AstroGnostic: You're Not Who You Think You Are

I've been getting these weird emails from Genebase telling me about these people whose DNA profile most closely matches my own (the Y-chromosome, at least). Strangely, their names are all almost stereotypically Irish, first and last. It's been an odd experience, although my once-hidden Irish heritage was slowly unveiled over the years, first by my paternal grandmother (at my wedding, no less), and then as family members worked out genealogies, and finally when I did the DNA profile.

I'm sure this will mean nothing to most of you, but the point here is that I grew up believing (and being told by my aforementioned Nana) that the Knowles family were a bunch of stolid Mayflower WASP holdouts in a sea of Irish Catholic usurpers. But it turns out we were not who we thought we were. It sounds insane in retrospect, but these things used to matter in New England.

There's also a deeper meaning here: so much of what I spend my time puzzling over has to do with our genome. To get these strange genetic messages contradicting the family mythology I grew up with can't help but seem like a synchronistic microcosm of the bigger issues at hand. Especially when those issues- DNA, genetics, human identity- are becoming such a fraught issue as we blindly stumble to a posthuman future.

Maybe that's the ultimate message of this blog: "You're not who you think you are."

That's also the conceit of The Nines, starring the Irish-Canadian hearthrob Ryan Reyonolds. The film is 200 proof astroGnosticism, though you may not see that in the trailer and I won't give the film's ending away. But if you're a regular reader of this blog I can't possibly recommend it highly enough. Its unrelenting immersion into mundane reality is as meticulous as its metaphysics are whacked out. Which is a good a description as any of where my head is at most of the time.

The film is written and directed by John August, who's Tim Burton's favorite screenwriter. Given the direction my research has been pulling me, it's worth mentioning that John August's first feature film was Go, which centered on a hallucinogenic drug deal. August explains that he came up with the idea for The Nines when he began to dissociate while acting as showrunner for an aborted TV series. Me being a huge fan of Go (Katie Holmes at her pre-Xenu cutest), I wonder if he had some kind of augmentation for that process.

Since I am an obsessive nutcase, I'd been watching the film over and over the past couple weeks, picking out syncs that are mainly of a personal nature. It's one of those films in which searching for hidden meanings is redundant, since the entire film is about hidden meaning. But I had an interesting experience at the doctor's office on Thursday when I saw the new Entertainment Weekly, which had Reynolds doing a strange spin on The Nines, with four covers picturing him in three different roles. Quite the coincidence, I thought.

The Nines is built around the Leibniz* aphorism, "This is the best of all possible worlds." It's divided into three distinct chapters, "The Prisoner," "Reality Television" and "Knowing." The three different roles Reynolds plays are a dippy actor under house arrest, a gay TV writer featured on an Project Greenlight-type documentary, and an earnest husband/father who finds himself in an encounter with the hippie-chick from hell. Reynolds is brilliant in all three roles, as are co-star Melissa McCarthy, the hauntingly-precocious Elle Fanning, and most especially, the virtuoso character actress, Hope Davis.

It's in the second chapter that Davis- and The Nines- scares the shit out of me. Davis plays Susan Howard, the d-girl (development executive, a post usually filled by women) from hell. August's dialogue is so scintillatingly perfect it could only be written verbatim from painful memory.

I met too many Susan Howards in the advertising racket, fast-talking lib-art grads who are constantly second-guessing everything, because they've bullshitted their way into jobs they're completely at sea in. They use all of the latest SWPL jargon and will play the nurturer role to the hilt, but will pin the blame for all of their f*ckups on you, even when they don't have to. Davis becomes Susan Howard...no, that's not right. She becomes all of the Susan Howards to ever walk the face of the earth. All of my LA readers will know exactly what I mean.

Some longtime readers might remember I had my own Hollywood adventure ten years ago, when I got a lot of interest in a graphic novel I'd written for Sirius Entertainment called Halo: An Angel's Story (this was way before the Halo videogame). The first bite came from Crossroads Films, a production house that specializes in advertising but dabbles in indie film. They called me in December of 1996 and it seemed like Project Greenlight city. I was told that they wanted me to write a treatment and then a screenplay and they'd start looking at actors and directors in January. They told me I would need an agent and I should replace my lawyer with someone specializing in film. Everything was smiles and handshakes and looking forward to working with you's.

I was assigned to report to a producer there (let's just call her "Susan Howard") and for reasons I think I've repressed it all got totally screwed up (my lawyer said Susan did something she wasn't supposed to but being an idiot I had no idea what the hell he was talking about) and I was unceremoniously kicked to the curb, just like Ryan Reynolds in The Nines. There's no feeling of rejection quite like the one the movie industry can hand you, which is why that chapter is particularly painful to me. But I had other bites (which all made that first experience seem like ice cream in the park) and Crossroads later hooked me up with a lot of storyboarding work, so no harm, no foul.


But here's where it gets weird. One of Crossroads' top ad directors is Mark Pellington (born 3/17, we also have friends in common), director of The Mothman Prophecies. His first feature film was Arlington Road, which co-starred none other than Susan Howard herself, Hope Davis (it also co-stars Joan Cusack, sister of John "Horus" Cusack, Superstar).

And weirdest of all, Arlington Road opens with a harrowing scene of a boy who's been maimed by a bomb. The boy is played by Mason Gamble...

...who I was just hanging around with at Esalen. The gyre is constantly widening, isn't it, Bob?

Now, I'm constantly struggling against becoming the Carlos Castaneda wannabe I once was, but I wonder if August has had some serious experience with psychedelics. And the kind of stress he was under not only generates the kind of dissociation he portrays in the film, but often very weird syncs. Like the Mothmen, the syncs notice you noticing them and tend to follow you around.

But for some reason, the syncs we see inside films like The Nines or The Number 23 never seem to be as arresting as the syncs we see in the Synchrosphere, or in our own lives. Movies are great at generating Synchronicity, but not usually as good at portraying it.

I think there's a reason for it, two reasons, actually. First, the brutal pace of film and TV writing and rewriting and production tend to keep you in your illusory self, reliant on your reptilian brain. Second, as we see August portray so painfully in The Nines, the Susan Howards of the world look at metaphysics the way an Ostrogoth looked at a fine Roman salon in the Fifth Century.

UPDATE: Loren Coleman picks up the ball and runs with it, as only he can.

UPDATE II: OK, this is interesting. The Elle Fanning character in The Nines is named Noelle ("Christmas"), which is the spelling of Katie Holmes' middle name.

* Another Nine sync- Leibniz and I share a birthday.

Astronaut Theology: I'm sorry, what was I just saying?

I was just saying this:

The US defense budget is larger than every other country on Earth combined. It was in the US that computers and microchips and transistors and all of the rest of it appeared almost overnight after...well, after the Roswell incident, whatever that was. Who are we preparing to fight? The Chinese, who manufacture everything for our Wal-Marts? The Russians, whose space program we've essentially merged with? The Arabs, who have little else but oil to sell to the world and fifth-rate militaries? All of them are keeping our warfare economy afloat.

Nothing makes sense anymore, if you follow conventional wisdom. The world economy is in recession, but we're spending billions - maybe trillions - on space hardware (and extremely sophisticated electronics for consumer use). And when you really stop to think about it, we've no real evidence that the defense budget is actually preparing us for war with Russia or China.

Now read this BBC story:

Russia and Nato have agreed to resume co-operation on security issues, after nearly a year of difficult relations.

The deal came at a meeting in Greece of foreign ministers from the two sides.

Ties deteriorated sharply in 2008 after Russia's brief conflict with Georgia. Nato chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said differences over the issue remained.

But he said Nato and Russia would nonetheless resume co-operation on issues such as Afghanistan, drug trafficking and piracy.

