AstroGnostic: Hoagland on the Shemsu Hor

Interesting stuff. As always, take away questions not answers.

Egypt, Egypt Everywhere: Night @ Museum II

David D brought up this film in a recent comment, which I had been studiously avoiding. It's still a rental- at best, and a RedBox rental at that- but check out this synopsis:

When the Museum of Natural History is closed for upgrades and renovations, the museum pieces are moved into federal storage at the famous Washington Museums... With a forwarded resume, Larry (Ben Stiller) becomes another caretaker at the Smithsonian, where Kahmunrah, an evil Pharaoh will come to life with the reestablishing of a tablet as a magical force in the museum bringing the old exhibits (Such as Theodore Roosevelt and Dexter) and new exhibits (like General Custer and Al Capone) back to life, and in conflict with each other. Larry enlists the help of Amelia Earhart, who he develops a romantic interest in, and together they try to put everything back in order.

Falls in love with Amelia Earhart, eh? Interesting. By the way, Amy Adams plays the androgynous aviator.



Some of you might recognize the plot to this film borrows from the basic premise of the old Mummies Alive cartoon, which ran briefly on kiddie TV from somewhere in the mid 90s or so. That in turn borrowed heavily from the Golden Age Hawkman, which in turn borrows from Bram Stoker's Jewel of the Seven Stars.

Speaking of all these reincarnated spirits, loved the bit on Sacagaewa in the trailer. Reminded me of the early days of this blog, when I looked at the interesting similarities between the golden dollar and Aleister Crowley's novel, which inspired Jack Parsons to perform the Babalon Working.


And hey- when did the Smithsonian change their logo to this? Looks like they too are hopping on the Solar Logos logo bandwagon. I hear all the kids are doing it...

Fringewatch: Alien Dreaming edition

Did you watch the season finale of Fringe? If not, you can do so here. The show took its time getting its act together, but seems to have constructed a fairly compelling mythology. It's always good to see smart sci-fi on network TV, but there's still something a bit distancing about it to me. Which is a bit ironic since it all centers on my old stomping grounds 42º 71º, and takes scads of bits from my all-time favorite TV show and one of my favorite novels (my grandfather and uncle were Harvard men, to boot).

But it could be that the writers are putting all of the pieces in place this season and will start to deliver in the next. If so, that's a pretty bold strategy considering that viewers- and network execs - seem to have the attention span of a 14 year-old Mountain Dew junkie these days.


I'm especially interested in Bosto-centric sync winks. I got a kick out of seeing homeboy Nimoy in the house, since his mother and my grandmother were friends. I'm hoping they'll set an ep in my old hometown next season, especially since it's the former home to the General Dynamics shipyard. I mean, how a show like this could resist using a town called "Braintree" as a setting is beyond me. As you can see above, it obviously hasn't escaped their notice...

Cheers to Soundless Steve for the heads-up.

Dawson's Trek

Well, I almost hate to say it, but this Onion video pretty much nails my reaction to the new Star Trek. I thought it was great fun - a highly entertaining and extremely well-produced thrill ride. Visually, this may be the best space opera to date. All the creatives involved seem to be die-hard fans trying to bring the concept back to basics and make it appealing for today's audiences.

But therein lies the rub, as some obscure Trek villain might say.

Hollywood seems to think that "today's audiences" have been dumbed down to the point that the only characters that are allowed to speak anything resembling proper English are either bad guys or androids. As much fun as the story is to this film, the kind of jokey, ironic fan-speak that you hear on the various Stargate or Joss Whedon franchises took me out of the story time and again.

Why does this matter? Well, the kinds of young, ultra-achieving military types we're supposed to believe these characters are simply wouldn't speak and behave the way these characters do, because these characters relate to one another like fans at a cosplay con. I realize you don't want them to be so earnest they're impossible to relate to, but I really needed to feel there were some stakes involved here. As exciting as this film looks, there is no trace of the gravity of the original series. The villain was especially casual. I can see wanting to escape that portentious villain cliche, but hearing something to the effect of "Hi Christopher, I'm Nero" didn't fill me with dread.

The cast looked like Dawson's Creek in space for the most part, most especially James Tiberius van der Kirk. The fact is that outside of Quinto as Spock and Pegg as Scottie, you could've gotten anyone to play these roles, simply because the amazing infrastructure Abrams and crew create around them is so idiot-proof. Millions of folks are going to see this movie and have a wonderful, good old-fashioned night at the movies, but I'm willing to be that no one's life is going to be changed by it.

The funny thing is that I've seen people bash Nemesis time and again writing about this new film, but in fact the new Trek grabs a boatload of ideas from the last TNG film. We have Romulans, a doomsday weapon, a planned attack on Earth, two incarnations of Trek icons encountering one another, a lost crewman on a desolate, dangerous planet, a captain held hostage and probably a ton of other bits I'm forgetting at the moment.

So this is Trek for the masses - or today's masses. I'm OK with that. To be honest, Voyager and Enterprise nearly extinguished my enthusiasm for the franchise. But the signals I'm getting from my tinfoil hat are telling me that maybe there's a reason to rejigger the concept for all of the Justin's and Courtney's out in the food courts of Anytown, USA. Here's what I wrote about the Trek weltanschuang a year ago:

Under the smiley veneer of humanism, politically correct pandering and New Deal-vintage liberalism, the Federation certainly feels like a socialist military dictatorship. At the core of the Federation and at the core of Starfleet is the presence of a expansionist philosophy (the Federation must grow to survive) and a Masonic, heirarchal world view. And these stories are all told exculsively from the point of view of elite military officers on spaceships armed with world-destroying arsenals.

Let's just say that the Trekkers you see milling around a Creation con might be perfectly nice folks, but probably not the targets of any potential social engineering messages embedded in big budget sci-fi. But certainly the high school jocks and preps attracted to this new age Trek might be. Of course, this is all just blue sky here, but there a few themes in this film that caught my attention:

• As in previous Treks, the message is clear- civilians are either trouble-makers or just plain trouble.
• Young people who can't fit into society need to be militarized, like Kirk and Spock.
  
• The best place for ambitious young people to make their mark is in the military.
• Even individuals in their 30s or so who can't cut it out there should try enlisting, like McCoy.
• Exactly as in Dark Knight, we see that the world (or the galaxy, in this case) is filled with psychotics whose mission in life is pure, mindless destruction. Only complete militarization can save us.
  

Now, don't get me wrong- this kind of thing has been part of sci-fi since Doc Smith's heyday. Sometimes you just have to accept the in-universe logic of these things. On the other hand, I was struck that Starfleet's vibe in this new Trek is more Starship Troopers than ever before, right down to the 30s vintage dress uniforms. If you were looking to get the youth pumped up for the militarization of space- or society, for that matter - this is a very good start. It will be interesting if any particular interests try to capitalize on the film's sucess for any kind of agenda in the months to come.


In the meantime, go see Star Trek and get yourself a big old bucket of popcorn. You'll probably have a blast. If you need me, I'll be up watching some old-school Quatermass with the missus.

Alien Dreaming, pt. V: The Mithraic Liturgy

The first four posts in this series can be read here

In this post, we will look at excerpts from the Mithraic Liturgy of the Paris Codex. This liturgy was part of a body of ancient Egyptian Hermetic writings compiled in the early 300s CE. The liturgy is filled with tons of uppercase glossolalia, which I've omitted. I also have included only the section of the liturgy believed to be the genuine Mithraic component- apparently there are some additional verses and spells tacked on follow the invocation.

