The Week in 17: The 17th Hole (UPDATED 1300 EST)

ITEM: Reader Daniel turned us on to this bizarre photo. A little green man with 17 emblazoned on his chest? Yep, sounds like 2009 to me. More:

CHASKA, Minn. (AP)—Tiger Woods will be fined by the PGA Tour for his public criticism of a rules official after winning the Bridgestone Invitational...

European Tour chief referee John Paramor told Woods and Harrington they were being timed.

Paramor said the final pairing was well behind most of the back nine, but officials gave them time to catch up. They were still 17 minutes out of position on the 16th tee, when they were put on the clock.

ITEM: Speaking of overpaid athletes, here's the 8/10/09 issue of Sports Illustrated.

ITEM: There was a tragic air crash between a plane and a helicopter in the Hudson River on Saturday- a grim replay of the Flight 1549. The airplane took off from Teterboro Airport, which is on Route 17. The weird thing about is that I saw a near air collision on Friday evening, not so far from Saturday's event. Pretty freaky sync.

ITEM: Another air disaster of a kind:

MINNEAPOLIS – By its sixth hour sitting on a deserted tarmac, Continental Express Flight 2816 had taken on the smell of diapers and an overwhelmed lone toilet.

What should have been a 2 1/2-hour trip from Houston to Minneapolis had moved into its ninth hour, and the 47 passengers on board had burned through the free pretzels and drinks handed out early in their Friday night flight from Houston.

2+8+1+6=17.

ITEM: Loren Coleman and others gave me the heads up on this weird story from India:

CHANDIGARH - No one knows exactly why it’s happening or how. But in Amloh, a dusty village of about 600 in Haryana's Yamunanagar district, one person has died every 17 days in the last four months. Now, a mortal fear has gripped Amloh, forcing people to go off sex, alcohol and even non-vegetarian food in a bid to purge themselves of what they call a 17-day death curse.

ITEM: More horror- a conspiracy behind the brutal murders of the "Parents of 17":

Investigators have linked Mexican organized crime to the murders of the parents of 17, perhaps answering the case's riddle: why was a Florida couple shot at home execution-style?

And the devil is also in the details:

“Tice admitted that he was selling cars across the border to be resold in Mexico and those deals were cash, under-the-table transactions.” The grand theft charge against Tice is for allegedly writing more than $17,000 in bad checks last year to Worldco Financial Services, a company owned by the Billings family.

ITEM: Not all 17 news has been grim- a reader tells us it was a lucky number for a repeat lottery winner:

Williams, who is single, has worked for almost 17 years ago for Johnson Controls. Before that, he served in the Marines. He said he has been playing Super Kansas Cash, Powerball and other lottery games consistently for 17 years.

ITEM: But not so lucky for the Michael Jackson estate:

The Lloyd's of London policy -- taken out by AEG in case Jackson didn't perform his London concerts -- did not cover death related to illegal drug use. According to the policy, obtained by the L.A. Times, "This insurance does not cover any loss directly or indirectly arising out of, contributed, to, by or resulting from ... the illegal possession or illicit taking of drugs and their effects."

The policy covered $17.5 million. AEG reportedly claims it's in the hole $30 mil.

ITEM: Speaking of 17.5, there's talk of Gil Grissom returning to CSI, since rating have dipped since he left the show. The first show after his departure garnered 17.5 million viewers an 11% dip from the week before.

ITEM: And speaking of dead pop stars, did you know the first Nirvana album cost $606.17 to record? It says so on the sleeve.


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ITEM: And speaking of Nirvana, how did I not know that New Age hotspot Sedona is on Interstate 17?

ITEM: Finally, speaking of exotic locales, check out 17 Questions, this week with alt-Egyptologist David Rohl.

UPDATE: Hey, guess what's out on DVD today?

UPDATE: Oh, you gotta be frickin' kidding me:

A Nasa space telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets orbiting a young star.

Dr Lisse and his team observed a star called HD 172555, which is about 12 million years old and situated about 100 light-years away in the far southern constellation Pavo (the Peacock).

2+5+5+5= nevermind.

UPDATE 2335 EST: Jason the Synchromystic Librarian informs us that there's a new exhibit opening in London, Ontario featuring life-sized animated dinosaurs. Guess how many?

Ten Thirteen: I Want to Believe, part 1

"That poster on Mulder's wall, I think, says it all." - Chris Carter

If you asked most people what The X-Files was about, they'd probably say something about aliens and conspiracies and monsters of the week. If you asked me, I'd tell you The X-Files was about Acid, Abuse and Ancient Astronauts.