OK, fair enough. But what the hell kind of logo is that NATO-Russia Council? Note how both the NATO star and the Russian two-headed eagle are distinctly subordinate to the big blue ball there. And I'm not getting the star map connection to either Russia or NATO.


But I'm sure as hell getting an interesting connection here...

UPDATE: More extremely strange symbolism in Russia here and here.

Remembering George Carlin

The older I get, the more sense George Carlin makes. We lost him this week last year, and boy, we could use a dozen or so more where he came from. Carlin's genius was in deconstruction- he took apart all of the bullshit we tell ourselves to get through the day and threw it back in our faces. He carved up our pretensions like a turkey on Thanksgiving. I think about his methodology all of the time and I hope that a new generation of big-hearted cynics discover his work and blow all of the Dane Cooks of the world off of the stage forever.

This UFO bit is classic, but this extremely NSFW bit on the Gulf War is one of the greatest revelations you will ever hear. I'm sure I'm preaching to the converted with most of you, but if you aren't familiar with Carlin's flamethrower wit, take some time to check out his videos on YouTube. Especially his bits on politics.

When motion pictures were first invented, some theorists said that death had been conquered- at least some kind of immortality could be achieved on celluloid. George Carlin left an enormous body of work that is available at your fingertips in the Digital Age, and in that way he will live forever. Genius never truly dies.

Sync Log: Michael Jackson

(Note: I had intended to post the second part of the John Cusack story today-
I've added onto the original post- scroll down for the full posting).

When I heard Michael Jackson had died, this page from Nexus #4 suddenly popped into my head, out of nowhere. But it was appropriate, because I wouldn't shed any tears for Michael Jackson, only for his family and fans - and his victims.

The story, called "The Ziggurat," is about with a floating pyramid that's powered by an alien sun. It was written by Mike Baron and drawn by Steve Rude.

I then went online to find out details about the Jackson incident and heard that the supervising LAFD paramedic on the scene was named Steve Ruda.

Tears aside, I thought this was as good a eulogy as any for the role Michael Jackson played in the golden age of American pop...

John Cusack, Superstar: 2012 and the Age of Horus (CONCLUDED 6/26)

Well, the full trailer for 2012 is here. And as to be expected from a Roland Emmerich film, it's chock-full of mass destruction and genocide. The guy certainly has a knack for it, doesn't he?

Apocalyptic film seems to have an added appeal during times of malaise like this one- it's the ultimate fantasy of the global reset button. Of course, no one watching pictures themselves amongst the piles of dead the dogs are picking at, they see the blood and fire through the eyes of the stars (John Cusack in this case, re-teamed with Martian Child co-star Amanda Peet) reaching that brand new day on the other side of it- the "Morning After" Maureen McGovern warbled about all those years ago.

So, what is this 2012 thing all about? I never heard about it until Jose Arguelles and the Harmonic Convergence hit the news. My gut tells me it's going to come and go just like Y2K, even if it was prophesied as the date of the final invasion in the X-Files mythos (which Peet is part of herself now, being the Mythos' latest Nephthys stand-in). But my gut's been wrong plenty of times before and certainly weirdness is on the march as never before.

Maybe December 21, 2012 will be the dawning of the Age of Horus, popularized by Aleister Crowley in The Book of the Law. After all, that new age doesn't necessarily need to coincide with the Age of Aquarius, which no one can seem to decide the start of. And these times certainly feel more Crowleyean than Aquarian, don't they?

Maybe the presence of John Cusack is the giveaway here. Because for reasons as yet unknown to me, Cusack has played characters bearing startling symbolic similarities to Horus and/or Osiris in more than a few films.


The man's career has been a rich and full one, mining that inborn Irish charm for fun and profit. And then there are the symbols, most importantly the ones we looked all those months ago in the context of Pushing Tin, which also featured Ka-Hathor-Ein/Eloah-Isis Blanchett, Billy Bob (Crown of) Thornton, and Angelina Jolie, the Megan Fox of the 90s.

The opening credits featured this stunning image, with Ali/A Li floating enigmatically over the bisected twin towers. A lot of wags commented that 9/11 was like a Roland Emmerich film come to life, so the symmetry is quite compelling here. But we only scratched the surface all those months ago, so in our next installment, we'll go back and pick out a few more compelling details that might illuminate Cusack's overall symbolic role in this collective fever dream that is manifesting in our culture...


PART II: WELCOME TO HIS SKY

Horus was originally known as "Lord of the Sky"

To recap: John Cusack and his Martian Child co-star Amanda Peet are the leads in Roland Emmerich's latest genocide-fest, 2012. The date most famously comes to us from the Mayan calendar, which is especially fascinating to Graham Hancock as well as people involved in AAT research.

Horus decapitated Isis during his battles with Set

I've been watching John Cusack's career for at least 10 years, ever since seeing Pushing Tin, which at plays like a note-for-note allegory of the old Osiris-Horus myths. Let me just say that not knowing the writers or producers of this film, I can't speak to their motivations. But let me also say this: I find it almost impossible to believe that the symbolism in Pushing Tin is not intentional. On someone's part, at least. Knowing what we know about Hollywood, the person credited for a screenplay is not always the true author of the final product.

What exactly the meaning of it all is a matter of pure speculation. Well, maybe not quite so pure- the evidence is certainly building up around these parts, it's just that it's leading in some pretty strange directions.

OK, we've looked at some of the interesting Osiris symbolism in Pushing Tin, so let's backtrack and look at the mythic narrative parallels. Anyone familiar with the film and the myth will be stunned to discover how closely the two hit the same exact plot points:

OK, Nick Falzone (Cusack) is in a rivalry with Russell Bell (Billy Bob Thornton). Nick meets Bell's sexpot wife Mary (Angelina Jolie) at a family cookout and then runs into her while she is weeping at a supermarket.

Here we see what Mary is shopping for- vodka and lettuce. Alcohol was identified with Isis, Hathor and Nephthys in Ancient Egypt. But for our purposes here we should remember that Isis was "the Lady of Beer," since Nephthys dressed as Isis to seduce Osiris (himself also identified with alcohol). The lettuce must be for Russell, since it was the favorite food of Set.

Interesting statement here - a double entendre? From the grocery store, Nick and Mary set out to a very festive Italian restaurant, which parallels the drunken party where Nephthys and Osiris hooked up.

There, Mary and Nick get drunk together and the viewer gets an eyeful of the elemental eroticism that made Angelina Jolie a superstar. As she suggestively plies her full, wet lips with her forefinger, Mary tells Nick that she grows plants. Here is our smoking gun. From Plutarch:

“Whenever, then, the Nile overflows and with abounding waters spreads far away to those who dwell in the outermost regions, they call this the union of Osiris with Nephthys, which is proved by the upspringing of the plants.”

Nick's little death amongst the stars

So right on cue, Nick then follows Mary home where she invites him in for a little "union." Nick's shirt is another interesting detail here.

The dying-rising Osiris amongst the stars

Remember that Osiris is a space-dwelling god, and damn, if that shirt doesn't look like a starry night sky. Remember, the sky belongs to Nick- he tells us so in as many words.

The hits just keep coming- Nick returns from his tryst with Mary and Connie his wife Connie (Cate Blanchett) holds up her drawing of JFK. Killing of the Divine King, anyone? It's Osiris' tryst with Nephthys that brings about his assassination, and here we see recent history's most famous slain king.

How about that?

In the mythology, Set tricks Osiris by inviting him to a dinner party. And sure enough we see the Bells and the Falzones return to the restaurant where Nick and Mary hooked up. Russell dazzles the crowd with "Muskrat Love" (of all songs) and even Mary is seduced by his inexplicable charms.