There is some controversy as to whether the liturgy represents "orthodox" Mithraism, or some Hermetic variant thereof. But it certainly does present a pretty powerful personal experience typical of the Mystery tradition. Experience is the unique component that separates the Mysteries from other cults. And for some time, modern scholars have speculated that entheogenic compounds were the actual sacraments of these cults.

This is just a shot across the bow with this topic, but it might shed new light on the ancient Mysteries for some of you. As with the Gnostics, there is so much ridiculous nonsense floating around out there about the Mysteries, most of it written by biased individuals who have never read the actual history of these movements, never mind their texts.

If you read the text of the liturgy carefully, some very interesting themes might catch your eye. I've been agonzing over this post for some weeks now, but I thought the best way to present it was to let the ancient Mithraists speak for themselves. We can get into interpretation later.

I've also added some images from our modern mysteries to break up the monotony.

Be gracious to me, O Providence and Psyche, as I write these mysteries handed down for gain but for instruction; and for an only child I request immortality, O initiates of this our power...

...furthermore, it is necessary for you, O daughter, to take the juices of herbs and spices, which will to you at the end of my holy treatise which the great god Helios Mithras ordered to be revealed to me by his archangel, so that I alone may ascend into heaven as an inquirer and behold the universe.

"First - origin of my origin, first beginning of my beginning, spirit of spirit, the first of the spirit in me, fire given by god to my mixture of the mixtures in me, the first of the fire in me, water of water, the first of the water in me, earthy substance, the first of the earthy substance in me..."

I, sanctified through holy consecrations!-- while there subsists within me, holy, for a short time, my human soul-might, which I will again receive after the present bitter and relentless necessity which is pressing down upon me...

...It is impossible for me, born mortal, to rise with the golden brightnesses of the immortal brilliance ...Draw in breath from the rays, drawing up three times as much as you can, and you will see yourself being lifted up and ascending to the height, so that you seem to be in mid-air.

You will hear nothing either of man or of any other living thing, nor in that hour will you see anything of mortal affairs on earth, but rather you will see all immortal things.

For in that day and hour you will see the divine order of the skies: the presiding gods rising into heaven, and others setting.

Now the course of the visible gods will appear through the disk of god, my father...

...and in similar fashion the so-called "pipe," the origin of the ministering wind. For you will see it hanging from the sun's disk like a pipe.

You will see the outflow of this object toward the regions westward, boundless as an east wind, if it be assigned to the regions of the East--and the other similarly, toward its own regions.

And you will see the gods staring intently at you and rushing at you. So at once put your right finger on your mouth and say: "Silence! Silence! Silence! Symbol of the living, incorruptible god!

Then you will see the gods looking graciously upon you and no longer rushing at you, but rather going about in their own order of affairs.

So when you see that the world above is clear and circling, and that none of the gods or angels is threatening you, expect to hear a great crash of thunder, so as to shock you. Then say again: "Silence! Silence! (the prayer) I am a star, wandering about with you, and shining forth out of the deep...

Immediately after you have said these things the sun's disk will be expanded. And after you have said the second prayer, where there is "Silence! Silence!" and the accompanying words, make a hissing sound twice and a popping sound twice, and immediately you will see many five- pronged stars coming forth from the disk and filling all the air. Then say again: "Silence! Silence!"

"And when the disk is open, you will see the fireless circle, and the fiery doors shut tight."

Say all these things with fire and spirit, until completing the first utterance; then, similarly, begin the second, until you complete the seven immortal gods of the world. When you have said these things, you will hear thundering and shaking in the surrounding realm; and you will likewise feel yourself being agitated. Then say again: "Silence!"

Then open your eyes and you will see the doors open and the world of the gods which is within the doors, so that from the pleasure and joy of the sight your spirit runs ahead and ascends. So stand still and at once draw breath from the divine into yourself, while you look intently.

When you have said this, the rays will turn toward you; look at the center of them. For when you have done this, you will see a youthful god, beautiful in appearance, with fiery hair, and in a white tunic and a scarlet cloak, and wearing a fiery crown. At once greet him with the fire-greeting:

"Hail, O Lord, Great Power, Great Might, King, Greatest of gods, Helios, the Lord of heaven and earth, God of gods: mighty is your breath; mighty is your strength, O Lord. If it be your will, announce me to the supreme god, the one who has begotten and made you.

He will come to the celestial pole, and you will see him walking as if on a road. Look intently and make a long bellowing sound, like a horn, releasing all your breath and straining your sides; and kiss the amulets and say, first toward the right: "Protect me, PROSYMERI!"

After saying this, you will see the doors thrown open, and seven virgins coming from deep within, dressed in linen garments, and with the faces of asps. They are called the Fates of heaven, and wield golden wands. When you see them, greet them in this manner:

"Hail, O seven Fates of heaven, O noble and good virgins, O sacred ones and companions of MINIMIRROPHOR, O most holy guardians of the four pillars!

There also come forth another seven gods, who have the faces of black bulls, in linen loin-cloths, and in possession of seven golden diadems. They are the so-called Pole-Lords of heaven, whom you must greet in the same manner, each of them with his own name:

"Hail, O guardians of the pivot, O sacred and brave youths, who turn at one command the revolving axis of the vault of heaven, who send out thunder and lightning and jolts of earthquakes and thunderbolts against the nations of impious people, but to me, who am pious and god-fearing, you send health and soundness of body, and acuteness of hearing and seeing, and calmness in the present good hours of this day, O my Lords and powerfully ruling Gods!"

Now when they take their place, here and there, in order, look in the air and you will see lightning-bolts going down, and lights flashing , and the earth shaking...

...and a god descending, a god immensely great, having a bright appearance youthful, golden-haired, with a white tunic and a golden crown and trousers, and holding in his right hand a golden shoulder of a young bull: this is the Bear which moves and turns heaven around, moving upward and downward in accordance with the hour.


Then you will see lightning-bolts leaping from his eyes and stars from his body.


And at once produce a long bellowing sound, straining your belly, that you may excite the five senses: bellow long until the conclusion, and again kiss the amulets... And gaze upon the god while bellowing long; and greet him in this manner:

"Hail, O Lord, O Master of the water!
Hail, O Founder of the earth!
Hail, O Ruler of the wind!
O Bright Lightener...

So, here we have a two thousand year-old prayer from one of the ancient world's most powerful cults, which talks about a flying disk with doors that open and close, and is filled with "gods" who take people up into the heavens.

I think it's safe to say they didn't get these ideas from Buck Rogers or 50's sci-fi movies.

Mysteries within Mysteries, to be sure...

AstroGnostic: The Quatermass Conclusion

This is episode 1 of the 1979 series The Quatermass Conclusion (released full-length as simply Quatermass), and I can't seem to find the other parts online quite yet. But there's enough to chew on as Quatermass discovers a UFO cult in the British countryside that's being manipulated for sinister purposes.

I'm stunned- again- by Kneale's meticulous attention to detail, keen understanding of human behavior, and most of all- his prescience. This episode alone not only prefigures The X-Files, but 80s sci-fi films like Streets of Fire, The Road Warrior and Conan the Barbarian as well.

