybe "Singularity" and "Disclosure" are somehow connected.
UPDATE II: Not exactly space news, but tying back to the Hulu ad:
Internet users in the United States watched a record 14.3 ("17"- CK) billion online videos in December, an increase of 13 percent over the previous month, according to comScore, an Internet marketing research firm. Popular site YouTube led the growth charge, accounting for almost half the incremental gain in videos viewed.
Internet TV services such as Hulu, Joost and Veoh also are feeding off a new generation of tech-savvy users in search of cheap access to video content.- CNN
Modern Mythology, Alt-History and Pop-Cult Symbology from the author of the Eagle Award-winning Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes, published by Red Wheel/Weiser and co-author of The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series, the Myths, and the Movies, published by Insight Editions.
"Without magic, this world is unbearable." - Hermann Hesse
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In addition to hitting us with some hardcore pseudo-Egyptian occultism, we also get a good dose of trailer park-level conspiracy theory in the form of the Hellfire Council, an Illuminati stand-in comprised of the usual gang of cartoon English bad guys, including Jonathan Hyde (playing "Morgan Sinclair"), Simon Callow and the grand-daddy of them all, Malcolm McDowell.
Outside of the Brits, the acting isn't quite Shakespearean. Casper Van Dien (who plays blatant Indiana Jones knockoff "Danny Fremont") and co-star Leonor Varela (as Dr. Azeila Barakat, a clear analog of Rachel Weisz's character in The Mummy movies) are easy on the eyes, but you might find yourself wishing talkies were never invented.
Leonor as Cleopatra as Isis as Ceres