Here's the very next scene: Nick meets Mary on the banks of the Hudson, where she tells Nick she confessed to Russell about their tryst. The river is self-explanatory, but the rain reminds us that Osiris was identified with all forms of moving water.

Inside the car, Nick refers to being murdered by Russell adding a cryptic reference to eyes. This could either refer to Russell's riveting stare or to the fact that Set had a thing for plucking out eyeballs....

Soonafter there is a death in the family. Now, is this the funeral of Connie's father or of her husband? Nick also inexplicably changes his hairstyle just at the point in the symbolic narrative where he transforms from Osiris to Horus. His struggles with Russell now erupt into open warfare.

Like in this scene, where Nick and Russell wrestle for dominance while ATC is emptied during a bomb scare. Note they are wrestling over Russell's feather- the Ostrich feather was the symbol of Osiris' role of judge, as we see in his mitre.

Nick is forced out of his job and sits at home wearing dark glasses. On an ordinary symbolic level, this speaks to his blindness- he can no longer see the planes in his mind's eye. On a deeper level, this reminds us again that Set tore out the eyes of Horus during their battles. Russell has taken his position as top controller just as Set took the throne of Osiris away from Horus.

So the culmination of their battle takes place on a runway, a nice metaphor for the Nile. Afterwards, Russell and Nick lie together and share a laugh, not unlike Set and Horus during their own contendings. Note the wound beneath Nick's right eye.

WHO ARE THE REAL AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS?

So yet again, ancient symbolism and high tech colliding on the silver screen. What could possibly be the connection? We've seen this strange pull that all of the Egyptian iconography has had on people involved in the arts and sciences (and politics), particularly those most intimately involved with ultra-high technology. It seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it? The connection of a sky god and an air traffic controller is especially fascinating here. To a point...

I mean, I love mythology and all, but all of this symbology seems rather archaic in this day and age. It also can get more than a little tedious, unless there is some compelling meaning behind it all. And certainly with Pushing Tin the meaning of it all has always escaped me.

Until yeterday, that is.

Let's take a look at a little visual detail in the film, something that I never really paid attention to until yesterday, strangely enough, even though I've watched this film over a dozen times...

Look at this very strange establishing shot. Tucked away on the lower left is the Bell's house, where Mary is seducing Nick, just as Nephthys seduced Osiris. Maybe the key to it all is here as well- the key to this inexplicable obsession with ancient mythology, to this incessant linking of ancient symbols to ultra-high tech (and flight, especially) that we see over and over and over beneath the surface in big-budget Hollywood films (though with the new Transformers film, the linking is now in your face).

With Diane ("Path of the Moon Goddess") Lane. That dog has star quality...

We're not done with John Cusack by a long shot- we've still barely scratched Serendipity and The Martian Child, but perhaps Pushing Tin gives us a clue to why he's been chosen to be the hero (again, a word derived from Horus) for Hollywood's big 2012 blowout.

But just a clue, mind you.

Astronaut Theology: Transforming the World (UPDATED)

Let's recap: NASA is launching moon probes and alien hunters, Fox News is showing UFO footage released by the Mexican military. Europe has a space freighter ready to go. We haven't had any strange, fiery debris falling mysteriously from the sky recently, but it's only a matter of time until the next event, certainly. Moon bases are in the planning stages, and a new film called Moon is being released to familiarize audiences with that coming reality. Never mind the research being done on warp-drive technology at NASA.

What's happening on the ground? We have an ineffectual new President who seems to be in office purely for some strange ritual purpose the rest of us can only guess at. All across the world, economies are being battered and millions put out of work. It was only a mere ten years ago a permanent prosperity was being predicted.

We are looking at the possibility of a stunning revolution taking place in Persia, one of the world's oldest civilizations, presently caught in the deathgrip of a cabal of insane Theocrats. There's a continuing American occupation going on across the border, which may or may not have something to do with contacting unknown entities once present at the dawn of civilization.

The US defense budget is larger than every other country on Earth combined. It was in the US that computers and microchips and transistors and all of the rest of it appeared almost overnight after...well, after the Roswell incident, whatever that was. Who are we preparing to fight? The Chinese, who manufacture everything for our Wal-Marts? The Russians, whose space program we've essentially merged with? The Arabs, who have little else but oil to sell to the world and fifth-rate militaries? All of them are keeping our warfare economy afloat.

Nothing makes sense anymore, if you follow conventional wisdom. The world economy is in recession, but we're spending billions - maybe trillions - on space hardware (and extremely sophisticated electronics for consumer use). And when you really stop to think about it, we've no real evidence that the defense budget is actually preparing us for war with Russia or China.

Timothy Good- as well as others- have told us that the US was essentially at war with UFOs in the 40s and 50s. This was front page news all over the world: Roswell, the Battle of Los Angeles, the Invasion of Washington. Lucky for the government, an army of cranks came out of the woodwork telling ridiculous stories about anal probes and blonde-haired Aryan queens from Venus. Along with them were an even larger army of debunkers, using every psychological warfare gimmick in the book to harass and ridicule anyone who took a second look at some of the incidents that defied easy explanation.

The pace of technology is now quickening exponentially, almost as if someone was losing patience the doubling of it every 18 months. Now, don't forget that before Roswell you had a gradually but slowly increasing curve of technology following the Industrial Revolution. You had wireless radio and television in the 20s and 30s, and computers, first Babbage's Difference Engine and then ENIAC during the 40s. But these things were enormous and cumbersome and less powerful than the digital calculators you see embedded in ball point pens.

Before that, technology had been essentially static for thousands of years, at least since the Roman Era. The printing press was not the breakthrough it seemed- even before Chinese block printing, you had lithographic printing blocks in Sumer.

Strangely enough, when technology truly became the center of the human story in the 19th Century, a whole host of weirdos started talking about contact with alien tutors (most commonly known as the "Secret Chiefs"), who were guiding this process. Crazy, right? After all, most of the literature these people produced was a bunch of babble, cobbled together from various esoteric sources.

But at the same time, you have this strange collision of fringe beliefs and ultra-high technology. In other words, weird beliefs are a dime a dozen but when you start to see extraordinary results arise from them, it's worth paying attention. You have all of this bleeding into the media sphere, which we look at here all of the time. And recently we had the two political parties fighting over control of the Sirius glyph (Sirius being the center of the occult universe) and the winner being initiated as the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian king in the customary setting of a tomb on prime time news. Weirdos like us blow our stacks in shock while the rest of the world shrugs. Just like they shrug at the busy, busy skies overhead.

So what is this new world order all about? Regular readers know I only have questions. But I can't help thinking about this new Transformers movie, which presents this scenario of Earth being caught in the middle of an ancient grudge match between alien machine intelligences. We have this Sam character, coincidentally played by Shia LaBoeuf who just happened to appear in the X-Files episode produced just before the one that his new movie is ripping off. I hate to keep harping on that, but that simply cannot be coincidence as we understand it.

UPDATE: No, I don't think it is- I think my original theory that someone involved in the writing of that movie reads this blog might be a better explanation, especially given the Egyptian links between Transformers and The X-Files are my interpretation and not part of the surface narrative.

The giveaway may be that the Transformers film opens in 17,000 BC.

Some determinists desperately want to assign human agency to these kinds of coincidences, but the more they metastisize the harder that gets. And I'm willing to bet that a lot of you out there have cataloged your personal synchs to the point that you realize that there's no way some secret cabal are orchestrating them. At least not one that we can understand.

UPDATE II: As I wrote in a comments section, I hope regular readers of this blog will begin to start synching their own lives, so you can see the latticework of connection that defies external agency.

And it's at that point that things get interesting. I can only speak for myself, but I've always thought something is going on that we just can't grasp. I know all of the common theories, but I find them all light on evidence and long on vitriol. Maybe we're being prepared for something we can imagine but can't begin to grasp. And maybe that has to do with the unimaginably huge US defense budget, and those busy skies overhead.