In many ways, this film also prefigures the Heaven's Gate cult: the end of this episode will give you chills. I bought the full-length DVD and will definitely review it in full detail here.

From imdb:

After the mysterious destruction of the new space station, young people find themselves drawn to a stone circle in England, and other locations around Earth. They believe they'll be taken to a better place by a higher power. Only Professor Quatermass realizes that the young people are being tricked by an alien power, who wants to "harvest" humanity. It's up to Quatermass to find a way to stop the deadly plans of the aliens.

More:

Civilisation is crumbling. Through the decay, Professor Quatermass searches for his missing granddaughter. Meanwhile an awesomely powerful beam of light is striking from space, each time apparantly transporting crowds of young people to another planet. But Quatermass and a young astromoner, Kapp, suspect a much more grisly purpose.

From the Google link:

Predictably rejected by an increasingly patronising BBC, this was one of the last thought-provoking dramas to be broadcast in Britain before Thatcher and her friends' clampdown on creative thought. John Mills stars as the eponymous Professor in 1979's Quatermass, the fourth, final and best of the celebrated television science fiction serials.

I might add that this series came out right around the same time as Jacques Vallee's Messengers of Deception...

Tying in Heaven's Gate to the alien/entheogen links we've been looking at, I recommend you take a look at Timothy Leary's 1973 tract Starseed, in which he waxes poetic about the Comet Kahoutek in ways not entirely dissimilar to Marshall Applewhite's prophecies of Hale-Bopp.


And- wait for it- The X-Files combined the cult suicide and drug guru memes in "Via Negativa," which centered on the Third Eye and psychic psychedelia. That episode co-starred Grant Heslov, director of the upcoming Men Who Stare at Goats, a sure-to-be instant Secret Sun classic about the Army's psychic war program, starring George Clooney and Robert "Oannes Anubis" Patrick.

Stairway to Sirius: Djoser, Tut and surfing the wake

OK, so you go to the Step Pyramid of Djoser to learn more about King Tut? Huh? The two were separated by 13 centuries. What do the two have to do with one another, other than that they were both Egyptian? Well, maybe not much on the exoteric level, but perhaps a bit more on the esoteric, symbolic level. Remember we had that "photo op" with the AF1BU buzzing around lower Manhattan?

Well, I wonder if maybe there is a deeper connection between the WFC and Djoser's necropolis after all, aside from the step pyramids at both sites, that is. There's certainly a connection between our new president and the Amun-lovin' pharaoh from days gone by.

Things have been relatively quiet on the Sirius front lately, maybe while all of the pieces are put into place to split up the country and sell it off to China and Europe, but I wouldn't bet that we've heard the last of the kinds of extremely high weirdness we looked at during the election.




I love how Zahi keeps saying that Djoser "was the first one on this earth" to do this or that. As opposed to his predecessors not on this earth? We're also reminded that Zahi went to college in Phila(e)delphia, which shouldn't surprise us. Though I don't remember; was that on the Edgar Cayce Foundation's dime or was that someone else?

The question must be raised: Does any of it have anything to do with any of us, really? Well, probably not intentionally. But with all of this symbolic and psychic energy being stirred up it's bound to have unseen after-effects. All of you psyche-surfers out there might find the wake from their space/ships makes one hell of a curl for your own journeys to alien shores...

Mulholland Dr. and the 17 Enigma

Maybe the simplest description I can offer of Synchromysticism is "the bleed-over of dream logic into consensus reality." The keys to this process are myth, symbol and co-incidence.

If symbol and myth is indeed the lingua franca of some higher function of consciousness, it could well be that manipulating that consciousness could certainly re-structure our reality paradigm. I'm saying not only our perception of reality, but even the causal order of that paradigm.

However, by investing yourself in this process you often find yourself living in a world governed not by reductionism and determinism, but by a real-time variant of dream logic. Not always a pleasant place to be, believe me.

Dream logic is David Lynch's lifeblood. Although some reviewers have dismissed Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire as jumbled navel-gazing, there are very simple keys in these films that unlock the mysteries. Even before I discovered these clues I felt the films made perfect sense, even if I couldn't quite nail it down. Knowing now what these films are about (at least what many people interpret them as, Lynch never makes any definitive statements on the films' meaning) doesn't demystify them for me, it does the exact opposite. With a friggin' unholy vengeance.

The film (released 10/12/01) gets its name from the famous Los Angeles street, which in turn is named in honor of William Mulholland, the LA water baron. Mulholland inspired Roman Polanski's 1974 film Chinatown, which starred Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston (who played the Mulholland character) and was based on a Robert Towne (Parallax View, Firm, Mission Impossible) screenplay. Mulholland's birthdate? 9/11/1855.

The film pretends to be a standard mystery: a would-be starlet named Betty (played by Naomi Watts) arrives in Hollywood to house-sit for her aunt, only to find a beautiful and mysterious brunette named Rita (played by Laura Harring) who is suffering from amnesia. Throughout the film there are disconnected subplots- a man who dreams of a demon living in a restaurant parking lot, a film director with the Kabbalist-sounding name Adam Kesher (meaning "connection," played by Justin Theroux) threatened by a crime boss, and an idiotic hitman who is looking for Rita. Sprinkled throughout are some old school Hollywood icons- Chad Everett, Lee Grant, Robert Forster, Ann Miller. Michael J Anderson (Twin Peaks, Carnivale, X-Files) also makes an enigmatic appearance.

Rita is looking for clues to her own identity, which leads her to an apartment of a woman who has committed suicide. Halfway through the film, Rita vanishes and a totally different story begins. Watts now plays a failed actress scorned by her glamorous but sadistic bisexual lover Camilla (played by Harring), who humiliates Diane by taking her to a party celebrating her engagement to Adam Kesher.

That's all I'll say for now. Let's run the number...

The apartment of the suicide is- yes, you guessed it - 17.


View Larger Map

Watts' characters are from Deep River, Ontario which lies smack dab on which route?

"Rita" takes the name from a Rita Hayworth poster. Hayworth's birthdate? The 17th.


Now here's where it starts to get interesting- when we first meet Betty, she's wearing a bright red cardigan. When Camilla dumps Diane, she's wearing a flaming scarlet dress. This color identification repeats itself throughout the film.

"Scarlet" and "17" take us to back to Jack Parson's old obsession- the Scarlet Woman, the Whore of Babylon from Revelation 17...

Is Lynch, the maverick artist, condemning the bitch goddess of Hollywood (like Rome, a city of hills) as the Whore of Babylon? That would be the obvious answer, but we don't see any further connections, obvious ones at least. That kind of mythologizing isn't really Lynch's style, and Camilla - the whore - merrily runs off with her Adam while jilted Diane lies dead in number 17. A detail-obsessive like Lynch wouldn't leave those loose ends dangling (though there a couple interesting scenes that might be interpreted as Diane riding a scarlet beast). We have to consider that this is bleed-over from the powerful subconscious contents Lynch is playing with.

And then we have this weird conjunction- Watts pregnant with Liev Schreiber, who played the Gregory Peck character in The Omen remake (released 6/6/06, which is Hollywood's idea of clever symbolism). Interesting connection back to Mulholland Drive, since The Omen is essentially a take-off on Rosemary's Baby, directed by Chinatown director Polanski.

Note that Watts' crown chakra is blocking CBS' Eye of Horus- we'll see that again in a bit.

