BSG-UN-ISS-NJ-UFO

On Tuesday, that Day of All Days, cast and crew from Battlestar Galactica turned the United Nations in a high-rent version of Dragon*Con. True to form, Guinan herself moderated while wearing an extremely odd scarf decorated with what looks like alien skulls.



All well and good, but not exactly Secret Sun, you might say? Oh, I'm not done yet. It turns out that Garret Resiman, one of the ISiS astronauts, appears as an extra in the BSG finale.

Reisman watched the original "Battlestar Galactica" series as a child and followed its recent rebirth, which retells the story of an immense space battleship as it protects a fleet of civilian spacecraft while fending off attacks from the robot Cylon enemy.

While he was in space, Reisman turned the lights down aboard the space station and tuned in to the new series via computer with the station's then-skipper, fellow NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, as Galactica's commander Bill Adama tried to keep his fleet together on the road to find Earth. The astronauts briefly spoke, while in space, with the show's producers Ron Moore and David Eick.

Interesting. But where was Reisman living when he was a child?

Science fiction, Reisman said, has a very real ability to inspire the public in real-life space exploration, though his passion was sparked by NASA's Apollo moon missions. Growing up in Parsippany, N.J, he watched Super 8 films of those missions until they wore out, then he spliced them back together and watched them again.

Oh, Parsippany- ground zero for the recent UFO/earthquake flaps. Fascinating. Even more fascinating that the mystery lights returned to Parsippany (or "Persephone," as reader Tommy rechristened it) on 2/17.

Speaking of wars in space, here's a very interesting article on the Space Arms Race and its implications for geopolitics. Funny how all of this seems to converge.

ISiS Spreads Her Wings on the Equinox

OK, let's hit the bases- Discovery is supposed to launch on Lincoln's birthday, is delayed until the Ides of March, when Caesar became Osiris. It then reaches ISiS on 3/17, accompanied by a strange, glowing orb. And what does ISiS do on the Equinox?

She spreads her solar wings.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Astronauts successfully unfurled the newly installed solar wings at the international space station Friday, a nerve-racking procedure that went exceedingly well and brought the orbiting outpost to full power.

The work was a highlight of shuttle Discovery's mission. Completed 220 miles above Earth, the new panels are the final pair of electricity-generating wings and should boost the amount of science research at the orbiting outpost.

Remember, we just had the Death of Osiris. Today is the Equinox, when the Sun begins to gain strength. Here is why Isis' wings are so important:

Isis is one of the only winged deities in Egyptian myth. She is sometimes representative of the wind, as in the legend of Osiris. One version of the legend tells of Isis using her wings to fill Osiris' mouth and nose with air. - touregypt.net

Ah yes, the newly born sun of Horus, conceived artificially by the Winged Isis. I swear, there are times when I wonder if NAZCA NASA isn't just a billion-dollar cargo cult...

AstroGnostic: Jacob Wrestles the Angels

As uncomfortable as it is for some of his fans and friends to admit, Jack Kirby was a true believer in AAT and intervention theory. The scope of his comics work from the early 70s to his retirement is unequivocal in this regard - the man was obsessed with gods from space.

So why is this important? Why do the beliefs of some old cartoonist who's been dead for 15 years matter now? Well, Kirby is one of the primary architects of popular culture today. Kirby's influence on comics is inarguable- as it is on superhero culture in general.

But so is his influence on Hollywood. James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas (particularly), Frank Miller, Quentin Tarantino and any other sci-fi mogul you can name today fed at Kirby's rich trough as kids. In fact, the quick cut/high intensity of action movies today comes directly from Kirby's Marvel work like The Fantastic Four. I see Kirby's influence all over video game design as well. You simply have to go back and look at pop culture before the Marvel Age and after, and the centrality of Kirby's imagination in the recreation of visual storytelling becomes clear as crystal.

And if Kirby is part of the essential DNA of pop culture, so then are his beliefs. You need look no further than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to see it- the entire tableau was simply a big budget replay of the first issue of The Eternals.

Remember- Spielberg and Lucas are the two of the most powerful men in Hollywood today, certainly from a creative standpoint. Even beyond the films they make themselves they have their fingers in countless pies through their production and technical interests.

More importantly, we have very strange indications of Jack Kirby's precognitive/psychic abilities, specifically in regards to events central to the Synchromystic worldview.

For instance:

• Depicting a Face on Mars 17 years before the Viking photos.

• Depicting a 2001 "Stargate" scenario 10 years before the film.

• Depicting a Saddam Hussein/Gulf Wars scenario in 1975

• Depicting 9/11 scenarios 17 years before the fact.