UPDATE: Check out the Hidden Agendas for a massive video presentation by UFO researcher Robert Dean.

Secret Solstice (UPDATED!)

Oh reverse-engineered alien Technology, you are the blogger's friend. Saturday was not the Solstice, but don't tell our friends on the West Coast that. I would think the fact that the Solstice was on a Sunday would be irresistible, but it might also have terrified any remaining Sun worshippers of the officially-sanctioned variety in the environs out of their wits. As if the sight of tens of thousands of folks on the street dancing and carousing and carrying on in ways indistinguishable from ancient Solar cults would not. Note: if you look closely you can see a suspiciously Lovecraftian cephalopod there.

Speaking of ancient Solar cults, Gus Grissom made an inexplicable appearance in Santa Barbara...

Fremont's parade suffered in comparison to Santa Barbara's, since the feeble Washington sun is no match for its Californian cousin, not to mention all of the lithe, Pilates-addicted California girls. But they made up for the deficit with their elaborate, pseudo-Aztec costumery. As far as I know, there weren't any hearts ripped out of chests at the parade's end and offered up to the Sun to delay the Earth's final destruction.

Well, in place of that, we had the nudist bicyclists providing the horror...

Our English friends gathered around Stonehenge for their Solstice blowout, apparently a record turnout. I guess it helps when the head of your state church is himself a Druid. Not sure what connection congas have to ancient Celtic culture, but everyone looks suitably inebriated.

I was in Phila(e)delphia yesterday and saw posters for their own Solstice festival, but the idea still seems pretty isolated to hippie/boho enclaves. It's all good fun but I'm not sure I see these kinds of festivals piercing the Heartland. Too much of a hippie, weirdo tinge to it all. Americans still prefer their Sun worship rituals to be dressed in more familiar religious garb.

Which we'll look at in great detail here on the September Equinox....

UPDATE: Kozmikon Tommy points us to NAZCA NASA's "astronomy picture of the day"- The Solstice Sun rising over the Parthenon.


UPDATE II: Stargurl gives us this scoop- the theme of the Fremont parade was "Phoenix Rising," and "Also Sprach Zarathustra" was the musical overture. Check out her amazing post on Phoenix syncs here. Go to The Satellite for Phoenix-a-licious synchitude.

Jack Sarfatti on UFO propulsion physics

Renegade physicist Jack Sarfatti talks about a meeting he attended that took place under the aegis of a major defense contractor. The topic was UFO propulsion and the military's interest in same. According to Sarfatti, the technology behind UFOs is understood, but not yet in the application stage. Very interesting conversation here- this is a guy with a very serious resume who has never been shy about peeking under the skirt of the mundane reality consensus.

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre, pt. VII: Transformers

If you've been in a cave the past few weeks, you've probably missed the thousands of images of Megan Fox relentlessly posing at various premieres of the new Transformers movie. This film is obviously a very big deal for the wizards of Hollywood, even bigger than the new Star Trek movie. Why? It's based on a toy/cartoon line that is of importance solely to young males who encountered it at a very early age. What's the mass appeal here?


I'm way too old to have been bit by the Transformers bug, but I'm not too surprised to see it delving deep into the murky waters of our Collective Alien Dream. I remember seeing the toys it was based on in the early 80s at the old Million Year Picnic in Cambridge and the cartoon hit the airwaves right around the same time I began to get serious about my own inner explorations. So I do feel a connection to the franchise in a strange way.

And I've always been amused by the name, since it was also the title of the classic Lou Reed album that contained the tranny-chasing anthem, "Walk On the Wild Side." That album was produced by David Bowie, that eternal resonator of androgynous alien occult identity. In that light, I'm sure the meme of transformation this film is broadcasting into our collective consciousness will have deeper implications than the mere mechanical shape-shifting we see in the movie already.

But again, the film is lifting themes lock, stock and barrel from The X-Files as well. The whole idea of an alien artifact infecting our brains with a new language would not be lost on Bowie and Reed's hero, William S. Burroughs, but here I'm thinking more along the lines of Terence McKenna's theories on hallucinogenic fungi as an intentional conduit for alien communication and the "Stoned Ape" concept of human transformation that McKenna preached. Put it all together and it's clear that McKenna had put his own spin on AAT.

It's interesting that Shia LaBoeuf (fresh off his Indiana Jones AAT opus) begins his own alien dreaming when he goes to college (Princeton, in this case) since that's the time that many young people have their first encounter with hallucinogens. Likewise, we also see Mulder searching for the alien gnosis that "Doctor Sandoz" possessed at American University (it's at college that some young people also begin to manifest symptoms of schizophrenia, too).

Unlike Transformers II, the new fratboy-centric revision of Star Trek is essentially hostile to subtext, perhaps in reaction to the cumbersome esotericism the franchise had taken on. Deep Space Nine, for instance, is essentially the story of the Emissary of the Prophets transforming from man to god. The series is so laden with deeply subversive text (never mind subtext) I don't even know where to begin, but the mytharc also delved into the same themes of alien dreaming and alien identity that we'll be seeing the hermetically-seductive form of the newly-minted bisexual Megan Fox being utilized to put over into the adolescent group mind at the end of the month.

In "Rapture," Sisko encounters an Bajoran artifact that erases the last vestiges of skepticism left in his psyche. He gets a double dose of the alien gnosis, and as in Transformers and X-Files it not only leads to the revelation of alien identity but to the brink of brain damage as well. The revelation Sisko receives comes in the form of a lost city (that hoary favorite of occult fiction) that shows that the Prophets helped shape Bajoran civilization, just as the Godship in "Biogenesis" did for our own. AAT is everywhere in the Star Trek Universe, with our Federation friends sometimes playing the part of the Anunaki.

The funny thing is that when Sisko gets zapped it's clear that he's on an artificially-induced trip, and we see him alternating between a blissed-out state and a tumultous, psychic one. The impetus for this episode probably came from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which seems to have inspired McKenna's alien dreaming theories as well, with the Mushroom in place of the Monolith. But I'm fairly certain at this point in time that something else inspired Kubrick's vision, other than the somewhat dull Arthur C. Clarke story it's allegedly based on. Maybe not the same thing that inspired Jack Kirby's- we're talking something more in the Cary Grant sphere.

So watch these opening credits for A Man Called Hawk featuring the Emissary himself. Really fascinating symbolism here, about as subtle as a kick in the balls. Soak it in. And strangely enough, the Emissary teaches now at a New Jersey university (the Mason Gross School at Rutgers), though not the one we see in Transformers. But even so, a fascinating conjunction there.

I'll end this with a repeated confession- those symbols that Sam sees in Transformers trailer? I see ones very much like them - a lot - when I close my eyes. First they appear in linear fields and then they morph into circular patterns that rotate too quickly for me to write them down. It's been going on for a few years now. Why am I mentioning them again? Well, I'm listening to a Terence McKenna lecture presently in which he describes DMT elves whose speech is expressed visually.

I've never tried DMT, but I think I'm pretty familiar with those elves.

Star Trek: Charlie is 17

For a concept created by a self-confessed atheist, there are a hell of a lot of gods in Star Trek.

I've been watching selected episodes of Deep Space Nine in a state of utter disbelief (the show is unvarnished religious drama of a very strange variety) but the very same themes we see in that show are abundant in the original series as well. As well as in TNG, as we looked at in great detail last year.

I've been watching a whole lot of Star Trek and am nowhere near putting it all together (the connections are too complex and enormous). But I am seeing patterns emerge that are remarkably consistent over the franchise's 43-year history. I have a copy of Brad Steiger's 1976 book Gods of Aquarius, that has a dual interviews with Roddenberry and none other than the author of The Sacred Mushroom, Andrija Puharich, taken while Roddenberry was working with Lab-9.