If Hollywood is Lynch's Babylon (more likely it's his saṃsāra), it's interesting to note that Parsons' Scarlet Woman, Marjorie Cameron, played the Whore of Babylon in Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (which was re-released in 1966 with the subtitle, "The Sacred Mushroom Edition"). Anger later penned the Hollywood Babylon books.

In this light, the name "Diane" takes on added resonance connecting back to Parsons and his crowd.

What's a 17 without a 33? Laura Harring has a birthday on March 3. Watts would later play a Hollywood icon herself, the lover of the mighty Kong. Here she is atop 33rd Street in Masonic Manhattan in the King Kong movie poster. A strange reversal of scale takes place in the climax of Mulholland Dr., when Diane watches in horror as two tiny versions of the elderly couple she meets on her arrival in Hollywood crawl under the door at #17.

Remembering that William Mulholland's birthday was 9/11, we shouldn't forget the previous remake of King Kong, from 1976.

Minor details take on resonance- Robert Towne's adorable daughter, Ka-Hathor-Ein, plays Adam's assistant Cynthia (another moon goddess name). The actress' birthday is on the 17th, too.

Kesher's wife Lorraine dumps him for a pool cleaner, played by none other than Mr. Montana himself. Gene, pool...hmmm.

And speaking of genes and mushrooms, the hitman is played by Mark Pellegrino, who guest-starred in the X-Files episode "Hungry," which immediately followed the FieldTrip/Biogenesis/Sixth Extinction blowout (and was actually filmed between them).

Token XF geekery: "Hungry" was written by Hancock co-writer Vince Gilligan.



Then there's this classic Lynch scene- Adam Kesher's confrontation with the enforcer known as the Cowboy, played with inhuman intensity by Monty Montgomery, a non-actor who's the founder of this organization....



When I first began looking seriously into symbol and Synchronicity, I took a very deterministic view towards it. But as the evidence and the connections multiplied, I realized that I was holding onto a comforting fantasy rather than surrender myself to a process I could not understand, and thereby never hope to control.

Which is all just another way of saying that I think David Lynch might have a tighter grip on the true nature of reality than the rest of us do.

I'll let the Cowboy have the last word...

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre, pt. IV

In that Kirby 2001/mushroom/star travel story, the astronauts are transformed into light for the journey through the furthest reaches of space. Which is fascinating to me, since that concept is at the core of the X-Files Mythology's cosmology- the transformation of souls into energy:

From Sein Und Zeit:

Kathy Lee Tencate: "She was trying to tell you."
Mulder: "Tell me what?"
Kathy Lee Tencate: "She'd seen them."
Mulder: "Who?"
Kathy Lee Tencate: "The walk-ins. Old souls looking for new homes. Your sister's among them."
Mulder: "You can see them?"
Kathy Lee Tencate: "Yes. But sometimes it's very difficult because they live in the starlight."

Tencate- I love that. With Mulder playing the role of Demeter and Samantha his Persephone, who might Ten-Cate be?

From Closure:

Mulder: "These walk-ins — you say they come and take the children. Why?"

Harold Piller: "In almost every case the parents had a precognitive image of their child, dead. Horrible visions. I believe what this is, is the work of good spirits. Foretelling their fates. The fate the child was about to meet. A particularly violent fate that wasn't meant to be... which is why the spirits intervene transforming matter into pure energy. Starlight. But it's not what happened here."

see Robert Bauval's site for further elaboration

Which is triply fascinating, since this concept of soul travel comes straight outta Egypt- the Akhu of the Pharaoh which becomes starlight and travels the heavens with Isis and Osiris:

Conceived of sky, born of dusk.
Sky conceived you and Orion,
Dusk gave birth to you and Orion.
Who lives lives by the gods' command,
You shall live!
You shall rise with Orion in the eastern sky,
You shall set with Orion in the western sky,
Your third is Sothis, pure of thrones,
She is your guide on sky's good paths,
In the Field of Rushes.

This concept is also passed down to us in the tradition of the Astral Body, which was taught by people as diverse as Gurdjieff, Rudolph Steiner, Jung and Casteneda, though in a different context.

And in that great AAT propaganda film that no one will recognize as such, Dave Bowman's last words before taking his own cross-cosmos journey (ending with his reincarnation as the Star Child) was "My God, it's full of stars."

Sync Log: Alien Dreaming edition

What incredible timing- I had read about this, but had no idea how explicit it was until seeing this new Transformers trailer. You X-Files fans out there are probably gob-smacked as well. The artefacts, the symbols, the psychic powers.

Sam Witwicky: "I just had a full-blown mental meltdown in the middle of my class."

Diana: "He called me. I found him in a university stairwell. He could barely speak. He said I was the only one who'd believe him-- about an artifact."

Again- Shia LaBoeuf (birthday 6/11) appeared in the X-Files episode produced just prior to "The Sixth Extinction."

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre, pt. III

So many strands of inquiry have been coming together...


Like Chris Carter, Jack Kirby intuitively linked visionary experience to alien contact. In his astro-Gnostic opus in Devil Dinosaur, contact with interventionist aliens is preceded by a hallucinatory vision of a great beast swallowing the Moon, and of a great reptile whose body is made of pure energy and giant eyes flying in the sky.

There's also this eerie foreshadowing of the Stargate sequence in 2001:A Space Odyssey, drawn in 1958, but not published until after production had begun on the film. Contact with an alien artifact on the Moon transforms human astronauts into pure energy and takes them for the trip of their lives. Note the mushroom aliens in the bottom left panel.

When Kirby drew the comic adaptation of 2001, he subtitled this story, "The Ultimate Trip."


Way back in the dark ages of 2007, I looked at my first Kirby Komik, the immortal Kamandi #30. Quite a place to start, with this symbolically-charged Stargate image. I'm sure there were other stories at the time imagining inter-dimensional portals, but no one did it quite like Jack.

I suppose this is a good time to mention that Art Spiegelman called Kirby "an idiot savant obsessed with orgasm."


And, of course, that Kamandi story was entitled "UFO: The Wildest Trip Ever."



How appropriate then that The X-Files used the Kirby Kreation named "The Silver Surfer" to identify the young Gibson Praise as the missing link between humans and our ancient alien progenitors- the "young Karnak" who held the "secrets to the pyramids" and was "the key to everything in the X-Files" until Mulder had his own alien transformation into the psychedelic Osiris.

And it was all centered in the brain, the skull, the crown chakra. The veneration of John, Baphomet, Leto Atreides, and the "one who was lost," all pointing us to the (alien?) biocomputer residing in us all.

Are these are just random scraps from pop culture, or are they breadcrumbs forming a subconscious trail to a greater revelation?

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre, pt. II

In the first installment of this series- which I had not intended to be a series- we looked at the book and film Altered States, and its references to the work of John C Lilly. The premise of Altered States dealt with a Harvard professor who believed that genetic memory was stored in our DNA, a theory that's gaining wider acceptance these days.

I was reminded of this when re-reading parts of Picknett and Prince's The Stargate Conspiracy, particularly the afterword where the authors speculate on the connection of the ancient gods to shamanic experience, particularly that involving entheogens. Stargate is not up to par with their other work - the "conspiracy" is entirely circumstantial and speculative, and their critique of AAT and alt-history is numbingly parochial (and a bit petty) - but it tied into my own research on the historical connections of the ancient mystery cults to psychedelic compounds.*

Squint and tell me what that looks like.