Why the discrepancy? Well, most people look at the surface elements of the series, whereas I look at the subtextual narrative, often expressed in mythological symbolism.

Now to clarify, by "Acid," I mean visionary and shamanic experience, hallucinogenic and otherwise, which was an integral part of the series from very early on. But I also mean DNA, itself an acidic compound. By "Abuse," I mean the constant undercurrent of child abuse- systemic or intimate- that lurks beneath all of the alien abductions and tests and the rest.


The very first episode is about children being abducted and abused, as is the Mythology of Samantha's abduction (and certainly its resolution in Sein Und Zeit/Closure). That resolution ties back to an earlier episode called Red Museum, which deals with hallucinogens, ancient aliens as gods and DNA manipulation, all of which is exposed by the actions of a sexual predator. Both stories hinge on the concept of "Walk-Ins," a type of spiritual intervention popularized by UFO cults in the 1970s.


I always saw the aliens in the first six seasons of the series (the "Colonization" storyline) as a metaphor for the Nazification of America, since the Syndicate conspiracy was headed by Conrad Strughold, a not-so-thinly-veiled stand-in for Hubertus Strughold, the Nazi/NASA founding father who used mescaline in many of his horrific experiments at the Dachau concentration camp.


He became two characters on The X-Files (Conrad Strughold and Victor Klemper), both of whom are introduced in the episode Paper Clip, which was based not only on the Nazi-importing program of the Cold War, but was the third installment of a storyline that dealt explicitly with Pueblo shamanism. Though not seen until the first XF movie, Strughold owned the mines in West Virginia (which we'll get to later) where DNA of alien abductees was being stored.

Hallucination and visionary experience is tied intimately into alien identity and AAT throughout the series. An early episode called Space had a Colonel Marcus Aurelius Belt, a former astronaut in charge of the Shuttle program, experiencing hallucinations of the the Face of Mars. It's later revealed that Belt was being controlled psychically by aliens to sabotage the space program so that humanity couldn't leave the biosphere and would remain ignorant of ancient civilizations in the Solar System.

That's part of the surface narrative of The X-Files. It's what lies beneath the surface that may be more enlightening.


Through the series, episodes centered alien identity and AAT would be preceded by episodes dealing with either hallucinations and/or hallucinogens. The first explicit inclusion of AAT in the Mythology was The End, which was preceded by an episode about an insectoid vampire (nearly identical to the ancient Martians from Quatermass and the Pit) that disguised its appearance by psychically implanting a hallucination of itself as human in the observer.


The major revelations of Biogenesis/The Sixth Extinction (with "Dr. Sandoz" and his revelatory "alien tablets") was preceded by the giant magic mushroom in Field Trip, as we looked at previously. The episode in which we first saw Scully's baby (conceived following her exposure to ancient alien technology) was produced right after Via Negativa, an episode about a Iboga guru who kills his victims in their dreams. William's alien identity was explored in two separate arcs: in TrustNo1, aired after Lord of the Flies which had a Syd Barrett subplot, and in Providence/Provenance, preceded by Hellbound which dealt with hallucinations of murder victims.


Ancient mythological symbolism was used throughout the series, eventually reaching a point where a careful observer might come to believe that the writers believed that the ancient fables trace their roots to human/alien contact. Certainly, all of the major characters would explicitly express a belief that humanity was the result of alien intervention in primate evolution, perhaps even in the terraforming of the Biosphere itself. It was never certain if the genetic engineers were the same as the Colonists, since their human/alien replacements were puzzled by the genetic structure of Scully's alien baby (see Essence/Existence).

Weaving throughout all of this is androgyny and psychic ability, since both are part of the alien dreaming and the Mythology throughout the series. As early as the first season, aliens were shown to be shapeshifters who could change genders. And the smoking gun of the alien component of human DNA was telepathy, which was first explained in The End.


So what does all of this have to do with the last X-Files feature film, I Want to Believe? It has everything to do with it- you just have to know how to look.

TO BE CONTINUED

GI Joe vs. Apophis: Addenda

Just Me informs us that there is a direct Egyptian connection in GI Joe, as we see from the promotional material:

From the Egyptian desert to deep below the polar ice caps, the elite G.I. JOE team uses the latest in next-generation spy and military equipment to fight the corrupt arms dealer Destro and the growing threat of the mysterious Cobra organization to prevent them from plunging the world into chaos.

GI Joe vs. Apophis, or "Gnosis is Half the Battle"

So GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra makes its debut today, and the critics have their knives out for it. Doubly so since Paramount didn't offer screenings for them. Having seen the the beating Transformers II took, you can't blame them. But then again, Transformers proved itself to be 1000% critic-proof, so maybe the studio it figured it could save a few bucks and leave the reviewers playing with their Wii's. You might see a lot more of that in the future, particularly as the legendary critics of yesteryear vanish from the scene, increasingly replaced by semi-literate Ain't It Cool-type reviewers.

