Mindbomb: Apocalypse Then and Now

Well, my childhood dream came true- Kamandi is finally animated. Of course, it's just for a few minutes in a weird episode of Batman: Brave and the Bold entitled "Dawn of the Deadman." I can't quite figure out the premise of the episode, but the winks are multitudinous. You have Boston Brand and Gentleman Ghost, time travel, walk-ins, astral projection, Doctor Canus and more (no Ben Boxer, alas). This is episode 1.7 and it aired 1/16.

What's more the voice actor for Kamandi is from my old stomping grounds, Quincy. In fact the very first thing I did when New England Comics (the fine folks who brought you The Tick) opened their first store in Quincy was complete my Kamandi kollection.


My first issue of Kamandi was #30, which came out 34 years ago this month. Quite an initiation into Earth AD; the story was entitled "UFO: The Wildest Ride Ever," and dealt with UFO abductions, stargates, genetic engineering, terrorism, and much more. Read more on this bizarre milestone of a funnybook here.

Although Kamandi was already sort of made into a cartoon with Thundarr the Barbarian, I think the time is ripe for the real thing. Those apocalyptic memes resonate in this time like no other since the mid 70s.

Mithras Rising: Utu and the Cross of Light

Bernie Madoff's new neighborhood, as seen from space. Spot the Solar symbols!

Tonight Bernie Madoff spends the night in the Metropolitan Correctional Center (zip code 10007), awaiting sentencing on June 16. It was reportedly a cathartic experience for many of his victims, and the New York Times report had it that...

Maybe it was cathartic for Wall St as well, seeing that the Tao Dow closed up...

There will a US Senate hearing on reimbursing his victims on March 17. I've read he might cost the IRS $17 Billion, but I also read he only embezzled $17 Billion, not 50. It's very confusing.

What's not confusing is that Madoff did his dirty deeds on the 17th floor of the Lipstick Building, on 53rd St. Of course, 53rd St was in the news for another reason recently, since a block of it was recently rechristened U2 Way.

We looked at some of the strange synchs surrounding U2 (or "Utu") here and here but there's another one that caught my eye. It was from a bit on Letterman, where Dave had the boys shovel the snow off of "U2 Way."

Here we see Adam Clayton crowned not only with the Sun, but with the Cross of Light as well.

Those of you who've seen Zeitgeist might recognize the Cross of Light, but for those of you who haven't here's a short primer on this ancient Solar icon:

The doctrine of salvation by crucifixion had, like many of the ancient forms of religious faith, an astronomical origin. The sun is hung on a cross or crucified when it passes through the equinoxes. People in northern climates were saved by the sun’s crucifixion when it crossed over the equatorial line into the season of spring, at the vernal equinox at Easter, and thereby gave out a saving heat and light to the world and stimulated the generative organs of animal and vegetable life.

The sun that is crucified is the dark winter sun, lacking the warmth and brightness of the summer. It is resurrected as, or supplanted by, its twin, the bright warm fertilizing summer sun that continues on to ascend into heaven.- Askwhy.co.uk

Last year we looked at a remarkable use of the Cross of Light in the film Across the Universe, a tribute to the Beatles. The cross was used in a performance of "Happiness is a Warm Gun" which featured multiple Salma Hayeks (there were 5 in the film but there were originally supposed to be 12). And who was one of the stars of that film? Why, none other than Paul Hewson, aka Bono Vox, singer of U2.

The Cross of Light was sacred to the Mithas cults, who were supplanted by a new religion that also was inspired by a cross of light, in this case Emperor Constantine's dream of an illuminated Chi-Rho icon. Constantine's vision was by no means unique- there have been sightings of crosses of light in the skies over California, which have been classified as UFOs. I wonder if they came from "across the universe?"

But getting back to that shot of Adam Clayton and the cross of light; "Adam Clayton" is a fascinating name given that Adam was made of clay in the Biblical rewriting of the Sumerian myths. Clay has an interesting Masonic resonance as well. But the reason I was so struck by that image (which most people would think was just more U2 media white noise) is that I've been working on the dense and rich symbolism in the film Michael Clayton, starring Chris K himself, George Clooney.