I'm certainly not the first to note that ancient encounters with gods or spirit beings have a lot in common with modern alien encounters. There are two opposing camps in dealing with encounter experiences- one has it that these were literal encounters with nuts-and-bolts aliens and another that this was a type of visionary experience possibly connecting to some kind of non-physical entities. There is, however, a third option.

Which is this- psychoactive compounds may trip something some kind of neural programming in our DNA that connects us to these long-gone alien entities. Who were responsible not only for engineering human intelligence (such as it is), but also creating this parallel program in which we are somehow able to access these genetic memories (or perhaps even some psychic connection to distant entities) through some unknowable, alien, psychic wetware.†

Perhaps AAT and psychedelic research are not mutually exclusive at all. Perhaps in fact they are intimately co-dependent. Look at the Stargate sequence in 2001, look at Jack Kirby's AAT (and prophetic) visions. Maybe the way to actually access the gods is through a totally new concept of our consciousness. Maybe they are in there waiting for us, as so many esoteric systems have taught.

It is my feeling that we need to go beyond entheogens even, since we obviously have not reached the core of this mystery. Possibly some hybrid technology, including electronics working in conjunction with psychoactive compounds. Like in Altered States.

All of this connects back to my eternal obsession on The X-Files' "Biogenesis/Sixth Extinction" storyline (continued in "Provenance/Providence"), which we'll be seeing retconned into the Transformers universe next month. That storyline in turn has powerful symbolic connections to the Egyptian mystery traditions, which I've written about in great detail.

Although AAT first crept into The X-Files in "The End," it wouldn't really become explicit until the end of the sixth season. But it wasn't until just the other day that it hit me like a ton of bricks- The "Biogenesis" AAT storyline was immediately proceeded by "Field Trip," a brilliant episode written by Hancock co-author Vince Gilligan in which Mulder and Scully are trapped within a giant fungal organism that uses a hallucinogenic compound like LSD to induce visions in its victims while it consumes them.

The genius of the episode is that the organism repeatedly allows the agents to believe they've escaped, with the fantasy becoming more and more convincing with each repetition. But Mulder and Scully are always able see through the illusion, until you're left at the end wondering if in fact they did escape in the end:

Mulder: Look at me. I'm here.

Scully: How did you get here?

Mulder: Aliens brought me back here.

Scully: From North Carolina direct to your apartment door? Mulder, you don't remember getting here, do you? Neither do I.

Mulder: It doesn't change what happened.

Scully: Mulder, why did you knock? This is your apartment. And you don't seem the least bit surprised to find me here. And what about the Schiffs? I mean, if they're alive, as you say, then... then where are they? Where'd they go? Mulder, five minutes ago... this room was filled with people attending your wake.

Mulder: Well, what can I say, Scully? I'm here. I'm real.

Scully: Mulder, this is not reality. This is a hallucination. It has to be. And either I am having it, or you are having it or we are having it together.

Mulder: Brought on by what?

Scully: Something that we found in that field, Mulder, because that's where it began. Wild mushroom. Wild mushrooms, Mulder. They were growing there. I stepped on one, and it gave off spores. Several varieties of... of mushrooms are known for their hallucinogenic properties. If... if we inhaled it...

Mulder: Whatever happened to the most logical explanation?

Scully: This is it, Mulder. What if we're still there? If we're still in that cave in North Carolina — that we're not here in this apartment right now?

Mulder: Whoa, Scully.

Scully: No, Mulder, bear with me. I think this is making sense. I think that Angela and Wallace Schiff were digested by that substance that I found all over that field. That they were dissolved and then expelled up out of the ground. What if that substance and this hallucinogen are — are from one and the same organism?

Mulder: A giant mushroom?

simulated reality...

So have they finally escaped the mushroom when the wheels come off of their reality conception in the following AAT storyline? Or were their brains blown open enough that it attracted the aliens' attention? Did they notice Mulder and Scully noticing them, in other words?

Navajo medicine man Albert Hosteen was a central figure
in Biogenesis/Sixth Extinction
Chris Carter once took part in a Navajo peyote ritual

The genius of it all is that the third chapter "Amor Fati" likewise plays with your head, presenting three separate realities: Mulder's Last Temptation of Christ fantasy in which he and Diana are married and raise a family, apparent consensus reality in which Scully is confronted with the astral projection of a Navajo shaman, and a third dream-reality in which Mulder encounters his future son William on a beach, building a life-size replica of the God-ship out of sand.º

So here we go- as in 2001, as in Indiana Jones, as in Jack Kirby's work - psychic and/or psychedelic visions precede or accompany humanity's encounter with their alien foster parents/genetic engineers.

Pop culture piffle, you say? Perhaps, but just two more pieces of the puzzle of the intimate connection of the frontiers of human consciousness to our very mysterious origins. A puzzle that I believe we need to be a lot more urgent in solving, considering how the wheels seem to be coming off our current paradigms at an alarming rate.

The African Godship took human form as a tribal shaman in "The Sixth Extinction." Use of mushrooms in ritual was known in the Ivory Coast, where the story took place. I'm sure Chris Carter knew this when he wrote the story.

NOTES

† Perhaps- as Graham Hancock says - there are other means than hallucinogens to access these entities, perhaps through sensory deprivation tanks, extreme physical pain techniques that some cultures have practiced, or in my own case, high fever. All of these methods seem to be only partially effective- we need to develop more dependable methods to access these mysterious parts of our brain if we're going to realize this potential.

* Or more modern variants- Stargate takes a jaundiced look at Andrija Puharich, who introduced Middle America to the thrills of magic mushrooms on One Step Beyond in the early 60s.

º Of course, you'll never get a straight answer from Chris Carter or Frank Spotnitz that that's what we're seeing, but take my word for it- in Provenance and Providence we see William psychically controlling another God-ship.

Stairway to Sirius: AF1BU photo op, or...?

From HuffPost:

A government exercise involving low-flying planes has created a panic in New York City. Two fighter jets escorted a low-flying Boeing 747 over lower Manhattan on Monday as part of a federal government photo opportunity.

The plane is a backup for Air Force One and the Department of Transport "coordinated the flight with FAA and we made the notifications to the city so they were aware that the flight would take place between 10 and 10:30 this morning."

Huh. Note the accompanying beauty shot of the Stairway to Sirius:



Hmmm.

Alchemy and The Fifth Element on The Solar Seminar

Luc Besson's The Fifth Element- decadent sci-fi or Alchemical ritual drama? Go read the latest eyeball-buster on The Solar Seminar and decide for yourself...

Weekend Matinee: The Nigel Kneale Tapes

I've spent my entire life obsessed with science fiction, but not in the ways some might expect. I don't sit and pore over blueprints of the various Enterprises, or spend all my time on message boards, nitpicking the ouevre of Joss Whedon. But I do spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing on the ideas that sci-fi plays with- not an uncommon condition these days.

Anyway, sci-fi is an overly broad term that incorporates space opera, hard sci-fi, sci-fi fantasy, speculative fiction (which I'd classify The X-Files as) and certainly superhero fiction, which in many ways is the apotheosis of the sci-fi aesthetic. In the late 80s, cyberpunk sci-fi (particularly the work of William Gibson) shook my worldview to its foundations and the aftershocks of that continue to this day.