The GI Joe revival is brought to you courtesy of Mr. Stephen Sommers, who initiated the popcorn-gobbling masses into the Egyptian Mysteries of death and resurrection with his Mummy series, which also introduced Dwayne "King Horus" Johnson to the mythic role he'd later fulfill in Race to Witch Mountain, if not in a different context.

But overshadowing that is the usual media controversy, this time brought to you by complaints that the GI Joe film doesn't celebrate nationalism, but instead ties into the ongoing trend of internationalist militarism in big budget flicks. Sommers stated that, "This is not a George Bush movie...(r)ight from the writing stage we said to ourselves, this can’t be about beefy guys on steroids who all met each other in the Vietnam War, but an elite organization that’s made up of the best of the best from around the world.” Which resulted in whining like this:

This is reminiscent of the determinedly unpatriotic Superman Returns, which deliberately refused to state that Superman was fighting for “truth, justice and the American way.” Even GI Joe is now subject to the dictates of political correctness. We wouldn’t want Europeans thinking that we idolize the men and women of the American military. That would be uncouth.

Unfortunately, the problem for the chickenhawks is that the rest of the world is sick of neocon bloodletting, so a film celebrating such would probably wilt in the international market, which is increasingly important for these very, very expensive action films. Never mind the politics, Paramount probably isn't interested in sacrificing hundreds of millions of dollars/pounds/euros/yen simply to get the thumbs-up from a bunch of chickenhawk keyboard commandos.

But you don't come to The Secret Sun for political handwringing, right? What I'm more interested in is that we have two big budget blockbusters based on beloved 80s toys this summer, both battling these international menaces fond of serpent/reptile symbolism. The Fallen in Transformers was distinctly serpentine and GI Joes face off against the old nemesis, the Cobra organization. Both films have powerful connections to Egypt, either directly (Transformers) or indirectly (Sommers' involvement in the Mummy/Scorpion King films).

Did I happen to mention that the GI Joe team is led by a General Hawk?

"You! You're the ringleader!" Hilarity.

It's tangential, but I'm reminded of the slightly-unsettling old GI Joe PSAs, which bore the tagline, "Knowing is Half the Battle." We just saw another big-budget alien apocalypse Knowing, and I can't help but wonder if there's a thread running through these 2009 films, either overtly or otherwise.

But what's certain is that we're seeing a new kind of militarism, as opposed to the 80s Rambo variety. It's about the group, not the individual. It's about shared, global threats and not about individual struggle. I've seen this developing on a parallel track in the comics and fandom underworlds for a long time now- the team and the group is paramount, and the individual is only as important as his contribution to the group.

Maybe it's always been that way. But it's only recently that this kind of inverse-Gnosis has begun to manifest itself itself in our pop mythology.

Yahooccultism: Meresamun Jackson (UPDATE)

Front-page news:

The Pharaoh of Pop doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as King of Pop, but visitors to Chicago’s Field Museum could swear that’s Jacko’s face on a 3,000-year-old Egyptian bust.

The spitting image limestone sculpture has been on display at the museum since 1988, but recently started drawing attention because of its likeness to Jacko --- complete with disfigured nose. -Yahoo

Well, enough of that. Here's some classic psychedelic Soul, featuring the late Minnie Ripperton....



UPDATE: If you guys are still jonesing for more MJ weirdness, check out Michael Luckman's book Alien Rock, which has a chapter on Jacko's obsession with UFOs and ET:

Michael Jackson is building an airport - for aliens.

The eccentric singer reportedly came up with the idea after dreaming he met little green men from outer space. Jackson wants to set up the extra terrestrial landing strip in the Nevada desert, according to new book 'Alien Rock: The Rock 'n' Roll ET Connection.'Author Michael C Luckman claims Jackson even wants to film the first landing at the alleged base.

He revealed: "Michael wants to welcome extra-terrestrials to earth and to film the landing."

The writer also claims the pop star - who is said to be a huge fan of sci-fi movies like 'ET' and 'Men in Black' - once believed he was an alien himself. He claimed: "Mr Eccentricity (Jackson) revealed in November 2001 that he felt he was from another planet." Michael identified the planet as 'A Capricious Anomaly in the Sea of Space' and said it was located 'just beyond our solar system'.

"Earlier this month, Luckman claimed the troubled star, who last month was acquitted of child abuse, had discussed having his remains cryogenically preserved so he could be brought back to life in the future.