This is one of those films that flew beneath my radar (like Solaris itself, actually) but I've come to see as incredibly profound and quite possibly prophetic. We'll be looking at it soon and I promise you will not be disappointed.

UPDATE: Sensei has some deep background on Mithras here. Much more to come on this emerging old/new archetype....

Get Your Freak ON

Ralph Buckley hit me with his latest and greatest video for "Wanna Be Initiated," and I'm passing it on to you. I think Ralph is a truly extraordinary talent, and has a keen knack for hitting you with tunes that you're sure you remember but weren't yet written.

This tune reminds me of the great, lost T.Rex track that wasn't found in time to be put on the Darjeeling Limited soundtrack. The video is hilarious, mysterious and oddly provocative, all at once. Check out Ralph's YouTube site for more musical madness.

Show Lex the Money (Updated)

From Madoff the Joker to Lex Luthor, the media paints its one-time superheroes as today's super-villains. In related news, Sir Allen Stanford takes the fifth.

UPDATE: Oh, here's a comforting story:

Trust fund millionaire James G. Cummings, an American Nazi sympathizer from Maine who was slain by his wife Amber in December, allegedly had the radioactive components necessary to construct a "dirty bomb," a newly released threat analysis report states.

The man, allegedly furious over the election of President Obama, purchased depleted uranium over the Internet from an American company.

UPDATE: Madoff sentencing set for 6/16. Why does that sound so familiar?

The 17th Floor (Updated)

Of course the big news in the soul-crushing world of consensus reality is the expected guilty plea of Bernie Madoff. I've been watching this story with great puzzlement. Though the suffering of his victims is certainly real, there's a carnival aspect to the story, as if it is all part of some larger agenda. What his downfall and that of other super-criminals like Allen Stanford is doing is destroying people's confidence in the confidence scheme known as the financial industry.

I'm not sure I see this as a net negative. I've read a lot of diatribes against Madoff describing him as a sociopath. Well, duh. I used to ride the commuter train surrounded by sociopaths on their way to Wall St. every day. I studied these guys. And a lot of them were the same kinds of assholes and bullies I hated in high school.

I remember hearing two of these types working themselves up into an orgasmic frenzy the day the Gulf War started, talking about how excited "everyone on the Street" was by the carnage, and how they "didn't see a downside to it." I saw guys sit and read The Wall St. Journal while pregnant women stood. I heard desperate, douche-chilling attempts to converse on a simple human level with one another about anything but money. I'd watch these characters sneer and sigh as Latinos or blacks boarded the trains at Broad Street. Every day, mind you.


Greed is the great amnesiac. When the Dow goes up, no one remembers 1987 or the dotcom bust or Enron or all of the other great swindles perpetrated on innocent people's life savings by thugs in three thousand-dollar suits. But in this Great Upheaval we are living through it almost seems to me that someone has decided the jig is up. Hence we see all of these Wall St. superheroes set up as the fall guys for the crash. Jon Stewart has been especially brilliant in disemboweling that howling buffon, Jim "BooYa" Cramer.

But we won't have much say in what will replace all of that idiocy, either. Indeed, we've been fed these stories about the new Treasury Secretary's "incompetence," and of course now he is telling Charlie Rose that "Capitalism will be different." Oh, I'm sure it will. Quite different, indeed.

Looking at all of this, I can't help but wonder if Madoff was himself on the losing end of a sting. We're seeing that magic 17 show up (Madoff's office was on the 17th Floor of the Lipstick Building) but not in his favor. Whatever he had planned, he's become the great sacrificial goat (note that New York made him up as Heath Ledger's Joker there) of this ritual recreation of once-mighty American capitalism into a mere component of the Global Economic Singularity. Having seen some of the faces up of Wall St. up close, I won't cry if a few of them follow Madoff to Molech's embrace.


UPDATE: And right on cue, here's the other shoe dropping. The President of Earth, Barackobamun the First, calls for a global stimulus and HuffPost gives us the requisite sunrise symbology. See my posts on 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gus Grissom and HuffPost symbology to program your magic decoder ring. Kudos to reader Mark Trueblood for the scoop.