Sci-fi is poorly understood, and a lot of that is the fault of the vocal, visual minority of fans who treat the medium as escapist fetish literature, and not as a medium for the exploration of concepts lying at the core of human existence. I think we're all indebted to Battlestar Galactica for changing the conversation about sci-fi in the mainstream press, back to the consensus that had developed around the genre in the 60s and 70s. Even though it's loaded with subtext and deeper meaning, the theme-park appeal of the Star Wars films set that process back. In some ways we're just recovering from the effect it and its imitators had on an entire generation.



And then there is Nigel Kneale, a sci-fi writer who is generally recognized as one of the most important British screenwriters, and perhaps one of the most important television writers ever. Kneale approached the genre the way all its best writers have, as a way to explore the frontiers of the human condition. I'd been familiar with his work since I was a kid, but it wasn't until I was able to see his original teleplays online that I really got it.




We may well be in a fragile pocket of time, and this understanding of sci-fi as real, functional mythology could probably get pretty stupid once the eternally-ravenous media beasties swoop in and start spewing their know-it-all arrogance all over the topic. But before that happens, it's important to investigate information like this excellent documentary on Kneale. I know that regular readers of this blog will eat it up, recognizing many of the same issues that get knocked around in the Synchrosphere being broadcast into the living rooms of hardscrabble, post-war Britain.



One of those issues is Intervention Theory or AAT or whatever you want to call it. Kneale joins Chris Carter, Jack Kirby, George Lucas and Stanley Kubrick in their unapologetic exploration of this forbidden topic, which really is one of the last taboos of our allegedly-enlightened times. What makes this disreputable theory so attractive to these brilliant, accomplished men? Maybe when you spend so much time exploring the human condition you become acutely aware of the improbability of it all, as well as the basic, immutable reality of human maladaptivity to its supposed native environment....




Loren Coleman is also a major Kneale fan- read his eulogy for the writer here.

AstroGnostic: Quatermass and the Pit (UPDATED)

Before Chariots of the Gods, before The 12th Planet, before Gods of Eden, before The X-Files, before Stargate, before Battlestar Galactica, before Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, before Transformers 2 there was Quatermass and the Pit.

Although popularized in the US with the Hammer version (see video above, retitled Five Million Years to Earth), Quatermass originally aired on the BBC in the late 50s as a serial. Though the Hammer version is certainly worthy, the BBC version (which can be seen in its entirety here) is nothing short of a sci-fi revelation. Brilliantly written and produced, the series would become a monster smash in the UK and a profound influence on a generation of sci-fi fans and writers. From the Independent:

Kneale's greatest achievement as a melder of science fiction and horror was undoubtedly Quatermass and the Pit, which kept people out of the pubs while it was running. He cheerfully threw aliens from Mars, pagan rituals, the "Horned God" and race memory into the mix and scored a huge popular success.

If you looking for evidence of culture's reverse-evolution with the rise of television, Quatermass is your motherlode. Kneale's script puts nearly everything on TV today to shame. In 1958, mind you, he was warning of the militarization of space, racial tensions, government cover-ups of alien contact and pseudo-skeptical denialism. Pretty strong stuff, almost unimaginable in today's highly-charged ideological climate -- outside of sci-fi programs like Battlestar Galactica, that is.

And if you're a regular reader of this blog, the fourth episode of BBC series especially will send chills down your spine. In excruciating detail, Kneale paints a scenario where aliens from a dying planet (Mars, in this case) come to earth and manipulate the genetic structure of proto-hominids in order to act as receptacles for alien consciousness.


Kneale's attention to detail is impeccable- the aliens keep themselves isolated in a sealed compartment on their ship to avoid contamination from Earth microbes. Their primary concern is the expansion of the proto-human neural capacity, as they were attempting to download their own consciousness into these new hybrid creatures.

Did I mention this was written in 1958?

As in The X-Files, communion with the residual alien consciousness manifests itself in psychic phenomena- telepathy and telekinesis, to be exact. Kneale also presents a scenario in which the racial memory of these beings and our ancestral contact with them is encoded in our DNA. Ghosts, demons and the occult are all the byproducts of periodic subconscious eruptions, particularly when humans are exposed to the radiation from the buried spacecraft in Hobb's Lane, Knightsbridge.

I'm going to leave it all there because I think everyone who visits this blog should watch both the BBC and Hammer versions of Quatermass. It is almost certainly the first exposure of AAT to a wide audience - I'm very curious to see if Von Daniken or Sitchin have ever acknowledged it as an influence. Certainly its influence is all over The X-Files, and Stephen King's Tommyknockers is essentially a New English pirating of the concept

We'll be looking at Tommyknockers- and most certainly, the other Quatermass stories- in greater detail in the future.

UPDATE: Emperor (host of The Cabinet of Wonders blog) adds this crucial data download:

It is easy to underestimate the influence of Nigel Kneale these days but back when Quatermass and the Pit were being shown the whole of the country just stopped to watch it (a third of the viewing audience saw it when it was originally broadcast - impressive numbers for any TV show but considering it was sci-fi...). I think the first one I caught was the film of Quatermass and the Pit when I was a kid and I remember being thoroughly unsettled by the whole thing.

They recently released a Quatermass boxset (of the first three, the fourth TV serial is collected separately) along with others for Beasts and Kinvig (also worth checking out, as is Stone Tape if people can find it) and a book was released at the same time: "Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale" and it touches on some of the themes mentioned like this from page 69:

"The central concept of Kneale's serial, that aliens had influenced the development of life on Earth, became a familiar one over time, but in 1959 it was relatively fresh. Some have detected a kinship with Kneale's approach and the writing of H.P. Lovecraft, but Kneale denies any influence, on very simple grounds. "I've never read any Lovecraft!" he insisits. The writing of Erich von Daniken later popularised the notion of extra-terrestrials guiding Mankind, which also greatly inform the 1968 film 2001 Space Odyssey. (Many, Kneale among them, have also remarked on the recurrence of an unearthed alien object in a pit playing a pivotal role in Kubrick's film.) The influence of the serial, as we'll see, was both long-lasting and wide-ranging"

One that is unacknowledged is the end sequence of Indiana Jones which strongly parallels that in the first Quatermas. Dan O'Bannon is happy to admit the influences though, most obvious in Alien, where they find the crashed alien ship. However, the list of where his ideas cropped up and the people his work influenced is impressive.

I'll leave the last words to Grant Morrison (page 99):

"Writer Grant Morrison feels that counter-cultural ideas are peppered throughout Kneale's work, however, unwittingly. "There's a lot of altered states, hive minds and alien intelligences controlling the population in his work," Morrison suggests"

and from page 182:

"Morrison gladly attests to the influence Kneale has had on his own work. "All that stuff was definitely a really big input for me," he says. "The idea that every story had a brilliant concept and started out from something really original was a big inspiration. Every one of them builds off this really simple, brilliant idea: we are descended from Martians, we are food for aliens, every one of them's just a great little concept. It's a mythical quality for me. The stories are so tiny, but I feel they're myths for the age of science. That's what he created. people have been riffing off him for a long time. There's something eternal about Quatermass""

Oh and he had an idea for a final Quatermass story: "Quatermass in the Third Reich", a prequel which say him hanging out in Germany with Nazi rocket scientists and stumbling across their larger plans involving the occult.

