Knowing: Addenda

ITEM: For those of you who haven't seen The Forgotten, here's the trailer. Note that yet again we see aliens connected to memory and amnesia and identity.

ITEM: Spoiler alert: Here is the final scene from The Quiet Earth, for those of you that have seen both Knowing and this film. See if you pick up on the similarity.

ITEM: Here's an interesting story on Nic Cage's now-defunct comic series, Voodoo Child:

There aren't many bigger comic book geeks in Hollywood than Nicolas Cage. After all, the guy has a tattoo of Ghost Rider on his arm. But when executives at Virgin Comics approached the actor about starting his own line of books, Cage shrugged. "I said I didn't have any ideas, but I told them my son might," Cage says.

So Cage and his 16-year-old son, Weston, brainstormed an idea that would become Voodoo Child, a six-issue illustrated series that hits shelves July 11 and marks one of the first launched by an A-list actor. Hollywood directors long have been fans of comic books. Those who have written Marvel and DC stories for years include Kevin Smith, Bryan Singer and Joss Whedon.

Voodoo Child is different because it's "more spiritual than, say, a Superman or a Batman," Cage says. "That's always been more effective because there's more believability to it." The stories will be rooted in some real-world scenarios.

Set in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Voodoo Child tells the story of Gabriel Moore, a child murdered in the antebellum South by secessionist soldiers. Just before dying, the boy puts a voodoo curse on his soul, leaving him in a netherworld to cope with gang violence and abductions in the modern-day city. Weston says he had tinkered with the idea since seeing hurricane damage in New Orleans, where he and his father lived part time for years.

ITEM: I was struck by the synchronicity between the Plymouth Air crash in Knowing and the connection between National Treasure and Flight 1549. Here's the link for the post making those connections.

ITEM: And on the Google alien tip, a fleet of UFOs flying in formation photographed over Bethnal Green.

Knowing and the Alien/Solar Revelation

WARNING: THIS REVIEW IS NOTHING BUT WALL-TO-WALL SPOILERS!


Well, I saw Knowing today, and as I write there is an extremely violent thunderstorm going on outside. I hope the power doesn't go out, because it's certainly an appropriate backdrop to express my thoughts on the film.

I went into the film nursing a preconception, that this was some allegory of personal Gnostic revelation for John Koestler (a tribute to Arthur Koestler, author of The Roots of Coincidence), and that what I would be seeing would feed into this notion. I still see this film as highly symbolic and inherently Gnostic, but by no means pertaining to any individual's personal "awakening." I started to wonder if this is a metaphorical depiction of an ongoing - or oncoming - agenda, as it ties into so many strands of meaning I've been puzzling over for the past several years, and certainly since 9/11.

Though I was surprised by how much I liked it, Knowing is derivative as hell. There is a scene where the Whisper People (the alien angels) show young Caleb Koestler (played by Chandler Canterbury, who also plays the young Benjamin Button) a vision of the oncoming solar apocalypse and it's nearly a shot-for-shot tribute to the alien apocalypse in The X-Files episode, "The Sixth Extinction: Amor Fati. "

The ending of the film- where children are taken from Earth in order to seed a new world- reminded me of the alien Rapture in "Two Fathers/One Son," the mytharc episodes that preceded "The Sixth Extinction." Visually, the scene reminded me of the cult classic film, The Quiet Earth. The climax of the film recalls Deep Impact. And those of you who saw The Day the Earth Stood Still will pick up a lot of that vibe in Knowing, though it's a lot better than that preachy mess.

Reviewers have compared the Whisper People to the Strangers in Dark City, but they reminded me more of the Friendly Man in The Forgotten (a film that was originally set in Boston). Knowing takes a lot of its ominous mood from The Forgotten, which itself borrowed liberally from The X-Files. At the end of the film the Whisper People morph from mopey goths to looking very much like the robots at the end of AI (but also reminded me of the light beings that Tracy Twyman mentioned in our first crossover).


The plane crash scene is pretty tough to watch, and reminded me of two other Ten Thirteen milestones- "Tempus Fugit/Max" from the fourth season of The X-Files, and "The Innocents" from the third season of Millennium (which we looked at in the "Grill Flame") post.

(Real time note: Not only do I hear thunder, now I hear sirens)

I was also struck on a personal level, seeing that the entire film takes place in my old neck of the woods, that being 42º latitude 71º longitude, which we see repeatedly on GPS. I did notice that my old hometown of Braintree was lit up like a Christmas tree in the satellite photos during the opening credits (I wonder how much of that was being generated by the monstrous South Shore Plaza, the mall where the exteriors for Paul Blart: Mall Cop were shot).