Benjamin Button and the Babylon Gate, part II

So much of the symbolism that I've studied over the years pertaining to this overarching esoteric tradition deals with reversal of time. Jim Marrs seemed to pick up on these meme when he wrote Rule By Secrecy in reverse chronological order. And we've seen highly symbolic film narratives told in reverse time like Christopher Nolan's Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And sure enough, The Reader, for which Ka-Hathor Winslet won her Oscar/Ausur, is also told in a kind of reverse time as well.

Time as the Movements of the Gods, downgraded to saints in Elizabethan England

I was completely puzzled by this motif until I traced the secret society tradition back through all of its permuations and corruptions to the Shemsu Hor, the powerful Egyptian priests of Heliopolis. I've come to see the Shemsu Hor as a kind of cargo cult, trying to return their country to the golden age of the Zep Tepi, where the gods ruled on Earth. After all, restoring divine rule is the goal of most of the world's major religions as well, isn't it?

So naturally the multiple Academy Award nominations for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a fable about a man who ages backward, caught my attention. The film is based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story and is directed by David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club), whose previous film was Zodiac, a film whose semiotic resonance cannot possibly be overstated.

I haven't yet seen this film, so all I can do is look at the trailer and the information about it on iMDb and Wikipedia. But for now, that's plenty. First, the trailer:

At 0:21 the clock moves from 10:12 backwards to 10:11. Had it moved forwards it would bring us to 10:13, which has ominous implications to the Templar tradition.

At 0:25 we see this child placed on a stairwell, suggesting his ascension. This is the mirror of the descending angelic beings we see in the Stairway to Sirius tracing board.

Next we see his unveiling by a black woman, which is the inverse of the veil worn by the Black Madonna of Esoteric Catholic tradition.

At 0:33 we see Benjamin's symbolic baptism by the Black Madonna, which ties into the water symbolism we see throughout the film.

At 0:51 we see Button now descend a stairway and encounter Tilda Swinton, whom we will be looking at in far greater depth in the future.

At 1:04 we meet Cate Blanchett's character and see another yet staircase behind her.

At 1:17 Benjamin and Blanchett's sexual union is symbolically prefigured by a figure diving into the water on a full moonlit night.

In the film, Button is born on 11/11, driving home the twinning motif we see in the title. This is significant in the context of the symbolism of reverse time in the Stairway to Sirius, since Sirius is a binary star system.

The cast here is highly resonant as well. You have Brad Pitt who was fawned over by the sycophants at the Oscar pre-show as the reigning Prince of Hollywood. Pitt's filmography is a semiotic gold mine, including films the previously mentioned Se7en and Fight Club.

Hollywood's breathtaking Faerie Queene

His primary co-star is Ka-Hathor-Ein Eloah-Isis Blanchett, the ethereal Elven Queen of Hollywood, who played Queen Eloah-Isis-Beth (the godmother of Empire, modern pop culture and Rosicrucianism) twice. Blanchett's Oscar win was for another Ka-Hathor-Ein and her Oscar nomination for the portrayal of Bob Dylan gives her the requisite androgynous bonus points. And Blanchett's role as psychic spy Irina Spalko in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull alone would be enough to put her at the top of every Synchromystics to-do list.

Nominated for supporting actress in Benjamin Button was Taraji P. Henson, born September 11, 1970 (17). Henson was amazing in Smokin' Aces, playing a butched-up contract killer whose lover was the luminous Alicia Keys (more gate/door symbolism and Wonderland resonator). Her character's husband in CCoBB is played by Mahershalalhashbaz Ali of The 4400.

Also playing Button's love interests in the film are Elle Fanning, who was so haunting in the must-see The Nines, and the aforementioned Tilda Swinton, who you'll probably get sick of hearing about in the near future around here.

But Pitt and Blanchett are the main attraction. But since we've been looking at the Oscars in the context of the Babylon Gate - meaning the portal through which man reconnects with the gods - is there any symbolism in this casting that points back to this motif?

Why, wouldn't you know it, indeed there is. You see, the last time we saw Pitt and Blanchett together was in this film....