Given these synchronicities, I believe it's important to take his AAT obsession very seriously. We've looked at The Eternals, Devil Dinosaur, and 2001: A Space Odyssey in so far as explicit depictions of AAT, but nearly all of Kirby's work from 1975 on dealt with aliens, UFOs, interdimensional travel, time travel, genetic engineering and space colonization and on and on. But it's Kirby's 1980 Bible portfolio that we'll be looking at today, which is 1000% Astro-Gnostic at its core.

Sorry for the lo-res- doubleclick to enlarge

The first plate depicts God in the standard Sistine Chapel mode, an old, bearded white guy emerging from primordial chaos, accompanied by a heavenly host. So far, so good right? But this celestial being is remote, celestial- more like the Monad of Gnostic mythology than the engaged creator of Judeo-Christian dogma.

What we see emanating from the chaos with him resemble the Aeons. They come from the same source, but are in fact on their own trajectory, away from the Monad.

Here the Monad sees Earth and humanity as a ball of sin. Lust, greed, hate and other expressions of the Ego, which are separate from the cosmic reality of the Monad. It is a fallen state, the cosmic abortion...

Which the Monad then turns his back on humanity to contemplate non-Euclidean geometry- the other-dimensional interests of cosmic divinity. Mankind then begs and curse the Monad. But who takes his place in the stewardship of our tiny, insignificant planet?

Today's modern UFO's and Alien Contacts being reported have a strong similarity to the Ancient descriptions of the "anunnaki" Android Beings. When we look at the descriptions of our modern "grey alien", we can clearly see that they do not look like us, or the anunnaki. Rather, they look like the ancient humanoid depictions of Figurines. The majority of Abduction cases usually have a similar story to them in that the Aliens abducting them will perform medical examination and sometimes experiments having to do with human reproduction.

Is it possible that the Greys were created by the anunnaki as "Watchers" to oversee their experiments here on earth?- xfacts.research

Astronaut Theology: Anunaki 101

Phenomenon: The Lost Archives was one of those interesting shows we saw a lot of in the 90s on channels like TLC and Discovery. Hosted by Dean Stockwell, the series took on topics like HAARP, Jonestown, cold fusion and the Federal Reserve in a way we wouldn't see on commercial TV in the Bush years.

This episode is called "Genesis Revisited" and acts as a nice primer to Zechariah Sitchin's theories about Sumer, Nibiru and the Anunaki. Let me just clarify that I'm not a Sitchinite per se; while I find his work fascinating, I am not really sold on all of his conclusions. But I'm certain there are a lot of powerful individuals out there that are, which is why this entertaining distillation of Sitchin's AAT is worth a look.

Introducing the Solar Seminar

Things are moving so quickly that I'm finding it difficult to fit it all on The Secret Sun. I started the Solar Satellite and gave it time to define itself, which it has done as a headline news site. But I also wanted another outlet for more in-depth articles and posts. A while back I had an email exchange with Tracy Twyman, continuing our previous discussion on the nature of the beings that our ancestors saw as gods or angels. I wanted to pick her brains on Gnostic creation myths, and Tracy really went to town laying out her supernaturalist perspective on the nature of these stories and these beings.



But Tracy gave me so much I didn't want to stick it on a daily post and let it disappear beneath the fold. So after some deliberation I created The Solar Seminar, a blog for more in-depth analysis of the issues we've been looking at here. So the Secret Sun will continue with symbolic and semiotic discussions, The Solar Satellite will keep an eye on the news and The Solar Seminar will carry heavier works and will be updated less often.

Please check out "Tracy Twyman Speaks on Creation Myths, Gnostic and Otherwise." It's a lot to digest, so the article will be up top for at least a couple of weeks. Feel free to add your own thoughts to the discussion as well.

Secret Sun Classic: St. Patrick's Day (UPDATED)

It's St. Osiris, er, I mean St. Paddy's Day- don't forget to read (or re-read) The Not-so-Secret History of St. Patrick's Day!

Me, I'll be fixing up the boiled dinner for the brood and hoping that nothing too heavy is rolled out today. I gotta admit I had some pretty disturbing dreams last night. Too bad I don't drink anymore...


UPDATE: Michelle Obama has the White House fountain dyed green. I'm sure that's to celebrate her Hibernian roots...

UPDATE II: Quoting the above-linked post:

General George Washington issued a proclamation during the Revolutionary War, declaring March 17, 1780 a holiday for the Continental Army, then stationed in Morristown, New Jersey, in honor of the many soldiers of Irish ancestry and those born in Ireland. It was reported that this was the first holiday granted the troops in two years.

In this light, don't forget the recent earthquake/UFO activity in Morristown.

UPDATE III: Also, don't forget my childhood encounter with a leprechaun, which I also linked to on the Satellite.

UPDATE IV: Here is some tragic St Paddy's Day news- Natasha Richardson, wife of Liam Neeson and member of the Richardson/Redgrave acting dynasty has been declared brain dead after a skiing accident. Richardson first became known to American audiences in her portrayal of Patty Hearst, whose comrade-in-arms in the SLA Sara Jane Olson was released from prison today. UPDATE 16:58EST- Richardson not brain-dead, flown to new hospital. Hmm...