The crash of the Plymouth Air jet seemed highly symbolic to me, since it was at Plymouth where corporatist Calvinism was imported into the New World (as were the Knowles family, incidentally). I've written about the strange, counter-intuitive syncs surrounding Plymouth and the Mayflower, and they certainly tied directly into this film.

Easter eggs are pretty redundant in a film like this, but I did catch a few:

• The subway disaster at Lafayette St (an obvious 9/11 allegory) claimed the lives of 170 people, not 81 (that was the plane crash). Check out Loren Coleman's post on Lafayette and "the Fayette factor" for deep background.

• And what's 17 without a 33? The last two disasters were predicted to claim 170 and 33 lives (although 33 wasn't quite accurate).

• Koestler's wife Allison died in a hotel fire in Phoenix. That's the kind of obvious sync we see when they are put in a film intentionally.

• Rose Byrne (Byrne=burn, more fire symbolism) is named Diana and dies in a car crash, as did her royal namesake, who was "England's Rose."
  

• Diana's identification with the Moon draws back to themes explored in Dark City- the lunar, monotheistic traditions battling the Solar, fertility ones. Interesting to note that Diana was going to disobey the aliens and take the children elsewhere, therefore opposing the Solar/alien revelation.

• Most of the action takes place in Lexington, where the American (read: Masonic) Revolution began. Lexington split off from Cambridge in 1713.

• When we meet Koestler's father, he is standing next to a very strange sculpture of a roaring lion, that looks very much like Aion (Deus Leontocephalus) from Mithraic iconography. Given the symbolic thrust of the film I don't think this is accidental. Since we are looking at Synchronicity, it should be noted that Aion was of particular importance to Carl Jung.

• At the end of the film we see the children on their new alien world, merrily skipping through fields of grain with their white rabbits (la la la, everyone on Earth is dead, la la la). Since we're coming up on Easter, it's worth noting that rabbits or hares are sacred to the Magna Mater, whether you call her Eostre or Ishtar or Astarte or Inanna or Isis. More ancient fertility symbolism in sci-fi, where it shouldn't belong.

• As others have noted, Caleb and Abigail (name on loan from National Treasure) run towards the Tree of Life, which we've been looking at in connection to ancient depicitions of the DNA helix. That entire tableau seems entirely symbolic to me.

• Since Sirius/Canis symbolism is becoming almost mandatory these days, it should be noted that Caleb also means "dog" in Hebrew.

• I couldn't help but remember that I had an ear infection when I had my leprechaun hallucination when I saw Caleb's hearing aid, which was a plot point in his own anomalous encounters.

• Exhibit A in Bible UFO literature- the wheels of Ezekiel- show up. Again, this ties into the "Sixth Extinction" storyline in The X-Files, since the quote was a linchpin when the AAT storyline was picked up again in "Providence/Provenance."

So yet again, aliens at the multiplex. I was expecting this film to be an exploitative scare-a-thon, but the world destruction seemed entirely metaphorical to me. I've been puzzling over this strange nexus of Solar symbolism and alien revelation for quite some time now, and I'm still always stunned when I see it play out before my eyes on screen. Maybe more so than if I hadn't been aware of the history and importance of these memes.

Koestler crowned with Sol, while the Green Sun keeps its own counsel

Although it's been reduced to a staid cartoon by scholars and opposition propagandists, the Solar religion is extremely complex, extremely symbolic and incredibly weird. I've been struggling with a post on Mithraism (that I hope to have up soon) that will prove just how alien - in the truest sense of the word- the Solar religions are. Last spring I began to suspect that the Sun in question is not our friendly old Sol, but an alien sun that some people throughout history have believed is of particular importance to human existence.

The giveaway for the symbolic nature of the end of the world scenario was given away for me when Koestler (representing technocratic reductionist materialism) and his pastor father (representing corporate supernaturalism) embrace and then are consumed by the solar flare. It struck me that both our sciences and our religions would be absolutely devastated by alien contact, no matter how hard we may see the priests of these institutions back-peddling in the media lately. Not that they would be destroyed, but they would have to completely start from scratch, just as the biosphere would after the kind of inferno we see depicted in the film.

So what does that mean today, when alien themes dominate in Hollywood like never before, UFO sightings are at an all-time high, and the Vatican and NASA are trying to figure out how humankind would respond to alien contact? This film could be pure fiction (in fact, let's just assume that it is, even though we've seen recent scare stories about solar activity), but if there was any truth behind all of the omens and portents we are all looking at, Knowing is throwing gasoline on this smoldering fire.