AstroGnostic: "The Cosmic Fetus Collective"

Secret societies? Shape-shifting aliens? Post-humanism? Secret societies of shape-shifting post-human aliens? These memes might be news to the mainstream, but not to old school funnybook geeks like myself.

What was once the province of stoner weirdos or visionary madmen is now Saturday morning TV fodder. An argument could certainly be made that 'twas ever thus, though perhaps it's a question of context today. And volume.

Ben 10: Alien Force is the latest hit from the WB Animation folks about the children of a secret society of crime-fighters called the Plumbers (yes, just like Watergate) who have developed superpowers through various means- technology, mutation, alien DNA. You know the drill. This episode is chock-full of interesting esoteric symbolism even beyond the surface narrative of aliens and super-beings. And see if you can't detect a hint of, um, subtext in it as well.

Well, aside from the obvious Gnostic subtext, in which alien identity and potential is either forgotten or unknown. A very subversive idea in its time, and even today. One for which a lot of people have paid with their lives over the past 17 centuries, to be sure.

Certainly this series is borrowing a lot from the X-Men mythos, which we've also seen in Heroes and The 4400. That these memes are so popular now speaks to their resonance, and to the increasing desire to transcend our present evolutionary restraints. But it won't be quite so tidy when it leaves the mythic realm and plays itself out in consensus reality, that you can be sure of.

Ben 10 was created by "Man of Action," which includes three comic book vets, one of whom is Joe Casey...



...who along with visionary madman Thomas Scioli created Gødland, a cozmo-psychedelick-get-yer-phreak-out-momma of a psilocybic Jack Kirby tribute. Here's the wiki synopsis (which almost sounds like a Synchromystic rant):

The main character of the series is astronaut Adam Archer. As the sole survivor of an ill-fated journey to Mars, Adam Archer meets the alien entities known as the Cosmic Fetus Collective, who transform him into a cosmic being and instruct him in the uses of his new powers. Archer is sent back to Earth as the first human to be touched by universal enlightenment.

Fascinating premise- and synchs perfectly with Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, which we looked at last Monday.

Clearly high on its own supply, Gødland is less inspired by the Fourth World comics than by Kirby's completely whacked-out late 70s and early 80s books like The Eternals, 2001, and Captain Victory* (which featured the "Fighting Fetus"). It's also packed wall-to-wall with bong-hit metaphysics and Scioli's limitless visual imagination (which his drawing skills can't always keep with).

But note how psychedelic experience, superpowers, future tech and alien intervention seem to be attracted to each other. That was the primary focus of Jack Kirby's work from about 1965 on. Timothy Leary claimed that it was the psychedelic movement that inspired the rise of the personal computer and the Internet and all of its attendant aftershocks. Graham Hancock argues today that psychedelic experience through the use of entheogens is the tripwire that brought about our own evolutionary development.


Apparently, Gødland is nearing the end of the line in comic form. Given Casey's Tinseltown mojo, you can be sure it will be coming to a movie or TV screen near you, probably via CGI. It's amazing how the power fantasies of lonely comics geeks are becoming mainstream entertainment. Combine that with the new discoveries pertaining to genetic memory and DNA, there's no telling where this all could go.


*Although it's sheer heresy in funnybook circles to say so, Kirby's early 80s work blew my brains out (surely aided by my bad habits at the time). It was the work of a man who was in constant communion with the deep sea denizens of the Collective Unconscious, a man who had nothing left to lose or to prove. His chops and his eyesight may have been shot and his inkers and production team clearly not up to par with Kirby's Marvel hands, but to me there is still something crucial and numinous in those krazy-ass komix.

"Vast Remaking of Economy"

If you're like me, you have been watching this worldwide economic meltdown with a sense of surreality. For some strange reason, this doesn't feel like one of the bust cycles, it feels like the prelude to a massive social engineering program. I mused on Stormy Weather that we could see a major shift to a space age version of the New Deal, and given the explosion in space tech, as well as the widening distribution of state of the art com-tech like 3G phones and fiber optic cable, I'm certainly starting to wonder. And lo and behold there is this recent New York Times headline: Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of Economy.