In it, Roddenberry referenced the two episodes, "Charlie X" (the second episode of the series, originally titled "Charlie is God") and "Where No Man Has Gone Before," (the second pilot) starring none other than 2001: A Space Odyssey's Gary Lockwood, as well as Sally Kellerman and the painfully gorgeous Andrea Dromm. Both episodes are about humans that acheive godhead through the agency of alien overlords.

Really fascinating stuff:

During his career, especially after Star Trek's cancellation, Roddenberry gave many lectures to supplement his income. Those speeches may be lost in time, but thankfully he also discussed UFO's and psychic phenomenon in a book called "Gods Of Aquarius" by Brad Steiger. In a chapter discussing the phenomenon of UFO's and developing psychic powers in children, here's what Roddenberry said:

"We wrote a couple of episodes about individuals who had such unique talents. As a matter of fact, our second pilot - and the one that sold the series - was on that subject when Gary Lockwood began to find out that he could, after having undergone a strange experience in space, accomplish things like moving a glass of water without touching it. And then he developed more and more power... It was too much power to put into the hands of an unprepared person."

"Being 17 is more than how many years you've lived, it's a whole other thing."

Truer words have never been spoken.

John the Baptist in Space: Addendum

Cover dated May 24, 1963, which means it hit the stands on the 17th. Note the cruciform star next to Gordon Cooper's name and the cross formed by the numerals - John the Baptist, the Templar Messiah, crucified on the Celestial Cross. Cooper was also 33rd Degree.

Read the original "John the Baptist in Space" post here for context.

Must See TV: The Pharmacratic Inquisition

All right, let's do this- Gnostic Media's landmark documentary on the secret history of mythology and religion. Some of you may have seen it, but I recommend that those of you who have review some of the recent posts here on the Sun, particularly the Alien Dreaming series. Do I think this documentary holds all the answers? No, and those of you who follow this blog realize I'm not very interested in answers, only questions.

I see this as part of a very large and strange puzzle, and that puzzle is called human consciousness. This documentary will hit you with some heavy information on Astrotheology and Entheogenics, but in my view no discussion even of those subjects is truly complete without pondering the question of alien identity. And most certainly, symbolism and Synchronicity play a very prominent role in all of this as well.

So sit back and let it soak in. Use what you can for your own research, and, more importantly, in the creation of your own personal mythos. We all have a very long way to go before we reach the bottom of all of this, but I think we all owe these Gnostic Media cats a debt of gratitude for laying out what is often a confusing and deliberately obscure topic in such a lucid and compelling way.

Zowie Bowie hits the big screen, pt. 2

Duncan Jones io9 Moon Interview from io9 on Vimeo.

Cheers to Kris- Duncan Jones (formerly known as Zowie Bowie) seems intent on following in his father's alien footsteps. That's David Bowman Bowie, in case you were wondering.

Will you look at that...

Speaking of Neuromancy...(UPDATED!!!)

...it's here.

Now go watch this again. Just for giggles and grins.

UPDATE: OK, let's backtrack. We have this technology that's straight out of the Sprawl Trilogy (or other, more unearthly sci-fi, perhaps), which "Neuromancy" refers to. It's called "Project Natal," meaning "Project Birth." The character here is Milo (who is actually an androgyne) and his/her dog Kate. First, let's do Milo. From wiki:

In Hebrew context, Milo is an abbreviation of the Hebrew name MI "who" KHA "like" IL "god", alias Michael meaning "who resembles God".

OK, "the project of the birth of he/she who is like god." Fair enough. Back to wiki:

Milo and Kate - a game in development by Lionhead Studios in which the player interacts with a young child (Milo or Milly, selected by the user at the start) and his/her dog Kate, using items and passing him virtual items from real life actions. In an interview after the demonstration, Lionhead founder Peter Molyneux confirmed that the demo was in fact the long running Project Dimitri. In the demonstration available at E3 2009, only Milo was available to interact with.

OK, Kate is a no-brainer for longtime Secret Sun readers. Kate is the diminutive of Katherine, which around here we interpret as Ka-Hathor-Ein- "to have the Ka (spirit) of Hathor." And the dog is Sirius, reminding us of the conjunctions between Hathor and Isis.


But who is the he/she that is like God? Adam Kadmon.

We find that Milo grew out of another project:

The Dimitri Project was the codename for a video game by Lionhead Studios that for many years had an unknown status, before surfacing in 2009 as the technology demo "Milo" for Microsoft's Project Natal.

The Dimitri Project! And where does that name come from?


Demeter.

And created by Lionhead Studios- all of you Jungians out there just spit your second cup of coffee at the screen. Who is the Lionhead?


Aion, companion of Mithras, brother of Harpocrates.

So, the birth of Milo/Milly who is like god and whose companion is Hathor-Isis, who grew out of Project Demeter who was created by Aion. These are not random bits culled from here and there in mythology, we're hitting the core archetypes here- the very apex of the Mystery pantheon.

Ancient mythology meets futuristic- almost alien- science, again. You can't keep them separated anymore these days, can you?

Now go look at that video again and feel the Secret Sun on your face.

Lee Perry and the Collective Alien Consciousness

There was a time in my life when I lived Dub morning, noon and night. I'm talking the old school Dub mainly, but also a lot of the work that people like Adrian Sherwood and Jack Dangers were putting out there as well. I was indiscriminate when it came to the classic stuff though- I just needed that sound in my head. It may be an acquired taste, but once it gets under your skin it can easily become an obsession.


Anyhow, Lee Perry is the man who created the form, for the most part. He's also, well, watch the video. Fascinating how Dub not only sprang from this man's brain, but also seems to have a collective effect on certain other brains- as he (sort of) refers to in this commercial. Just another piece in the alien puzzle, that seems to be insinuating itself into the global consciousness we are building in the Synchrosphere.

Dub played a crucial role in Neuromancer, which ties into this idea of the electronic Loa - the old gods using new technology to reanimate themselves as evolutionary wetware, just as Gibson described in the still-prescient Count Zero.

Even here- note that after identifying himself as an alien, Perry invoked Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury...

Check out Dub Radio to infect your own brain....

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre, pt. VI: Transmission

The Heavenly Mushroom inseminates the Terrestrial Yoni

[UPDATED 11:00 AM EST] When you study mythology and symbolism in depth, you constantly run up against the problem of transmission- how are symbols and myths transmitted across time and geographic barriers? It was this very problem that inspired Carl Jung to devise the theory of the Collective Unconscious- a kind of universal database which holds all of these symbols, which we access through psychic means.

This theory has never been popular in academic circles, and perhaps Jung didn't have access to the data he needed to better argue it. But increasingly we are seeing fascinating evidence bolstering Jung's intuition- the only problem is that pursuing this evidence takes you completely out of the reductionist, deterministic mindset so dominant in academic circles.

And thank God for that...

PHALLUS SOLARIS

A 17th Century coin depicting the solar phallus in a flying disk

Strangely enough, Jung's inspiration for the Collective Unconscious theory came from a schizophrenic patient who was experiencing hallucinations that a tube or phallus burst forth from the center of the Sun. Jung had been studying the Mithraic liturgy, recognized this icon from it and was struck by the synchronicity. Ever since critics have been trying to poke holes in this story, but as we recently saw here, the Mithraic liturgy has extremely powerful and compelling parallels to hallucinogenic ritual and to alien abduction lore, parallels that cannot be dismissed or explained away through cultural contamination.