But it's almost impossible for me to see this as a literal narrative, given the whimsical, soft-focus ending. Since solar symbolism and aliens seem to be so closely linked in movies, Knowing seems to tell us that large-scale contact would bring humanity to a standstill, and that only the very young would be able to fully adjust to the post-contact paradigm.

All well and good, but why not just make that a movie? Why cloak these themes in a disaster movie scenario? That's the sort of thing that arouses my suspicions. But so does nearly everything we are seeing nowadays. Aliens and disasters are standard fare for big budget movies. But there's something about the way we're seeing these themes play out lately that really makes me wonder.


UPDATE: Speaking of aliens as beings of light, here's a much better shot of that NJ alien that showed up on Google Street View that I wrote about last week.

Thanks to JR for the grabs.

Synchromystic Media Blitz

Lots of audio-visual activity in the Synchrosphere this week....



Jake Kotze does his first video in I don't know how long. This video is not narrated in Jake's inimitable style, but features a song from British pop group All Saints. Here's the synopsis:

Synchromystic video unveiling the emerging human subtle body (see Alex Grey paintings for more details). The vivified and realized, aureola, halo and chakras of the Stars.

Always interesting stuff. Jake has a wonderful knack for catching the icons/triggers in our new ritualized pop culture.

Jake's partner-in-crime Steve Willner has started a new podcast called Balmy Weather, apparently a riposte to Aeolus' Stormy Weather. Steve is a very capable media wizard, so this is definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Speaking of Aeolus, he has his last post and podcast up, which I mentioned on the Satellite. I hope people are not concerned- this is a self-induced alchemical transcending, presaging a new birth after a time spent in the purifying waters of the Omniversal Mind. Neil Kramer of The Cleaver fame takes part in the ultimate Storm, and links to it on his own site.

Also, don't forget that Henrik conducted a live show with Michael Tsarion on the ancient Brotherhood network and the second part of the archived show is up now.

I've overbooked myself on a host of different projects (that will be announced in time here) but I may start an occasional podcast or videoblog in the Summer. I don't want the Secret Sun to get stale, so I may pursue something along those lines.

All you Synchromystics and Psychonauts out there, let me know what you're blogging on or reading lately in the comments sections. Don't forget to include hotlinks.

The Age of Horus: Hancock, Part III

This is the long-overdue third part of the Hancock analysis. My apologies for the delay. You can read part one here and part two here if, like me, you totally forgot what the heck was going on in this series.

The original intent of the screenplay that Hancock is based on is that Hancock is Superman. Although the Jason Bateman character was originally named Horus, somewhere along the line he became Ray (Re, Ra). His character's son was a major character in the original screenplay but was not in the film, since the thrust of the script (no pun intended) became about Ray and Hancock's relationship.


Strangely, Hancock is clearly subservient to Ray, to the point of going to prison at his suggestion. This relationship may not make sense in a real-world context, but corresponds to the mythology, as we see in this interesting story:

When Ra reigned as king over Egypt he sailed up the Nile towards Nubia, because his enemies were plotting against him. At Edfu Horus entered the bark of the great god and hailed him as father. Ra greeted the hawk god and entreated him to slay the rebels of Nubia. Then Horus flew up to the sun as a great winged disk, and he was afterwards called "the great god, the lord of the sky". He perceived the enemies of Ra, and went against them as a winged disk. Their eyes were blinded by his brightness, and their ears were made deaf, and in the confusion they slew one another. Not a single conspirator remained alive.

I'm sure no one will be surprised that when I read "great winged disk," I think "flying saucer." And one can almost imagine some sort of sonic and laser weaponry inherent in this narrative. But this little coda to the story still cracks me up:

Ra afterwards visited the battlefield, and, when he saw the dead bodies of his foes, he said: "Life is pleasant."

This story has an interesting parallel in Hancock when the police summon Hancock from prison to take down a heavily armed gang of bank robbers. Ultimately this episode was orchestrated by Ray, who has a similar epiphany to Ra's when his plan to rehabilitate Hancock succeeds.

So this unlikely relationship between Hancock and Ray has its roots in the ancient literature, as does the tension between Hancock and Mary (read Isis-Meri), since Horus reportedly beheaded Isis when she took pity on Set.

Given the relationship to Superman (whose own god is Rao) it's should be noted that we also have a tantalizing Synchromystic link with President-elect Obama, a bonafide geek who has not been shy in identifying with Superman. I didn't catch any obvious alien subtext in Hancock, but he and Mary's longevity is certainly reminiscent of the immense lifespans of the Anunaki in the ancient literature.