I still haven't adjusted to how the power structure in Washington for my entire adult life was systematically dismantled in the past four years (and reduced to a side show), and I certainly can't believe my eyes when I see all of the master-of-the-universe Wall St. tycoons set up as the fall guys for the crash. I'm starting to ponder the very real possibility that the entire Fortune 500 could be liquidated before this is all over.

And yet I don't see or feel the panic that one might expect in such a scenario. Obama and the new ruling elite in Washington seem to be quite blase and matter of fact about all of this carnage, as if they already know what is to be put in place.

Musing about space colonization as the basis of a new worldwide economy might be whacked out enough, but I'm also seriously starting to wonder if this may also be part of the D word- Disclosure. After all, you'd might want people to already feel displaced to lessen the shock to their daily routines. Crazy? Probably. But that's why I do this for free.

I will add, though, that this all certainly puts all of the Stairway to Sirius symbolism in a whole new light...

Amun Rising: The Oracular Power of Junk Culture

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.

Atlantis Risen: A Picture Story

Click images for links

The Secret Storm, Part 2: Watchmen and Beyond

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.

Check out Aeolus' blog here.

Slave to the Gods

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.

Inanna Montana (UPDATED 317 EST)

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."

UPDATE V: Inanna meets Isis (played by Rachel York) in a recent episode of Hannah Montana. The episode reruns on March II.

U2: Stranger in a Strange Land

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 when this 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.

Rantin' and Ravin' on Stormy Weather

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.

"Put Yourself in Their Shoes"

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: No Line on the Horus-Zone

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.

The last song on the album fascinates me as well. It's entitled "Cedars of Lebanon" synchs perfectly with the Masonic organization called The Tall Cedars of Lebanon. As Loren Coleman reminded us, the Cedars sponsor the Muscular Dystrophy telethons that Jerry Lewis was honored for at the Oscars on Sunday Night. The term "Cedars of Lebanon" comes from the Biblical passage concerning Hiram of Tyre and King Solomon that Freemasons incorporated into the myth of Hiram Abiff.

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 album Boy 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.

Pieces of Eight (A Picture Story) UPDATED

Click images for clarification and further revelations.

Further madness at the Solar Satellite.

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."

Now, that is interesting.

UPDATE II: Not as interesting as this: Curious octopus causes flood at aquarium

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.

Boy, talk about Synchronicity.

UPDATE III: Da Beeb (file named 7910335.stm)

President Barack Obama has unveiled a $3.6tn (£2.5tn) budget for 2010, aiming to pull the US out of financial crisis.

He has predicted the budget deficit for the current year will be $1.75 tn, which is 12.3% of annual output and the biggest since World War II

Seen From Space: Busy Skies, Filled with Portent (MAJOR UPDATES)

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 †

UPDATE 1131 EST: Top Story on CNN: Galaxy may be full of 'Earths,' alien life

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.

It's strange, thinking about NASA and its Masonic origins, and Masonry and its Roman Mithraic origins got me to thinking about the death of another Taurus, the Tauroctony of Mithraism*:

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.

Strangely enough, they're in Colorado (specifically 1722 Boxelder St, Louisville, CO 80027), the state which was the center of much excitement on the 17th.

The space race is heating up to such an extent that even North Korea is getting in on the act:

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.

SEXY SATURN, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

Well, on Sunday we had the Ausurs Oscars, Monday we had the reopening of the Babylon Gate Iraq museum and Tuesday we had a rare alignment of Saturn's moons:

"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."


Oh geez, that's awkward.

UPDATE: Italy: Air Force Head says UFOs possibly ET craft

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.

UPDATE: Masons on the Warpath: Astronaut-authored report says NASA needs new direction:

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.

UPDATE: Arizona Scientist: We Could All Be Martians

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."

Cheers to Tom Horn at Raiders for the phat links!

UPDATE: UFO Sightings Soar in Canada

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."

Link via Red Ice.

The mighty ox has colors
More than oneself could conceive of
The great one has become a portent hue
A portent hue†

NOTES

† Caterwaul, "Big Ox Laughing" (re-released 2/17/09)

*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.

Benjamin Button and the Babylon Gate, pt. I

Oh look, isn't this timely? The Iraqi National Museum has reopened, the day after the Oscars.