Despite what Jung's critics may claim, experienced psychonauts would take the solar phallus hallucination for granted these days. We have a large and fairly consistent corpus of reports of shamanic visions from all over the world, which Jung did not have in his day. But for many reasons too numerous to discuss here, that corpus is a minefield, completely out of the realm of acceptable discussion.

UFOs OVER CALVARY

One thing both scientific and religious fundamentalists find common ground in the controversy over apparent UFOs in Medieval and ancient art. One of the big skeptic groups consulted with a Medieval art scholar to "debunk" theories that certain images of Jesus depict UFOs, floating around in the background.

One of the images he focused on was the Visoki Decani Crucifixion, found in a monastery in the former Yugoslavia."

...this Crucifixion also follows the common iconographic model of the Middle Ages. The “Deposition from the Cross” of Benedetto Antelami, in the Dome of Parma in particular resembles the Crucifixion of Visoki Decani:.

On the edges of the composition, in the same position as in the fresco of Visoki Decani, the Sun and the Moon are represented as human witnesses to the Crucifixion just as they are in the previous painting. In both art works the figures who represent the Sun and the Moon look towards the Cross that is located in the center of the composition.

OK, sounds reasonable, right? Not really...

Yes, the Sun and the Moon icon are in their places in other Crucifixions, but they are absolutely nothing like the depictions of the celestial bodies in the Visoki Decani example, which pictures two full figures enclosed in what very much look like sci-fi spacecraft. I would argue that the artists who created that image could well have tapped into the same precognitive aspect of consciousness that Jack Kirby did, and had seen visions of Mercury-era space capsules.

Or it could also be based on visionary experience of alien craft, if not eyewitness accounts. UFOs have been recorded as long as we've had writing- there's a book coming out in the near future from a prominent researcher that catalogs thousands of UFO reports, all throughout history, compiled from primary sources. That will change the discussion on the topic, I guarantee you. If it isn't supressed, that is.

Back to the Crucifixion- the supposedly-eminent Medieval scholar completely ignores the fact that this crucifixion iconography is lifted from a common icon of Mithras, like so much religious symbolism we take for granted today.

THE ORIGINAL UFO CULT

Here it is the model for the Medieval/Byzantine crucifixion icon- the common Mithraic Tauroctony. We see the Sun and Moon in their places, the Solar sacrifice marking the passage of the Zodiacal Age (Taurus to Ares, in this instance), and the two witness to the sacrifice.

The UFOs of the Crucifxion image and the Solar phallus hallucination of Jung's patient both directly tie to the Mithraic liturgy, which as we saw opens with a recipe for a kykeon-like potion. And what would you expect to experience once you partook of that bitter potion?

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.

Exactly as Jung described in his account of the schizophrenic.

HELIOS HORUS

Now, the transmission for the Mithras-Christian symbolism is a little less mystical- it's the Emperor Constantine himself. Constantine is the man who took hundreds of competing doctrines and texts and hammered them into what is practiced the world over today. But long after his conversion, Constantine was minting coins with Mithras Sol on the reverse. Bart Ehrman has explained the apparent contradiction- Constantine believed the god of the Bible was Sol.

And when you begin to look at the original inspiration behind these dying-rising archetypes, you realize he may well have been on the right track. And the potential for a new revelation in that possibility is nothing less than earth-shaking.

Mithras as Harpocrates

But even hoary old Mithras was drawn on an earlier tradition- the Mysteries of the Egyptian Trinity. The astronomical alignments of the Tauroctony appear in the Pyramid Texts, thousands of years before Mithras entered the city walls of Rome.

Thou hast come that thou mayest command in the regions of Horus;
(thou hast come) that thou mayest command in the regions of Set;
that thou mayest speak in the regions of Osiris.
May the king make an offering: Thy son is upon thy throne...
thou goest in sandals; thou slaughterest an ox;

Pyramid Text, utterance 224

A servant (holy person) who belongs to the Ennead (pelican) is fallen in water.
Serpent, turn over that Rï‘ may see thee.
To say: The head of the great black bull was cut off.
Hpn.w-serpent, this is said to thee. ...-scorpion, this is said to thee

Pyramid Text, utterance 227

This kind of transmission has always been with us. But what about when it leaves the mythic realm and enters our own?

THE MIRACLE OF THE SUN

Isis and Mary or Mary and Isis?

The connection between these ancient Mysteries, modern religions and UFOs continues to this day. In early 20th Century Portuhal, a phenomeonon that Jacques Vallee described as a classic UFO sighting was recorded as the "Miracle of the Sun." Here are a handful of eyewitness accounts:

"Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was biblical as they stood bare-headed, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws — the sun 'danced' according to the typical expression of the people."

"…The silver sun, enveloped in the same gauzy grey light, was seen to whirl and turn in the circle of broken clouds… The light turned a beautiful blue, as if it had come through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral, and spread itself over the people who knelt with outstretched hands… "

"The sun's disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl, when suddenly a clamor was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was terrible."

Fascinating. But certainly consistent with the ancient traditions, in which gods and UFOs seem to keep very close company...

PHILA(E)DELPHIA, AGAIN

This image comes to us from a 1900 edition of Egyptian Religion by Wallis Budge, published long before ET or Close Encounters, and is a tracing of an ancient bas relief from where?

Why, Philae, of course!

Here we see Isis traveling across the sky, following a path of stars to the Moon. And what do we see following close behind her? We see Osiris and Harpocrates in a flying disk, sitting in positions not unlike the Visoki Decani Crucifixion. Several questions are raised:

• What is the chain of transmission here, from this ancient image to an Alexandrin liturgy to a Medieval tableau?

• Why would the Sun and Moon be seen as vehicles that the gods sat within, as we read in the Mithraic liturgy? Where would that idea possibly come from?

One answer is that between Philae and Visoki Decani we have the Mithraic liturgy, that presents us with a sun disk with doors, exhaust, a beam of light, ramps and several gods casually going about their business within it.

The absolutely-essential documentary The Pharmacratic Inquisition helps explain this chain of transmission, in part. We see a long and consistent chain through visionary experience and Astrotheology. But as compelling as all of this is, it's still only part of the puzzle.

There's still a very strong reluctance among some scholars to connect the dots between Astrotheology and Astro-naut Theology, between AAT and DMT. Even in alternative scholarship, there is a still a very strong territorial instinct, as well as a reluctance to not be too challenging to prevailing orthodoxies - at least not publicly. And yet all of these subjects offer tantalizing links to one another, connections which could very well revolutionize human history and human consciousness...

We see these connections put into a fictional context in The X-Files (and following Carter and Spotnitz's lead, the recent Indiana Jones film and the new Transformers movie). But how compelling do the connections have to be before we start to tie all of these loose strands together in the real world? And where will all of it take us, in the end?

It's so strange- a couple years ago I wasn't looking for any of this. I was working in a completely linear and deterministic paradigm. But I made a decision to follow the evidence, and not my preconceptions of where that evidence was supposed to lead. It's how I discovered the lingering footsteps of the Shemsu Hor, and how the Sirius and 17 memes caught my attention as well, among many others. And in many ways, the question of transmission has been at the heart of it all. And from those questions a whole universe of possibility has opened up in front of me.

The Secret Sun is not about either's and or's- it's about and's. We've had amazing work done in all of these new disciplines- alternative history, Entheogenic research, UFOology, depth psychology- but no single discipline has yet been able to break through and really set the world on its ear. I think that the breakthrough will come only when all of it starts to work together...


Stay tuned, in the John Murdoch sense...

PS: Don't forget to watch UFOs in the Bible!

The Exegesis: The People's Evolutionary Army

I know we're all supposed to be politically-correct and be down on posthumanism, but from where I sit that's just more provincial, Fundamentalist brainwash. Our evolution will be messy to be certain, but for people like myself who deal with chronic pain or other serious health problems, convincing us of the perfection of the "creator's plan" is nothing short of a slap in the face, to say the very least. I'd trade this model in for a new and better one without much hesitation.