HIDDEN HANDS?

So, yet another blizzard of weird correspondences to mull over. And a whole host of questions as to what we are actually looking at. Are these just easter eggs or still more evidence of the power of archetypes to tell their own story once set in motion? It could be a little of both.

There's little trace of any of this in the original Tonight, He Comes screenplay, and it's certainly not Vince Gilligan's style either. However, one thing I've learned is that screenwriting credits don't always mean much, and that there are often other hands on deck, often getting producer credit - or often, no credit at all.

Bat-George covers the bases in Batman and Robin (1997)

One of the producers on Hancock is Akiva Goldsman, who is no stranger to hidden messages and secret symbols, having written the screenplays for The Da Vinci Code and the upcoming Angels and Demons. In the Hancock DVD doc, Goldsman gets a lot more screen-time than Gilligan, and seems a lot more involved with the shaping of the narrative.

Goldsman is no stranger to superheroes either, having served as the credited screenwriter for the Schumacher-era Batman films, Batman Forever and Batman and Robin (the latter starred George Clooney, himself no stranger to sun god symbolism).

Who better to write this very interesting film?

POSTSCRIPT

Ancient space gods and all the rest of it makes me think of Scientology as well. And of course Will Smith is now BFF with Tom Cruise, High Priest of the Church of L-Ron. After wrapping Hancock, Smith even gave the crew gift cards for CoS "personality tests."

Pondering Cruise and the various scandals over some of the more prominent Scientologists reminds me of L Ron Hubbard and Jack Parsons, going off into the desert together in January of 1946 to do a little boundary crossing of their own, the so-called "Babalon Working." Both were members of the OTO at the time (though Hubbard later claimed he was actually spying on the group), though we have no clear record of what degrees Hubbard may have attained.

Hancock paints a giant red heart on the moon for Ray

Regular Secret Sun readers know that this occurred at the exact same time that the US Army was sending radar signals to the Moon from Fort Monmouth, New Jersey with Project Diana, the first known project to make contact with another celestial body (given Parsons and Hubbard's contacts with the MIC, it's possible they coordinated the Working with the radar test).

Interesting then to note that Hancock ends with the image of a giant red heart painted on the moon for Ray by Hancock.

Incidentally, both Parsons and L-Ron were closely associated with Aleister Crowley at the time of the Babalon Working, though I'm not sure how they themselves defined the Eye of Horus, or if that figured somehow into their summoning of the "Scarlet Woman."

How strange that these obscure rituals still reverberate to this day.

David Sereda on NASA, UFOs, Time Travel and Sirius

This is a very long and detailed video but offers some very interesting puzzle pieces for anyone digging into the UFO phenomena. David Sereda talks about the filmed encounters that NASA has had with anomalous objects and then proceeds to lay out his own theories on Stargates, time travel and alien contact. Lots of interesting questions raised and lots of interesting grist for your semiotic mill. I can't speak to the science, obviously, but Sereda certainly hits some very interesting bases in the overall mystery of extraterrestrial contact and its aftershocks.

Again, heavy stuff, often slow-going, but essential for UFOologists and other assorted psychonauts.

Wyrd New Jersey: ET Phone Home

Andre at The Alien Project links to another UFO story in the Telegraph, this time claiming "ET tracked down on Google Street View" with the sub-headline "UFO experts were left baffled after claims that ET was finally tracked down on Google Street View."

A misty shape, bearing a distinct similarity to the movie alien, was captured behind a bush next to a mysterious beam of light. The spooky snap was caught by Google image cameras in the town of Berkeley Heights in New Jersey. Some claim the image could be evidence of life in outer space while others point to a simple trick of the light.

The 'ET' alien was photographed on Diamond Hill Road, a semi-rural location about eight miles from Morristown Municipal Airport, New Jersey and 30 miles from the bright lights of New York City.

Malcolm Robinson, head of the Strange Phenomena Investigations, described the image as "the first of its kind". He said: "On close inspection the similarities with ET are obvious but it's hard to say with any certainty what exactly it is."

"Of added interest is the strange beam of light to the right, which I cannot explain either. "This picture is the first of it's kind, as far as I'm aware, in that its been captured on Google's new Street View technology.

The beam is nothing new to Secret Sun readers, since we've looked at the Heavenly Beam icon in several different posts. And strangely enough the E.T. film came up in Wednesday's post. But the Synchronicity here goes even deeper.