Kneale was invited to write an episode of the X-Files but turned it down, a real pity!!

As a child he read a lot of HG Wells and MR James but the third and fourth Quatermass adventures do make me wonder if he somehow came into contact with Charles Fort's work - from The Book of the Damned (1919):

"Would we, if we could, educate and sophisticate pigs, geese, cattle?

Would it be wise to establish diplomatic relation with the hen that now functions, satisfied with mere sense of achievement by way of compensation?

I think we're property.

I should say we belong to something:

That once upon a time, this earth was No-man's Land, that other worlds explored and colonized here, and fought among themselves for possession, but that now it's owned by something:

That something owns this earth -- all others warned off. "

The Mythic, Mithraic Mysticism of Michael Clayton

Abstract: Tony Gilroy's 2007 masterpiece Michael Clayton is an ancient myth masquerading as a legal thriller. Consciously drawing upon the symbolism of fantasy literature and pre-Christian religion, Gilroy revives a narrative tradition of ethics and morality wed to Synchronicity and visionary experience.


While preparing this article, I realized that in my somewhat-amorphous Top 20 list of favorite movies from the past 15 years, 4 of them star George Clooney.

Of those 4, only one (Out of Sight) was a true mainstream hit. The other three films are Soderbergh and Cameron's Solaris, Syriana and Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton.* I've written about the deep mythological parallels in Solaris, which you'd expect in a mystical sci-fi film (particularly one involving James Cameron).

But there is as much - if not more - mythic symbolism in Michael Clayton, which you wouldn't expect in a legal thriller of this type. Unless said thriller was written and directed by one of the primary screenwriters in yet another of my top 20 films, The Devil's Advocate.

Gilroy has said that Clayton grew out of his work on Advocate, which saw a scenery-chewing Al Pacino as Satan using a Manhattan law firm as a staging ground for the Apocalypse. The conceit of that film was that the Devil was not a puppeteer, but merely an enabler for humankind's own (limitless) capacity for evil. The Devil's Advocate was pure fantasy; Michael Clayton is much more frightening because the evil it depicts is that much more real.

MYTHOSYNOPSIS

NOTE: We're in for spoilers galore, so if you haven't seen the film and want to be surprised, stop reading now, go rent it and then come back. I'll be still be here when you get back.

First a word about the actors- in a Secret Sun context, it's hard to imagine a more significant lead cast: You have the aforementioned Clooney in the title role. You have Tom Wilkinson (of Eternal Sunshine fame) as the doomed attorney Arthur Edens (more on that name later). You have the late, great Sydney Pollack playing a close variation of his Eyes Wide Shut role as Clayton/Clooney's boss.

And finally you have Tilda Swinton (aka the "One-Woman Synchromystic Factory") as the villian of the piece, corporate attorney Karen Crowder (I'm sorry, I realize using "corporate attorney" and "villain" in same sentence is redundant). Both Clooney and Wilkinson were nominated for Ausurs® for their amazing work in the film and Swinton won Best Supporting Actress.

The plot is that Arthur Edens- a top litigator with a history of mental illness- goes off the deep end when he realizes that U-North, the agro-chemical company his firm is representing, deliberately suppressed evidence during a lawsuit over a carcinogenic weed killer. When Arthur threatens to expose a damning memo, U-North's lead attorney has him murdered by a pair of corporate spies. Clayton is the firm's fixer who discovers what Edens was on to and soon becomes a target himself.


So many of the signifiers we've seen repeated over and over in other films are well-represented in this film. First of all, the story is told in flashback, which is to say reverse time. At the beginning of the film we meet Michael Clayton at a gambling den in Koreatown. His car is parked on 33rd St, staring straight up at the Empire State Building.

From there, Clayton drives to Westchester, to deal with a client involved in a hit-and-run. Driving home as the Sun rises, Clayton stops when he sees three horses on a hilltop. Later we find out the significance of this sighting.

Michael Clayton Clip - The most popular videos are here

Exhausted and distraught, Clayton climbs the hill to connect with the animals. But as he does so, his car explodes. Hmmm- flaming chariot, horses, sunrise...sound familiar?

Here's a hint.


Clayton then throws his wallet and watch and phone into the flaming car. The watch is especially fascinating, given that the Roman sun god, Helios Mithras (aka Sol Invictus, or the "Unconquerable Sun") was known as "the god of Infinite Time."



Doubly fascinating, since following the explosion (and its attendant sun god symbolism), we go back in time, and the first thing we see is this image: the flaming solar disk logo of the film's fantasy franchise, Realm + Conquest, which is sort of a combination of Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia and World of Warcraft.

Realm + Conquest is the obsession of Clayton's son Henry, and becomes the linchpin of the entire film. What Gilroy is doing here is telling us that we are now in a mythic realm, so we need to look out for signifiers.


Like this: Clayton is summoned to Milwaukee to deal with a crisis- Arthur freaked out during a deposition with a plaintiff (named "Anna Kysersun"- I kid you not) and stripped naked and ran through the parking lot. Now we are introduced to Karen Crowder in narrative time as she leaves a corporate minivan during a Wisconsin snowstorm. Ring any bells?

Here, does this image help?

We hear Arthur's confession to Clayton during the film's opening credits. What he describes sounds less like a psychotic break, and more like a Philip K. Dick-type visionary experience. After a lifetime of conscience-less litigation, Arthur realizes he himself has become an accomplice to mass murder:

I realize we're standing in the middle of the street, the light's changed, there's this wall of traffic, serious traffic speeding towards us, and I freeze, I can't move, and I'm suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I'm covered with some sort of film. It's in my hair, my face... it's like a glaze... like a coating, and... at first I thought, oh my god, I know what this is, this is some sort of amniotic - embryonic - fluid. I'm drenched in afterbirth, I've-I've breached the chrysalis, I've been reborn.

But then the traffic, the stampede, the cars, the trucks, the horns, the screaming and I'm thinking no-no-no-no, reset, this is not rebirth, this is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before death. And then I realize no-no-no, this is completely wrong because I look back at the building and I had the most stunning moment of clarity. I realized Michael, that I had emerged not from the doors of Kenner, Bach, and Ledeen, not through the portals of our vast and powerful law firm, but from the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete the... the-the-the poison, the ammo, the defoliant necessary for other, larger, more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity.

Clayton then meets Karen Crowder and it's hate at first site (this film is kind of a classic Clooney romance picture in reverse). She's one of those denatured, defeminized, dehumanized drones those of you who've worked at certain corporations will be well familiar with. Clayton has Arthur released and is charged with cleaning up his mess. Crowder's minions do background on Clayton, where we hear this voiceover:


You were probably wondering when our magic number was going to show up. Note also the staff of wheat in the flag behind Clayton, which bears a strange resemblance to the golden laurels of Apollo.


After his release from prison, Arthur speaks with Henry, who has called to speak with his absent father. Henry has become a Realm + Conquest evangelist, and Arthur is immediately captivated by the story's premise of heroes being summoned to a great mission by shared, visionary dreams.

Gilroy is giving us the true power of mythology, by placing a myth within his own emotion-laden myth.

Arthur uses the book as direct inspiration for his own quest- to avenge the deaths of the Midwestern farmers killed by U-North's weed killer. He later titles his case against U-North "Summons to Conquest."