There's infinite room for improvement in the human condition and it's time we radically embrace that. Otherwise we cede our evolution to the most inhumane elements in our society, who, unfortunately, are very well-represented in the high-tech field (never mind the venture capital sphere). As it is, we are continuing to surrender our future to the worst de-evolutionary forces, who are gaining power everywhere; all of the varying Fundamentalisms who would destroy this world to fulfill their narcissistic delusions.

Certainly a radical, self-directed form of evolution is at the center of the Superhero mythos as well as the best science fiction. And my contribution to the discussion would be that electronics and genetic engineering are just part of the equation, and that the radical exploration of consciousness must be a part of the process as well.

Similarly, the Enlightenment model of the domination of nature is not a viable model for the future- some understanding of harmonizing our technology to this biosphere must be a part of this process. We have thousands of years of experience to draw upon- and I think that psychonauts have a lot to contribute to this process, as well as integrative environmentalists and enlightened practitioners of spiritual disciplines.

I'm tired of the nonsense being spoonfed to us by the media- the stupid, boring arguments we're supposed to have with each other over marginal issues. I'm tired of all of the false dichotomies of fundamentalism-versus-mindless hedonism that the corporate media wants us to subscribe to. I'm tired of a joyless, inhumane model of evolution, a robotic Borgworld vision of the future that any sane person would shrink from.

I'm tired of the pundits and talking heads who force us to accept this false science vs. spirit dichotomy, those clashing fundamentalisms. I'm tired of seeing people who should be making arguments for a better future being brow-beaten by prefabricated "attitudes" dreamed up in corporate thinktanks and fed to us through the mindless media. Most of all, I'm tired of people who don't subscribe to these false dichotomies being ignored in the public square. This is no accident.

All of these great myths that we discuss mean absolutely nothing if they are not battle-cries for an Evolutionary Army. Religion should not be about faith or belief - it should be about extraordinary knowledge and extraordinary experience. It should be about putting that knowledge and experience into action. It should be about embracing a radical transformation of the human condition, no matter how many obstacles stand in the way.

Think of all the great visionaries of the past 100 years- Jules Verne, Nietzsche, Nicola Tesla, Carl Jung, Alan Turing, Jack Kirby, Philip K. Dick, Stanley Kubrick, Albert Hoffman, Buckminster Fuller - they must rolling in their graves. We have these amazing, unprecedented communication tools at our disposal and tens of millions of people simply use them to watch cellphone videos of a dog licking its balls. Not good enough.

None of it is. The only place you see people talking about the future is in science fiction and comic books and video games. Certainly not in the corporate news media. That has to change.


It may well come time that those who want to evolve will by necessity be forced to separate from those who want to drag this world back to the Dark Ages. But before that happens a rational and humane argument can - and must - be made for self-directed, radical evolution. This is not a simple matter of electronics or genetics, but an all-encompassing, holistic approach to solving our problems and expanding our consciousness.


We need all hands on deck for this, otherwise you can kiss your grandchildren's future goodbye. The way it stands, they'll be lucky if they live in a post-apocalyptic dystopia.

The first step in this process is constructing a culture- which simply means a communal discussion- that is not based on the old paradigms. That doesn't fall into the same old traps put out by the think-tanks and their mouthpieces in the media. That doesn't pay any attention to totalitarian superstitions and their witch doctors - no matter how cleverly they package themselves- and isn't shy to call bullshit on their shills when they come sniffing around.

I think Synchromysticism can play a very important role in this culture, because it is straining towards a new understanding of causality. As can a deeper understanding of our new mythologies and the very powerful impulses behind them, even if the self-appointed guardians of those myths don't approve.

Forgive the rant, but sometimes you just need to say what needs to be said. We now return to our regularly scheduled program...

"Mr. President, You Look Like King Tut" (UPDATED)

So many strands coming together here- Barackobamun as the avatar of restoration, compared to King Tut by none other than Zahi Hawass himself. This is no surprise to attentive readers of this blog, but it's still quite remarkable to see that CNN is now pushing this meme.

And here again, we see the whole Muslim dodge misdirecting us away from the true story, while the secret hides in plain sight. But the secret itself is so hard to wrap your head around, isn't it? Even now, I have a hard time processing it all.

I can't quite say what this all is leading to. But it definitely won't be boring, I can tell you that.

UPDATE: Here's some information on the Tomb of Qar, where Barackobamun was anointed and raised. Here's Manly P. Hall on the use of the pyramids for initiation ceremonies.

UPDATE II: I hope you guys made note of the timecode on that story.

UPDATE III: Check out the original story in which Obama, Tut and UFOs converged in Phila(e)delphia during a Bruce Springsteen concert for the President. After playing the Inauguration and the Super Bowl, Springsteen's next big gig is headlining Glastonbury, drawing the appropriate Arthurian memes into the mix. Some scholars believe that Arthur was an adaptation of Osiris, who may have also lent his name to the Norse gods as well.


UPDATE IV: Eleleth points out CNN's Tut pasteup job- I'm still partial to my version.

Must See TV: UFOs in the Bible

Wrapping up an exciting week with an oldie but goodie. Enjoy!

For further reading, check out "Jacob Wrestles the Angels."

Stairway to Sirius: Barackobamun Tours Giza (UPDATES)

During his stay in Cairo, Egypt, where he gave his longest and arguably most anticipated speech yet, President Obama indulged in some tourism, visiting the Great Pyramids of Giza, which he labeled "awe-inspiring". Obama described the tour as the best off the record (OTR) experience of his presidency so far -- even trumping the burger run to Five Guys with NBC's Brian Williams last week. "Five Guys was good, this was better," Obama said, according to MSNBC News- HuffPost

I think this may be a good time to re-read the Stairway to Sirius series again, and the Very Sirius Election series as well. Maybe this post too.


Star of the day goes to Mark Trueblood. Good work, my brother.

UPDATE: Ha! The Five Guys Obama referred to at Giza is on New Jersey Ave! Click here for context...

UPDATE: Another 17 photo gallery for the "Tutankhamon of the World." This time on Talking Points Memo. Previous 17 photo Barackobamun galleries here.

Man, this hilarity is certainly brightening up the relentless gloom around here...

UPDATE II: Keeping the Manhattanhenge business in mind, there are 17 more days until the Summer Solstice...

UPDATE III: Obama touches down at 7:17 AM and begins speech at 11:11 AM. Pinch me.


UPDATE IV: Oh, please tell me this is all a joke:

Serving as Mr. Obama’s guide in Giza was Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary-General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. He led the way in and around the pyramids and the Sphinx, including a visit to the Tomb of Qar, who Hawass described as a well-known priest, scholar and judge in ancient Egypt. On the wall were hieroglyphs of Qar, primitive images engraved in the stone. He was a thin man man with big ears.

“That looks like me!” exclaimed President Obama. “Look at those ears.”

Actually, the graven image bore more of a resemblance to Mr. Spock of “Star Trek” fame. Wasn’t there an episode where the crew of the Enterprise went back in time to the Egypt of the Pharoahs? If there wasn’t, there should have been. That might have explained a hieroglyph of Spock on the wall of an ancient tomb. Maybe President Obama went back in time. That’d be a good scenario for a pitch meeting in Hollywood.

UPDATE V: Do you think I should sue those "New Tut" guys for copyright infringement?

UPDATE VI: I just thought I'd walk-in and mention that Star Trek:Deep Space Nine had 173 episodes.

The (Secret) Sunrise: A Picture Story

This is how we do it- each image clicks to a link providing further information pertaining to the overall narrative. What is this story all about? You decide.