Diamond Hill Road is a very interesting spot for this image to be found because it connects to the entrance for the old Bell Labs compound in adjoining Murray Hill, where the transistor was somewhat mysteriously developed shortly after the Roswell incident in 1947. I know this road well since I used to pick my wife up there when she worked for Bell Labs (don't get excited, she was just a secretary), which became Lucent Technologies and is now Alcatel Lucent (Previously to working at BL/LT she worked at the old AT&T where the giant Mithras statue was located).

How ironic that ET is snapped right near where phone technology is developed. And of course, anyone who listened to my last appearance on Red Ice knows what I think about the whole transistor issue. And I'm not alone in this suspicion:

Much more recently, stories began surfacing about what the Army or Air Force supposedly did with the downed Alien Spacecraft in August, September and October of 1947. Nuclear Powered Engines and Advanced Communications and Computing devices, all of which were a hundred years beyond post-World War II technology, were taken from the Alien wreck and purportedly made their way to The Bell System's "Bell Laboratories", then located in Murray Hill, New Jersey -- it has been alleged. There, they were studied, dissected, microanalyzed and pieces tested. One piece was supposedly found to have unique potential, an Alien switching device composed of Silicon and Arsenic, arranged in a microscopic array much more complicated than even now have been assembled by Humankind, hundreds of years ahead.

The Alien device purportedly became the priority focus object of Bell Labs' and The US Department of Defense's analysis and scientific research. It was discovered by the researchers, that the unusual electronic Alien device could act as both a high speed electronic switch and as an Amplifier. They decided to call it the "Transfer Resistor", because it could be made to resist or accept power flow at much higher or lower currents than were applied to it, depending upon unique application of electron flows.

And all of this is hot on the heels of the UFO and earthquake activity in adjoining Morris County.

Three months ago, police in nearby Morris County, New Jersey, were alerted to a series of unidentified flying objects hovering over the area. Dozens of residents watched on in awe as five flickering red lights moved gently across the night's sky.

Local resident Paul Hurley, a pilot who works at Morristown Airport, said: "I've been in the aviation industry about 20 years, so I knew they weren't airplanes"

Fox Mulder, thou art revenged.

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre

This is yet another post I've been working on for weeks. The connections kept multiplying and I finally had to bring it into focus. And to think it all started as Satellite news story on an upcoming low-budget film...

2009 is the Year of the Alien, innit? Well, at least in the movies. X-Files producer/director Bob Goodwin goes old-school with his tribute to classic BEM sci-fi with Alien Trespass. Goodwin enlists John "Anubis" Doggett (aka T1000, aka Robert Patrick ) and Eric McCormack (Will of Will & Grace fame) for the invasion, as well as the delightful Jenni Baird, who added a bit of smolder to the last season of The 44oo. I'm sure it's not intentional, but the subject matter and the time period make this a nice companion piece to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

X-Files Lexicon has an amazing interview with Goodwin up now. In it Goodwin discusses his time producing the first five (and most essential) seasons of the show. Interviewer Matt Allair also lands an amazing scoop from Goodwin, who reveals that the primary inspiration for The X-Files distinctive look was the Italian wild man/artist Caravaggio:

My biggest role in the beginning was to get a concept based on what Chris had been talking about, and how we wanted to go forward, so we put together the people--the team that were able to do it--and to guide them as to what we wanted. I remember for the look of the show, which in those days was very unique for television, they didn't have shows that had so much dark and light.

One of my favorite artists, a guy named Caravaggio, who was probably one of the most innovative and creative artists ever. He came at a time in the late 16th Century, early 17th Century when most art was colorist or mannerist. He was the first to start using real dramatic source light...So I pulled a number of Caravaggio's, I got reproductions of them and mounted them all on a board, and that's kind of where we started. That was the reference of what we're going to go for, from there, the camera, the cinematographer John Bartley and other people were able to at least move forward with the concept.

Caravaggio was the Keith Moon of the Italian art world. He ran with some pretty interesting crowds, including the Velvet Mafia within the Vatican and the Knights of Malta. He also was accused of murder and had a knack for fisticuffs.

Derek Jarman, the late underground director, directed a kind of biopic on the artist in 1986 that introduced the one-woman Synchromystic factory Tilda Swinton (Orlando, Narnia, Benjamin Button, Michael Clayton) to the world. Amazingly it was also the debut of Sean Bean (Lord of the Rings, National Treasure). The artist is portrayed by Nigel Terry, who portrayed King Arthur in the classic 1981 film Excalibur (which is one of Joltin' Joe Linsner's all-time favorite films).