Happy Birthday, Sweet 17

You've all read about the "Birther" brouhaha. All I can add is that no one seems to have learned anything from the Bush AWOL fiasco. No one except Barackobamun's handlers, that is. The whole birth certificate thing was a masterstroke- even Joseph Farah is back-peddling now. By now, you've probably seen the Birther lawyer's meltdown on MSNBC, which is fascinating in that this lawyer felt compelled to leave the country soon after circulating the alleged document.

Like everything else in the news these days, the whole issue gives me a major headache. But this alleged forgery caught my eye with the Feb 17 date down at the bottom. Regular readers probably still have the February 17th semiotic blitzkrieg fresh in their minds. If not, click here.


For her part, Tina Brown celebrated Barackobamun's birthdate with a 17 photo gallery. Becoming a habit with these media types.

And lo and behold, the always dependable Yahoo headlines a story linking births to the magic number, adding a fluff piece identifying Guinevere Lopez with a Roman goddess. The 17 here is odd since parents are responsible for their children until age 18.

Oh, Chris, you say- more craziness. You're right. It's all a coincidence, I'm sure. But remember when I identified Blackwater as the symbolic resurrection of the Knights Templar, noting that they were called before Congress on the 700th anniversary of the Templar suppression? Check out this story:

The two declarations are each five pages long and contain a series of devastating allegations concerning Erik Prince and his network of companies, which now operate under the banner of Xe Services LLC. Among those leveled by Doe #2 is that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe":

To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.

This all springs from an investigation into a massacre that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

UPDATE: Astronut points out that Olbermann is rocking the Barackobamun alien meme.

Blue Sunshine and the Pyramids on Mars

A reader informed us that there's a new Doctor Who series coming called The Waters of Mars. Here's the scoop from the Wiki:

The story is set on Mars and the Doctor will be joined by a new companion named Adelaide, played by Lindsay Duncan, who is head of the Mars base. Producer Nikki Wilson described the character as "the Doctor's cleverest and most strong-minded companion yet." The most recent trailer shows a massive Terrarium of life on the planet's surface, and a mysterious alien which infects its victims using a water compound it creates.

This isn't the Doctor's first encounter with Mars, however. The Tom Baker Doctor (who appeared in 173 episodes) fought an incarnation of Set in The Pyramids of Mars in 1975, the first episode of which aired exactly nine months before the Viking Probe passed over Cydonia. In this adventure, it turns out that Set is actually Sutekh, the last survivor of an ancient alien race called the Osirians.

Strangely enough, The Pyramids of Mars aired around the same time that Gene Roddenberry was working with Andrija Puharich (of The Sacred Mushroom fame) and his channelers at Lab 9. How's that for a coincidence?

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On a more personal note, sometime during the mid-70s (though I'm very fuzzy on the timeline) we spent a week in a rented cottage in Egypt, Massachusetts. We being my mother, my sister and myself with the family we had essentially merged with for a time in the 70s. My mother was a nightclub performer and we led this kind of a gypsy lifestyle with all of the other performers and their families. One of the few things I miss from a generally miserable childhood. These were the same people we summered in Innsmouth Gloucester with, so I'm assuming that cottage was a timeshare.

The reason I bring it up is that I remember that I was very sick that week, with one of those chevron-summoning fevers. I spent the week in bed while everyone else spent it on the beach. I don't remember any interesting encounters, sadly. I do remember all of the girls listening to a George Carlin record- the one with the "seven dirty words" routine.

I had no idea until much later that part of Scituate was called Egypt. However, I did know that Lost in Space star Mark Goddard grew up there, speaking of classic camp sci-fi.

And speaking of hallucinations, Mark Goddard also starred in Blue Sunshine, one of the first films the missus and I rented when we got our first VCR. The film lent its name to the one and only album by The Glove, which Robert Smith and Steve Severin recorded in between Banshees albums. The Glove performed on Siouxsie and the Banshees' 1984 Alice In Wonderland BBC special, which boasted some very Doctor Who-type production values, as well as the usual semiotic (and drug-addled) insanity.

PS- I'm going to catch up with my comment responses sometime in the next couple of days, and I'm also trying to figure what to do with the other blogs. I've already merged the Seminar with the Satellite, but I'm still trying to figure how best to use an auxiliary blog without making myself crazy. For now, this is where the action is.

Dream Log: Room 128

Michael Rennie on The Invaders, a sci-fi spin on The Fugitive*

I was watching a black and white movie. It was about one of those people you've always known but who isn't a friend. I wondered if this was one of those movies that's actually an allegory for an alien abduction. I suddenly went from watching it in someone's living room to watching it in outside, lying in the grass outside my old grade school. The movie was now in color. It was about 1 AM, but the playground was well lit.