Lily Cole...or Indrid Cold? (UPDATED!)

"It depends on who is looking."- Indrid Cold responding to question about his appearance, in the Mothman Prophecies film

I'm not much of a UFO expert, in fact I merely poke around the fringes of UFOlogy to feed into my symbolic studies. My main concern is determining whether the evidence is compelling enough to possibly inspire serious interest in the topic by certain individuals and groups. And I think I can answer that question with a qualified yes.



My wife keeps running into a guy in town who from her description reminds me of the strange MIBs that John Keel describes in The Mothman Prophecies. I'm sure a lot of you have run into someone at least once in your life who doesn't seem to fit the expected parameters of an ordinary person, and perhaps left you with a very strange feeling that he or she was not quite human. The author of Raechel's Eyes (see above video) believed that she befriended one of these people. And if there are such creatures, my vote for possible human-alien hybrid goes to the supermodel Lily Cole.


Although hypnotically beautiful, there's also something kind of disturbing about her. She looks like an anime wetdream come to life. Etymologically, we also have a link to the owl-human hybrid-demon-goddess Lilith, who we discussed last week. Strangely appropriate in this instance.


It's worth noting that Lily is appearing in Sally Potter's new film Rage, which has garnered a degree of notoriety for casting Jude Law as a trannie. This would make perfect sense, seeing how gender-bending and alien theorizing seem so contiguous these days.

Note that she plays a character named "Valentina" in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and plays Alice in Marilyn Manson's upcoming film on Lewis Carroll. Pretty strong semiotics there, you ask me...


UPDATE: Well, if you thought Lily Cole was alien-looking, take a look at Gemma Ward...


Or, God help us all, Masha Telna...

I used to work in midtown Manhattan, and my friends and I used to lunch at Bryant Park. There was some big agency on 41st St, so I used to see models all of the time. I would see them down near Madison Square when I was working in the toy industry, too. When you see these girls up close, you are struck by their otherness, as well as their existential asexuality. I can only imagine what these girls we're talking about today look like in person...

Whatever you do, please dig into the comments section for some amazing information from Secret Sun readers...


UPDATE: Masha's eyes reminded me of Elizabeth Fraser, star of the Not-Quite-Human series of rants...



UPDATE II: Remember this? Thanks to Donnie.

Oscars Update: The Semiotics of Celluloid

I've been very busy with work, but I wanted to do an Oscar follow-up. Esoteric themes seem to multiplying in Hollywood at an astonishing rate, and the follow-up projects we see this year's winners involved in reflect this trend.


Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel is slated to star in M. Night Shayamalan's live-action adaptation of The Last Airbender, which is rife with mystical and occult themes (like nearly everything else on kids TV these days).

Sean Penn and Brad Pitt are slated for an upcoming film called The Tree of Life. It's Zechariah Sitchin's contention that the Tree of Life we see in ancient Mesopotamian art is actually a corrupted depiction of a DNA helix. Speaking of which, there's also the Tree of Life in the Kabbalah, but has little visual connection to DNA.

After The Reader, Kate Winslet starred with Leonardo Di Caprio in domestic melodrama Revolutionary Road. DeCaprio is reportedly attached to Christopher Nolan's mysterious project Inception, which is described as "a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind." Hmmm. Winslet is not attached currently to any announced projects, but after Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind she doesn't need to be.


Heath Ledger's next and last film is the occult extravaganza The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Robert Downey, Jr. (who actually deserved the award and would have won in a landslide had not Ledger died) has full slate of heroics ahead, playing Sherlock Homes as well as Iron Man in two different pictures.

Penelope Cruz will be in a CGI film with Nic Cage and will also portray a character named "Magdalena." For the semiotic hat-trick she'll be also be in a film called Nine.

Best Director Danny Boyle actually had two films premiere in 2008. One was Slumdog Millionaire, the other was Alien Love Triangle, which starred Kenneth Branagh, Courtney Cox and Heather ("Hathor") Graham. In the film Branagh plays a scientist whose wife is in fact a genderbending, green-skinned male alien (are there any other kind, really?). Originally made in 2002, don't be surprised if this re-emerges as a feature sometime in the future.

As discussed earlier Boyle's previous film was Sunshine, a 2001-analog in which the Sun is resurrected. Pretty hardcore in the symbolic realm, to be sure.

Benjamin Button director David Fincher had previously directed Zodiac, the poster for which made me wonder if there is in fact some kind of Stargate symbolism connected to the Golden Gate Bridge (besides this, I mean). His next project is a film tie-in to Heavy Metal. Enki Bilal's Immortel Ad Vitam might seem to make any further adaptation of Heavy Metal redundant. It certainly makes the depressing Heavy Metal cartoon from 1980 redundant. More on Immortel in the near future.