Gate of the Gods opens on The Solar Seminar

The Iraq War was launched to gain access to an ancient portal to another world? Babylon was built to glorify a "Stargate" through which humans and alien gods were able to meet? Saddam found ancient texts which offered important clues on how to reconstruct the Gate of the Gods?

Aww, come on. This is all crazy talk, right? Maybe not.

In the winter of 1975, Jack "King" Kirby unleashed two strange yarns on an unsuspecting world. One had a dictator launch an illegal war in defiance of international law. He was then pulled out of his bunker and brought to justice, charged with crimes of genocide and possession of weapons of mass destruction.


Two months after that story hit the newsstands, a strange story of a UFO encounter in the desert and a Stargate in the sky was published. Is there a connection to these two stories?

Kirby often stated that he merely projected the visions inside his head onto paper. So why would the ancient Babylonian god Marduk make an appearance in this sci-fi potboiler? What were the links between energy beings, interdimensional portals, globalist wars and ancient pagan gods?

The Solar Seminar collects the Mindbomb series, which explored these very questions, in a new, giant-sized article. I presented an abbreviated version of some of this material at Esalen, so I thought this would be a good time to revisit this series and see if you psychonauts have any fresh insights on a series that appeared in the very early days of this blog.


Click here to read "Mindbomb: The Dreaming Mind and the Gate of the Gods."

Star Trek: The ReGenesis of Gus Grissom

“I grew up on Star Trek. I believe in the final frontier.”- Barackobamun

Just about this time last year I was looking at the strange semiotic links between Star Trek and a young, up and coming politician who had just secured the Democratic nomination for President. Earlier this year I also looked at the new President's near-ritualistic symbolic connections to a dead astronaut, whom some see as a martyr in the struggle for the soul of the US space program (which was largely the pet project of a strange collection of Nazis and Freemasons at the time).

So here we are in June '09- the new Star Trek film is a blockbuster at the box office and the new President is seen as a near-messiah figure by a significant proportion of the world's population. His opposition is in shambles and he seems poised on remaking the American economy in his image (and he made his first visit as President to NYC during a rare solar alignment).

So, I thought I'd just take a look at an earlier Star Trek film, which also had some very interesting references to that martyred astronaut, as well as to the symbolic Ur-narrative that seems to becoming more and more central to our culture these days (like in the new Star Trek, for instance).

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock opens with the death of Spock during the battle with Khan (from Star Trek II), the time-traveling supersoldier who ruled the Earth following the Eugenics Wars. Spock dies aboard a spacecraft, as did Gus Grissom.

We then see Spock's coffin torpedoed to the surface of the Genesis Planet, which was terraformed using radical technology develop by Kirk's son, David Marcus (played by the late Merritt Buttrick, who also played "Johnny Slash" opposite Sarah Jessica Parker on the 80s cringefest Square Pegs- Buttrick died 3/17/89 from AIDS complications.).

We also see a new Starfleet Commander, played by Robert Hooks. This being post-Lab9 Trek, the Starfleet Commander is essentially the de facto leader of the Federation as well. Interesting conjunction with all of the Gus Grissom symbolism we're about to be hammered with.

Here, the Commander forbids the crew to discuss their "knowledge of Genesis." Interesting.

Well, who's flying off to gain further "knowledge" of "Genesis?" Why, none other than the USS Grissom! The Grissom's registry is NCC-638, and a quick bit of addition there should help clarify its purpose in the story.

Marcus and Lt. Saavik (played by Scientologist Kirstie Alley in Star Trek II) detect signs of life on "Genesis" and beam down from the Grissom to investigate. There they find the reborn Spock, reborn with the technomagic of Marcus' Genesis Project. While on the planet, the Grissom is destroyed. However, Saavik refers to the Grissom without the article, as we hear several times throughout the story. Throughout the various Star Treks, ship names are almost always preceded by "the."

Really interesting.

I love these kinds of juxtapositions- is our dying/rising astronaut Spock a stand-in for someone else here?

Here the Klingons interogate the Grissom's survivors about the Genesis project, which we discover is a failure, fashioned by an imperfect creator who would see himself as a god. Anyone with a passing familiarity with Gnosticism should be hearing bells and whistles going off...

"The lowest emanation was an evil god (the demiurge) who created the material world as a prison for the divine sparks that dwell in human bodies. The Gnostics identified this evil creator with the God of the Old Testament, and saw the Adam/Eve and the ministry of Jesus as attempts to liberate humanity from his dominion, by imparting divine secret wisdom. Gnostics like Christians take an allegorical view of the Old Testament."

"Overview of Gnosticism" by Lewis Loflin

What's that, you say? Pure conjecture? Oh, you're probably right. But get a load of what Saavik blurts out a moment later...

...she has no knowledge. Ahh, but she has; Marcus, the creator of Genesis, told her all about it. As his Garden of Eden goes up in flames, Marcus sacrifices himself to save Spock and Saavik, our Vulcan Adam and Eve. Remember that some Gnostic sects taught that the Serpent was actually Christ, sent by the Monad to grant Adam and Eve the gnosis and free them from the Demiurge and the Archons.

How tragically fascinating then that the actor who portrayed Marcus died on the day of Osiris' death, given the similarities between Osiris and Christ (further uncovered in DM Murdock's new book).

After some obligatory fisticuffs between Bill Shatner and Christopher Lloyd (who would launch his own sci-fi franchise the next year), the Enterprise is destroyed and a Klingon Bird of Prey is hijacked and flown to Vulcan. Interesting red glow coming from the ship's stern there.

Then it's some heavy Vulcan ritual hoodoo in order to transfer Spock's katra from "the son of David" back to Spock. I wonder: is the katra anything like the Egyptian ka?

Maybe Spock's ritual cloak might hold a clue...

Hmmm, kind of reminds me of the ceremonial shafts in the Great Pyramid, through which the ka of the Pharaoh would be sent to Orion to spend eternity with Osiris, the lord of the afterlife and judge of the dead.

And what do you get with the ascension of the soul of Osiris to the afterlife? Why, the rising of Harpocrates, god of the dawn....

Speaking of which, this was Harve Bennett's post-Star Trek series, Time Trax ( Harve is heavily into the time travel concept, obviously). The portal there reminds me a bit of the Tardis, but that giant Eye is something else altogether...

Coindentally enough, Bennett was born on August 17th. His last project to date was Invasion America, an animated mini-series co-produced with Steven Spielberg. From the wiki:

.... humanoid aliens from the planet Tyrus begin to initiate their plans for making contact with Earth. Cale-Oosha, the ruler of Tyrus, looks into his uncle's project with Earth.

However, his uncle, The Dragit, claims that their dying planet ought to invade Earth and take hold of its resources. Cale refuses, and a civil war breaks out. Cale and Rafe, his bodyguard, trainer, and trusted friend, escape to Earth, disguising themselves as humans. Cale meets Rita Carter, a human woman; he falls in love with her, and they marry.

After a long time of running from the Dragit's forces on Earth, Cale returns to Tyrus to help strengthen his loyalist forces, the Ooshati, leaving Rita and their young son, David, under Rafe's protection. In the present day, when the Dragit finally finds the family, he is determined to kill them, and David Carter's teenage life is thrown into a devastating adventure of stopping the Dragit, losing and gaining friends, and finding out just who he is.

"Finding out just who you are" is the whole point of Gnosticism, and finding out you are actually an alien hybrid like David Carter is the whole point of Astro-Gnosticism. Fascinating to see some of those old Delta Cycle memes in this series. Interesting guy, that Harve Bennett...

Coincidentally, the voice actor playing Massachusetts-born Carter ("nine-point-nine, nine-point-nine") made a recent appearance on The Secret Sun...

PS For more on the deep Gnostic roots of Star Trek, click here.