Arthur then escapes Clayton's supervision and returns to his New York loft, where U-North's spies are tapping his phone. Clayton then confronts Arthur, who is clutching a large bag of French bread to his chest. We must then wonder- is Arthur actually Ausur? After all, some scholars have traced the Arthurian legends to Egyptian sources.

And I can't help but wonder when I picture this image of Osiris, with wheat growing from his sarcophagus.


The performances in this film are absolutely riveting. As a loose cannon, Wilkinson alternates from child-like mental case to aggressive, razor-sharp litigator without warning throughout the film. Suspicious that the firm wants him committed, Arthur utters this cryptic line, which ties us back to Clayton's sunrise epiphany. His confrontation ends with a withering glare which you could just imagine reducing witnesses to rubble in a courtroom.


From there we see Arthur back in vacant mode, wandering around Times Square (of course) freed of a lifetime of deceit. Note that he is crowned with the oceans of the earth in this shot, again tying back to the Osiris archetype.

But his mood instantly changes when he sees U-North's greenwash bullshit appear on an electronic billboard. Note the juxtaposition of the U-North logo and the Wicked poster- the Wicked Witch of the West identified with Jadis the White Witch in the form of Karen, Tilda Swinton's character.

Genius.

In the mix-and-match language of fantasy literature, Karen could also be Morgan le Fay, perhaps with Arthur and Clayton as the Pendragons.

Note also the explictly Solar Europa Cafe logo- this links us directly to bull symbolism, which we'll see in a moment...


Karen orders Arthur to be killed when he announces his intention to expose their complicity. I couldn't help but see Arthur/Ausur as the Apis bull, the sacrificial god of Taurus seen in the Mithraic Tauroctony. Those surgical caps the killers (named Mr. Verne and Mr. Iker) are wearing remind me of this...

... Mithras' Phrygian cap, which we see in the Tauroctony. The fact that Arthur is poisoned parallels the scorpion and snake in the icon.

Oh, I know- that's stretching it a bit...

...or is it? As we are told, "the man was a bull." This Tauroctony parallel certainly puts the flaming chariot in a whole new context...

...which is foreshadowed when Clayton looks at Arthur's copy of Realm+Conquest (note mark-ups). Gilroy is not only showing us the power of myth, he's showing us classic synchronicity. The symbolism of this myth drove Arthur's own quest and then saved Clayton's life- and signifies his symbolic apotheosis.


Clayton "dies" and is resurrected- Using his police connections (through his brother) Clayton has the story get out that he was killed when Verne and Iker bomb his car. Clutching a rolled-up copy of Arthur's "Summons to Conquest," Clayton confronts Jadis/Morgan after U-North has agreed to a cash settlement with the victims' families.

This confrontation is one of the greatest scenes in the history of cinema. And there we see that magic name- Anna Kysersun ("Inanna Caesar-Sun") - interesting in that Inanna was the direct equivalent of Hathor, consort of sun god Horus. Is Gilroy pointing to this love goddess/sun god relationship when Anna and Clayton meet in a hot-sheet motel-at an airport, no less? (Inanna was identifed with the sky, as was Hathor)

Michael then explicitly takes on the mantle of Arthur's godhood as the NYPD swoop in and arrest Karen and her boss Don Jeffries (brilliantly played by Ken Howard of White Shadow fame).


Clayton then descends an escalator, like Osiris descending to the Underworld to judge the dead, and walks out to the street...


...and hails down a cab (or in Kotzean parlance, a "Checker Chariot"). Note that 7x25=175.

ARTHURIAN

In my opinion what Gilroy has done here is create a modern myth to encapsulate the elemental forces that converge within the daily corruptions of modern corporate practice.

Following the financial meltdown, this mythology seems less subversive (some idiot reviewers accused Gilroy of "anti-captialism") than prescient. It's one of the oldest stories in the book- Arthur is a king who is unjustly killed and Clayton is his son who avenges his death. "Arthur" and "Edens" both point to lost idylls- the Camelot and Round Table of the Arthurian romances and the Garden of Eden in Genesis.

Clayton is an elemental man (who, like the Adamah, is "made" of clay) who dies and is reborn as an avenging sun god, which is signified by the horses and flaming chariot at sunrise - and Arthur's explictly solar totem "Summons to Conquest." Just like in Narnia, the Sun God melts the Ice Queen. This is mythology in its purest form, made relevant for a modern audience. If Michael Clayton was powerful in 2007, today it's foundational.

WHY THE SUN WENT DOWN IN THE WEST

This attitude towards corruption ties back to Mithraism, which imposed a stringent morality upon its followers. Contrary to academic misinformation, this variety of sun worship didn't die because it was elitist- the Emperor Aurelian had established an exoteric solar religion apart from the Mystery cults during his reign. It died because it insisted on a severe morality in business as well as personal matters. And with bone-crushers like Aurelian (nicknamed manu ad ferrum, meaning "Hand on Sword) in its ranks, it had the ability to enforce that morality.

Aurelian was assassinated for opposing corruption, which became a way of life as Rome became increasingly beholden to foreign merchants (we see this paralleled with the NYC-based law firm and the provincial U-North). Likewise, Diocletian opposed profiteering and deceitful business practices.

The last sun-worshipping emperor of Rome, Julian the Apostate, followed Aurelian and Diocletian's rigorous example and publicly chastised his cousins in the Constantine family for their mind-numbing hypocrisy and criminality. He too may have been assassinated for fighting corruption, which slowly strangled the Empire when the Christian emperors regained power.†

Is Gilroy consciously referring back to Mithraism and its stern ethics? Probably not, but he is obviously using mythic elements drawn from that same tradition. Again, perhaps we are looking at a kind of cultural DNA, where you can't separate the mythos from the message. Meaning that through cultural osmosis, we absorb the myths and their meanings, which are reconstructed through the power of the Collective Unconscious.

Clearly and unambiguously we see myth as a motivator, both for Arthur and Clayton. We see Clayton "die" and be reborn at sunrise (which we looked at in the context of a different Clayton recently). We see Tilda Swinton do a real world do-over of her Narnia role. We have symbolism galore, both overt and otherwise, if not always a clear handle on its meaning.

TRANSCENDENT

For reasons I can't explain, I believe that Myth needs to exist in the non-physical realm for it to truly realize its power. Meaning that it loses its power when it is literalized. I think that the Gnostics understood this, I think the philosophers understood this.

Another problem is when people diminish the power of Myth by trying to actualize it. Michael Clayton is powerful exactly because I don't know all of the mundanities of the character's lives or their temporal connections (which too much fannish sci-fi tries to reintroduce, as in the various Stargates or The Dead Zone series). These characters exist outside of temporal restriction, which we see symbolically referenced when Clayton destroys his watch in his flaming chariot.

I think a new understanding of Myth is an integral component in our conscious evolution, and I very much suspect that storytellers like Tony Gilroy agree.



*Clooney also starred in a couple movies in my top 50- Three Kings (about the betrayal of the Kurdish resistance after the Gulf War) and The Perfect Storm (which was set in my old summer stomping grounds, Gloucester aka Innsmouth and co-starred my former neighbor Mark Wahlberg and my teenage lust object, Diane Lane).

† Despite what some apologists would like you to believe, the "Eastern Empire" was a glorified city-state with a geographic buffer that shrank relentlessly before finally surrendering to Islam.