WALL-E director Andrew Stanton is attached to a planned film version of Edgar Rice Burrough's occult superhero John Carter of Mars, which was Jack Parsons' favorite pulp character.

Speaking of the Oscars, I had a "When Mythworlds Collide" moment watching How to Lose Friends and ALIENate People when I saw Simon Pegg, Megan Fox and Gillian Anderson sit down to dinner. Pegg is slated for the new Star Trek remake as Scottie, Fox will be in the afore-mentioned Transformers sequel, which reportedly borrows heavily from the ancient astronaut storyline in The X-Files.

In the film, Fox's character wins an Apollo, obviously modeled on the Oscars. What caught my eye is that Apollo is not modeled on any version of Apollo I've ever seen, but on AT&T's Golden Boy, himself an incarnation of Mithras. Fascinating choice if imagery there, which surely went over the heads of the handful of people who saw the film. But par for the course in this reality paradigm we find ourselves immersed in.

Speaking of which, you may be wondering where all this Mithras stuff is coming from. Well, we'll be looking into that very soon and I think it will tie everything together.

Secret Sun Picture Parade: Cybele Rising

Back in May, we looked at the fascinating architecture around Columbus Circle in New York, particularly the Time Warner building and the so-called Maine Memorial, a breath-taking depiction of the ancient goddess Cybele, the Magner Mater of the Roman Mysteries.

Although contemporary critics were puzzled, the statue of Cybele symbolizes the female component of the Masonic superstructure (of which Freemasonry is just a very small part, remember) that was extremely active in Manhattan while the city was being built into a (temporary) world headquarters. Since the Masonic systems all ultimately derive from the warrior cult of Mithras, we should look for the Great Mother (whose cult Mithraic wives joined) where ever we see the footprints of the Invincible Sun, and Columbus Circle (ostensibly named for one of history's most enigmatic explorers, now linked to the Templars) is no exception.


Or here. CNN is owned by Time Warner, so this headline about intramural power struggles at NASA takes on added resonance with its prominent black statue of Cybele. If you've never been on the Columbia campus, you should Google Earth it, since it is a neat simulacrum of an ancient Roman metropolis. Note the convergence of symbolism here- Cybele, NAZCA, "watchdog"- get used to them, since they will be the lingua franca of our militarized Star Trek future.

Here's a fascinating convergence of symbolism from Yahoo News- a family living in a cave reminding us of the Mithraeums (which were ritual caves), a shooting spree in Samson, AL (Samson being a Hebrew hijacking of Hercules, who also lent parts of his identity to Mithras), a typically imperial Washington landmark, and what's this? Elle McPherson's dress being a top headline? How is that considered news?

Well, perhaps it's because Cybele's own dress was green. McPherson certainly got my attention in the 1994 film Sirens (which resonates Sirius) and if you saw that film you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Scholars now agree that the Purim story, in which Esther and Mordecai free the Jews from the tyrant Haman is in fact an appropriation of the Babylonian Winter Festival, in which Ishtar and Marduk free the earth from the grip of winter.

This picture is from a Purim celebration in Israel, where high school kids cross-dressed. This corresponds neatly with ancient priests of Cybele (often identified/combined with Ishtar), the Galloi, who were cross-dressing eunuchs. Note the 89 (17) and twin 5s, resonating the 5-pointed binary star of Sirius.

Strangely, TV host Jimmy Kimmel showed up in drag on The View on the first day of Purim to discuss his breakup with Sarah Silverman (Sarah derived from another Magner Mater, Saraswati, mother of the Vedas). This was shot on the Disney lot in Burbank, unsurprisingly.

Here's another remarkable image from the Mouse Factory, for the 3/9 episode of superhero drama Kyle XY. A girl being initiated into the Solar mysteries, as we all are these days? Speaking of the Solar mysteries, get an eyeful of this image...


Since literally trillions of dollars are spent (including hundreds of millions of your tax dollars) every year maintaining the Christian corporate enterprise, it's no surprise that new, more mystical forms of the faith are coming to the fore as the Evangelical subsidiaries begin to fail. One of these new projects is the Order of Christ Sophia, also known as the Centers of Light.

This group is in the news since they are trying to purchase a $1.6 million mansion in Quincy, MA (again, my old stomping grounds). How is this group, who hardly anyone has heard of, getting the money for this building? How does this group have other, similar buildings across the country?

Well, how do any of these groups find the money? Who was financing the 70s cults, or the 80s Religious Right groups, or the 90s megachurches, or any of these other religious groups that pop up out of nowhere with vast, well-appointed and pre-fabricated infrastructures?

Who, indeed. Mysteries within mysteries...

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.