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

More pictures from the grand reopening here. It seems there is a large-scale effort underway to rebuild Babylon (from the Akkadian Babilu, meaning "Gateway of the Gods.") This syncs quite well with the Atlantis Rising memes, as well as the re-emergence of Amun, as well as with last night's Oscar ceremony, which we will get to in a minute.

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.

You know, as in "Inanna."

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.

TO BE CONTINUED

(Slum)Dog Star, the Reborn Sun and the Scarlet Women (UPDATES)

Beam me up, Horus.

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.

Speaking of astronaut theology, we recently looked at India and Hindu polytheism in relation to disclosure and AAT, and sure enough, the Ausurs reflected that in quite nicely.

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...

UPDATE IV: Did you catch the "green sun" motif in the new 17" Mac Notebook ad?

UPDATE 1641 EST: Will wonders never cease? The Iraq National Museum reopened today. More on that at midnight.

Oscar Blogging on The Solar Satellite

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.

"Miss Mason for 2009"

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.

Memestream: Sexy Shapeshifting Socialites (UPDATED 2023 EST)

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.

Here is a brief synopsis from the wiki:

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.

Tying into the 007 syncs with Klum and the Hearsts, Schell was herself a Bond girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Space:1999 was filmed at Pinewood Studios in England, where the Bond movies were filmed (as well as a whole host of other Synchromystic delights).

Bela Lugosi, whom Martin Landau portrayed in Ed Wood, was himself born in Austria-Hungary.

Schell was born on the 17th of July (7/17/44) 17 and 44 add to 8, and 17 is the 7th prime number. She's also 1.70 meters tall.

Schell starred in a British mini-series called The Search for the Nile, which was narrarated by James Mason.


The flag of the Austo-Hungarian Empire featured both the double-cross of Lorraine, but also the double-headed eagle now used by the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (among others).

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.

I'll let Uncle Carl have the last word:

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 intern Chandra 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.

Michelle Obama spoke recently before the Dept. of Agriculture, urging the spread of community gardens and offering a magnolia tree sprout to employees.

And wouldn't you just know it, there's a Magnolia FA&AM Lodge in Washington DC.

Chandra is the name of the Hindu moon goddess and also the name of the X-Ray telescope at Harvard University, Masonic stronghold and Barack Obama's alma mater.

Levy' last-known whereabouts on May 1, 2001 were Grove 17 in Rock Creek Park.

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.

Furthermore, some believe that the Norse name for the gods (Aesir) is derived from Ausur, or 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.

Seen From Space: Following the Memestream (UPDATES!)

The Skylon flying vibrator Spaceplane

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.

Amazing. Great catches here, guys.

UPDATE IV: What was I just saying about androgyny? "George Mason University picks drag queen as homecoming queen."

Note: In the next post, we'll see how obscure details can tie together seemingly unrelated aspects of the Memestream.

Memestream Addendum: T & A-liens (UPDATES)

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."

Valles was pronounced "Valis."

UPDATE: What would I do without my readers? James Ratte and Jay A both point us to Yahoo's headlining of a Popular Mechanics story entitled "6 Top-Secret Aircraft that are Mistaken for UFOs".

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.

Memestream: Secret Societies and Sexy Socialites

Can't we all be brothers?

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.

Speaking of secrets, Heidi played Bond girl Ursula Andress in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, and was a Bond girl herself of sorts, doing voice work for a 007 video game.

Nice blue-and-gold color scheme

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.

The Solar Satellite (UPDATES)

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.

UPDATE: Here's some info for you to process: "Court reverses ruling bringing 17 detainees to US." Pat points us to "Housing starts plunge 17% to record low in January" and "17-Year-Old Has Rock-Star Look and Golf-Star Game." Boy, Tuesday continues to reverberate.

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."

Sheesh, and I thought I had OCD.

UPDATE V: Mystery Lights Return to NJ on the 17th now up on the Satellite.

UPDATE VI: Soapie reminds us that the Pope (Heirophant, if you prefer) met with the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who spoke these immortal words at a recent college commencement ceremony:

“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?

UPDATE VII: I missed this in all the 17 excitement yesterday- Ahmadinejad calls for new world order:

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.