Pan among the padres, from Caravaggio

Swinton became Jarman's muse and would later write an essay on Jarman's second feature film, Jubilee, which had John Dee magically transport Queen Elizabeth forward in time to 1977, just in time for QEII's silver jubilee and the Punk Rock Revolution. Incidentally, this was the first feature film soundtrack for U2 producer Brian Eno who would also write the score (with fellow U2 producer Daniel Lanois) for a film on the Apollo moon landing.



I always pay special attention these "firsts." Jarman's first film work was in Ken Russell's religious phatasmagoria The Devils. Russell would later direct Altered States, based on Paddy Chayefsky's must-read book (even though Chayefsky was so upset with the finished product he asked to take his name off the credits). That film would be the first leading role for William Hurt (of Dark City fame) and Blair Brown, who plays a female version of the Smoking Man in Fringe. Speaking of film firsts, Altered States marked the first appearance of Drew Barrymore, who rose to fame in ET, The Extra-Terrestrial. Bob Balaban of Close Encounters fame is also a major player in the film.

The basic story is that a Harvard professor believes that genetic memory is stored in the DNA and with the use of powerful hallucinogens and isolation tanks he would be able to travel back in time. The subplot was that he was a religious visionary as a child and lost his faith when his father died, and was trying to reconnect to God ever since. These themes are not well-explored in the film as in the book, taking away the character's motivation.



Even if Chayefsky hated it, Altered States is still a must-see. It's fascinating to me that Chayefsky saw fit to write the book after Network, in which he laid bare the depressing reality of the new world order (which isn't really new, seeing that Network came out in 1976- note that it too drinks from Caravaggio's well). In fact, Altered States is the first and only novel Chayefsky ever wrote (which makes him the second most unlikely psychonaut, next to Jack Kirby). He spent two years researching DNA, psychedelics and schizophrenia in order to bring this book to life.

From my standpoint it was time well spent, since that book hit me like a freight train when I read it. I even tried an isolation tank, which was a disaster since I kept getting the damn salt water in my eyes. I still think about getting a tank- a good one- if I ever have a few thousand bucks burning a hole in my pocket. That's how hard that book hit me.

It's interesting to note that like some more recent apocalyptic fiction, Altered States took place in Boston and had a professor as its protagonist. You see echoes of this in the Revelations miniseries (which also starred Secret Sun siren Natacha McElhone), Knowing, and particularly, Fringe.

Fringe creator JJ Abrams (again, the man behind the new Star Trek) has cited States as an inspiration for Fringe, and the Walter Bishop character certainly seems like an older analog of Edward Jessup. And to bring it all full circle, all three of these Altered States analogs were also influenced by The X-Files, which itself was also deeply influenced by Altered States- and Network.



The X-Files delved into themes explored in Altered States in the apocalyptic "Sixth Extinction" storyline. In the first part, "Biogenesis," the alien virus in Mulder's bloodstream is activated by exposure to radiation embedding in the rubbing of an alien spacecraft (that incidentally is an encrypted magic square).

The rubbing was the property of a Dr. Sandoz (heh), highly appropriate since it ultimately activates the deepest recesses of Mulder's brain, making him psychic and immune to the coming viral apocalypse. The storyline also reintroduced the Navajo shaman Albert Hosteen, who had performed the Blessing Way ritual when Mulder was nearly killed in a boxcar filled with alien corpses (in an episode directed by Goodwin). Somewhere, Terrence McKenna is smiling.

I've written on this storyline several times, since not only does it involve shamanism, psychedelic experience and ancient astronauts, it also began the Isis-Osiris symbology that I cut my Synchromystic teeth on. It's also going to be reintroduced to the movie-going public this spring when the next Transformers movie comes out, featuring Indiana Jones, Jr.

It's all too much sometimes. These strands of meaning weave in and out of seemingly-unconnected phenomena and create their own meta-narratives, which in turn reveal deeper levels of meaning to those who bother to pay attention. And the strongest connections always seem to coalesce around the same memes- gods, aliens, and shamanic experience.

Written in Stone: Hancock on Megalithic Structures

Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval don't espouse intervention theory, but to my mind cough up some pretty compelling evidence for it. A lot of the material in this video ties in with the recent Ancient Aliens doc but from a different angle. Either way, it's pretty astonishing once the facts are laid out.

My opinion may not count for much, but I think whoever built these sites did so that future generations would come to realize that only a people with very advanced mechanical tools and knowledge of the cosmos could pull this stuff off. And the increasingly shrill and desperate tone we are hearing from academics on these topics is proof enough that they are feeling the ground of certainty give way beneath their feet.

I truly believe we are on the verge of a complete revision of our ancient past. And these massive stone structures may hold the key to that. If so, it could go a long way in explaining why the iconography of architecture and stonemasonry have always been so compelling to the people within the power structure.