UPDATE VIII: Michael S reports that Saraswati Palin owes $17,000 in back taxes.

SpongeBob Goes Masonic for the 17th (UPDATE 2/18)

OK, I give up. Pyramids, Masons, All-Seeing Eyes on frickin' Spongebob. Brand new episode, premiering tonight. The 17th.

Watch the entire episode here and get back to me. I'm not sure I didn't hallucinate it.

SpongeBob SquarePants: Cephalopod Lodge

* 129.
* Season: 6
* Episode: 24
* First Aired: 2/17/2009
* Prod Code: 115B

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.

UPDATE: Here's dialogue from the "Good Neighbors" episode:

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'.

Celebrating the 17th (CONTINUING UPDATES)

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.


After visiting Denver, Obama travels to Phoenix. You know, on the 33rd parallel.

Am I hallucinating all of this?


UPDATE: Be sure to check out the Life on Mars online exhibit at the Denver museum site.

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...

Or the Gus Grissom connection, either. And StrangeEye posted a link to a Denver Airport video.

UPDATE V: For an excellent analysis of the Astrotheological origins of 17, read this excerpt from Echoes of the Ancient Skies: The Astronomy of Lost Civilizations.

UPDATE VI: Birds and Planes, redux: Plane survives collision with vulture in Fort Lauderdale.

Bonus factoid: Nekhbet was the vulture goddess of Egypt and was part of the udjat, or Eye of Horus amulet.

UPDATE VII: Jake has a new post up with the new Days Inn logo. Can you guess how many rays there are in that sunrise?

UPDATE VIII: Solar-power firm fired up about stimulus

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.

UPDATE IX: Oh, come on- 17 companies adopt micro USB phone charger standard?

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.

They're just trying to drive me crazy.

UPDATE X: James Ratte makes the catch- Barack to send 17K troops to Afghanistan:

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?

UPDATE XIII: Speaking of Masonic Martyrs, James catches this story: UK 'eyes' to hunt for other Earths:

"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.

UPDATE XIV: According to MSNBC, this was another 17-minute speech.

UPDATE XV: GM is getting in on the zany 17 hijinks:

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”.

Obama also mentioned the Space program in the same sentence.

Transformers: New Trailer

OK, so we go from a 9/11 situation to the pyramids in the space of a second. What more can I say?

Transformers syncs galore here. Again, duality, shape-shifting, aliens and on and on.

If vid gets yanked, click here.

Seen from Space: Slouching Towards Disclosure?

Another very big week in space and cosmic news, so let's dive right in...

ITEM: Honestly, what are to make of The Times of London- arguably the most prestigious newspaper in the world- running a headline like this: "Aliens 'may be living among us' undetected by science."

Which one of you said "conditioning process?"

UPDATE: As of 1855 GMT, the most popular headline on BBC News is "Alien life may exist among us." Note how the picture is of a deep ocean scene.

UPDATE 2144 GMT: The ocean memes continue with news of the Global Marine Survey.

ITEM: Then there's this - "New Artificial DNA points to alien life."

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?

ITEM: "There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy," a US conference has heard.

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: CNN has a weekly update of space imagery fed to it by the various space agencies. Weekly.

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.

"The Priest of Ra," Manly P Hall

Just saying, is all.

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

Check out the collections here.

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).

ITEM: In semiotically-related news, British and French nuclear submarines collided in the Atlantic. How the hell does that happen? And who would possibly benefit from that? From The Sun:

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.

ITEM: And then there's this- We looked at the New Jersey UFO flap last month. Well, guess what? There have been two earthquakes in that same area (Morris County) since those sightings. Earthquakes are very rare in NJ, and almost unheard of in Morris County.

Quite a coincidence, don't you think?

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.

UPDATE II: Strange Eye has a post tying together some of these strands on his blog called "Head's Up- Heaven's Junk is Falling."

Earth Akhet Addendum (UPDATES, of course)

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'"

Hathor Watch: Rihanna (Updates, Updates, Updates)

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.

Hathor was the goddess of sex, music and dancing.



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 VII: RihannIsis, like Will "Horus" Smith, has been the subject of frequent speculation on her sexual preference...


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