Indiana Jones and The Lost Tracing Boards of Gnosis

At this point, I think I could do an entire blog on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I've written about the film before (here and here) but there are so many layers of symbol and double-meaning, I don't feel like I've even scratched the surface. This post has been several weeks in the making - months really, it was supposed to be part of the WFC series.

It all started a while back when doing the Stairway to Sirius posts, and really got socked in the jaw by the whole angels descending a staircase imagery. I also found a variation on the Third Degree board that just struck me in a funny way. The standard board depicts a closed coffin...

...but this version depicted the coffin as open, and shows us the blazing five-pointed star of Sirius above it. But for some strange reason the image reminded me of this notorious scene from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull...

...where Indiana Jones escapes nuclear annihilation by hiding in a refrigerator that then is shot like a cannonball across the desert. Look at the rays emanating from Sirius from the tracing board- very similar to the blast of light from the mushroom cloud. And those evergreen branches you see on both sides of the fridge resemble the branches you see in Third Degree tracing boards (and at Masonic funerals). Looking at this image, it's hard not to see a man rising from his coffin, with some bizarre transmutation of base matter-type theme thrown in.

But what about the other tracing boards? We're starting at the Third Degree, is this yet another example of "reversal of time?" I looked at the Second Degree board. There are different variations on the board but you usually see a waterfall and a staircase.

Which instantly reminded me of the three waterfalls in Crystal Skull, which we see sometime after the atomic refrigerator scene. This too was one of the sequences in the film that put some people off for being too far-fetched.

So there's the waterfall, but what about the staircase? Or the pillars?

Here's another version of the staircase and waterfall. Note also that some Second Degree boards frame the staircase between Boaz and Jachin, the famous pillars of Solomon's Temple.

After Indy and his crew escape the waterfalls, they ascend a staircase towards an obelisk, which unlocks the door to the tomb of the gods (right after entering a chamber where the film's theology is explicitly spelled out, of course). Note the top of the stairway is framed by two columns, similar to the first Second Degree board we looked at. Interesting.


When the adventurers finally enter the tomb of the gods, we see yet more Masonic parallels. Cate Blanchett's character refers to the 13-piece variation on the Trinity, in that they are 13 figures who combine into one when revived. Very strange motif there (and we all know the importance of 13 in the Templar/Masonic tradition). Note also that the alien gods sit atop ziggurats. Stairs seem to be a very important motif in this film.

Cate also refers to them as a "hive mind," which recalls the Masonic beehive icon. These quotes from the 1724 tract, The Craft and Its Symbols, explain that particular symbol:

What Modern Masons call a Lodge was for the above Reasons by Antiquity call'd a HIVE of Free-Masons, and for the same Reasons when a Dissention happens in a Lodge the going off and forming another Lodge is to this Day call'd SWARMING.

The bee definitely is industrious. He works hard and tirelessly, not for himself, but for the swarm. He has a strength and knowledge of materials that cannot be duplicated. He works in complete cooperation, and without dissention, with his fellow bees.

Hmm, so there were two pretty interesting parallels to the tracing boards, some 13 action and the hive. Well, there are a lot of things going on in this movie- could this just be a coincidence? The way "Ox" (read: Serapis) carried around the skull caught my attention, as did the way the guardians of the tomb of the gods venerated it. Right there I'm thinking Templars and Baphomet. But then it got even better...

John the Baptist is a central figure in Freemasonry (the first Grand Lodge was established on the Feast of St John the Baptist in 1717), as well as other esoteric traditions. No less a luminary than Pope Pius IX called the Baptist "the Father of the Gnostics" and identified the Baptist as the messiah of the Templar and Masonic "heresies."

In the Bible, the villainess Salome had the Baptist killed against the wishes of King Herod. And since we are looking for reversal-of-time imagery here, it's fascinating to note that the villainess in Crystal Skull returns the decapitated head of the 13th alien, symbolically reversing an historical trauma.

And even still, this reverse-Salome dies a horrible death for her trouble. Pretty potent stuff here, almost like the payback of a long-held grudge. Interesting how the whole Cold War motif and the crazy action sequences distract people's attention from this blatant symbolism.

So we all know what happens after that, the aliens reconstitute and their ship takes off for the dimensional rift. Now, I suppose Freemasons will see Hope and Faith and Virtue descending to this mortal realm from the spiritual planes, offering enlightenment and awakening and fine feelings and all of that jolly rot, but I still see aliens descending from the solar system of Sirius. I always like to use this version of the board, since it looks like an old 50s sci-fi pulp cover of aliens deplaning off a glowing spaceship.

Once the aliens get ready to split, Indy and his family then ascend a staircase away from them, which really drives home that reversal motif. Note also that water is closely identified with Sirius in the UFO lore.

Veneration of the Alien Osiris, crucified on the Solar Cross

The reversal motif seems to show up a lot in symbolic narratives, but in reversing the Masonic icon-cycle, the message seems to be that the esoteric systems themselves are just a faint echo of the original revelation, which Crystal Skull makes crystal clear was alien contact.

Pretty potent stuff for the multiplex, brought to you by the two most powerful creators in Hollywood. And presented in such an outlandish way as to not be taken seriously by the masses.

Hmm, kind of like the old stories about the Men-in-Black in that regard...


NOTE- I decided to finish this post (I have dozens of posts in one stage of completion at any given point in time) after watching the History Channel's Von Daniken smoochfest, Ancient Aliens. It struck me that as we learn more of all of the megalithic sites - the enormous size of the stones, the incredible construction methods, the celestial knowledge encoded in them- that perhaps these structures were created precisely that future generations would realize that they were indeed built with the aid of an extremely advanced technical culture. How interesting when we then make that connection between these structures and the basic iconography of Masonry, free or otherwise, in this film and so many others.

Witch Mountain: The Dog is a Major Issue

We went to see Race to Witch Mountain on Saturday and were all pleasantly surprised; it's actually a nice little sci-fi romp. I had considered checking out Knowing after reading that it too is alien-themed (isn't everything this year?), but realized the missus wouldn't enjoy the violence and I wouldn't enjoy the cosmology.

I've done quite a few Witch Mountain posts already and don't have all that much more to add, but I was quite struck that Junkyard the dog is a "major" character in the film. After looking at Obama and Sirius during and after the election, it was quite striking to see Dwayne "The Rock Obama" Johnson driving to a UFO convention with Junkyard in the front and Seth and Sara in the back. I couldn't help but think there's some greater meaning there, but won't really be able to tell until I watch it a few more times. Aside from Junkyard, I didn't see much Sirius symbolism in the film at all.

The UFO convention subplot reminded me a lot of my beloved Galaxy Quest, but also reminded me of Dragon*Con and my musings on conventions as the new pilgrimages. I did find it interesting that Hollywood loves to demean and ridicule people who take UFOs seriously (like Whitley Strieber in the film) at the same time they depict aliens as a self-evident reality.

Aside from Johnson, Watchmen and Threshold star Carla Gugino plays Dr. Alex Friedman, who is probably an androgynization of UFO stalwart Stanton Friedman. Note that both Carla and Alex are he/she names, and that Carla literally means "man-woman."

Given that the Roswell crash and the mass sightings over Washington happened in the month of July, it was a kick to see Ciaran Hinds - who was the best Julius Caesar in motion picture history, hands down - playing an MIB. However, I thought there was a bit of a missed opportunity with the character- I thought he should have also been an alien spy looking to sabotage the kids' mission. It's interesting that they changed "the bounty hunter" to "the assassin" since the first trailer. Maybe Chris Carter cried foul.


As to the kids, Alexander Ludwig looks exactly like my cousin Andrew, so my wife and I found that extremely distracting. Things like that can take me out of the story, strange as it may sound. But I must say Annasophia Robb is quite a convincing alien. I kept thinking of the Lily Cole discussion as I looked at her manga-huge eyes.

Robb already has an interesting filmography, having appeared in Witch Mountain, Jumper, Bridge to Terabithia and an odious-looking propaganda-piece called The Reaping, which features Hollywood's most destructive and pernicious cliche, the demonic or demon-possessed child.

The image from the DVD cover caught my eye, since it tied into the classic image of Lilith, whom we've been discussing quite a bit lately. But it also reminded me very much of ancient portrayals of Mithras, whose possible connection to aliens and UFOs is on the verge of becoming a fixation of mine. And of course you gotta love "Anna-Sophia" for hitting both the Inanna and Gnostic memes. Keep an eye on this actress...

Looking at the trailer for The Reaping I wondered how many gifted children the world has lost to religious paranoia. This is why our stories are so important. Going from psychopathic, perverted, misogynistic filth like The Exorcist to pro-child, pro-individuation, pro-evolutionary memes in Witch Mountain, Harry Potter and The X-Men is a very encouraging trend in our pop culture. Hopefully the emerging new myths will inspire us to nurture gifted or otherwise unusual children, rather than the abuse we still see in backward, superstitious parts of the world today.

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.