The movie was over. I went up the hill to turn the TV off, but it was inside the school and the door was ajar but chained. I found the florescent light coming in from the door somewhat nauseating. Then three teachers walked towards me, but I couldn't really see their faces in the shadows.

"You're not supposed to be in there," one of them said.

"The TV was on in Room 128," I replied, "It was on when I came by. I saw the light from the bottom of the hill."

"What were you watching?"

"It was that movie that they just remade. It had David Janssen," I offered, "I think it was The Man Who Fell to Earth."

"The Man Who Fell to Earth?," one asked. Why can't I see their faces?

Written on literal scraps, around 5:30 AM

"No, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Michael Rennie," I said, more confidently.

"What was the name? Was it the name or the film?," another asked.

"I don't know, It had something to do with owls," I said, annoyed. "It was one of those movies that was really about alien abduction, though that wasn't in the actual story."

"Well, you're not supposed to go in there," a woman said, "They're doing tests. It's dangerous."

* From the Fugitive wiki: The series premise was set up in the opening narration, but the full details about the crime were not offered in the pilot episode, which started with Kimble having been on the run for six months. Not until episode 14, "The Girl from Little Egypt," does the viewer finally get the full details of Richard Kimble's plight.

You can blame Mike Clelland at Hidden Experience for filling my head with these memes.

Week in Review: McKinnon, China's Ubermen in Space

ITEM: China has set some pretty tough standards for its astronaut corps:

No scars, no history of serious illness in the last three generations of your family, and no tooth cavities.

These are amongst the 100 health requirements for would-be astronauts vying to be part of China's next space team, the Yangtse Evening Paper reported on Saturday.

The selection process, which the paper said is for the second batch of Chinese astronauts, will disqualify those who have runny noses, ringworm, drug allergies or bad breath.

In case any of this sounds vaguely familiar, it echoes the rules laid out for SS initiates by Himmler:

Himmler insisted that the candidate be racially pure, that is being of good German stock and able to prove his Germanic roots back to 1800 (officers back to 1750). If it was later discovered that the candidate had Jewish ancestry then he would be thrown out of the Waffen SS. This sometimes infuriated Sepp Dietrich who complained that some first class soldiers were being expelled from his ranks. Also the candidate could have no criminal record, have no history of mental illness and be aged between 17 and a half and 22. Also he had to be the correct height (5 ft 11 inches) and build with perfect vision, even as far as no filled teeth! Alcoholism was a definite refusal of entry.

Not a comforting precedent, given China's growing military and economic power.

ITEM: Did Heinlein unwittingly create the Nazi UFO myth? The UFO Iconoclast gets to the bottom of it:

A very disturbing theme recurs from time to time in the UFO literature. Some maintain that Nazi scientists had perfected advanced aerial craft including "flying saucers" - both in Germany during WWII and as captured "Paperclip" scientists in the US. This supposed Nazi technology is seen by these "researchers" as the genesis of early man-made UFOs. Even now it is seen by some as the reason for today's state-of-the-art "Dreamland" flying machines- or even as the true cause of the Roswell crash!

The belief that secret Nazi UFO technologies existed during WWII -and that the US took these technologies to develop further- is as unsettling as it is untrue. "Nazi UFOs" have been proposed by some on numerous websites and in such books as "The Facade," "Pentagon Space Aliens," "The Hunt for Zero Point," "Man-Made UFOs" and "Hitler's Flying Saucers." They elevate Nazi scientific know-how to a level that it does not deserve.

ITEM: Scientists are working on flying saucer technology using plasma lasers. The results aren't terribly impressive so far. At least judging by this video.

ITEM: NAZCA NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper believed that UFOs are visiting the Earth.

ITEM: UFO hacker Gary McKinnon loses his final appeal:

The British computer hacker Gary McKinnon failed today in his latest legal attempt to avoid extradition to the US where he could face a sentence of up to 60 years in a high-security prison.

The high court dismissed two claims for judicial review, dismaying McKinnon's family and supporters. Janis Sharp, his mother, said: "We are heartbroken. If the law says it's fair to destroy someone's life in this way, then it's a bad law."

My guess? The US probably wants to put his skills to work in the Cyberwarfare Department. A good hacker is worth his weight in gold.

Midnight Movie: Dracula's New World Order

The great Bruce Timm created his own poster for the film

A secret occult society made of powerful figures from government, industry and the military? Unspeakable rites of blood sacrifice, death and resurrection? A secretive aristocrat at the head of a massive conspiracy involving mind-controlled sex slaves, a vicious death squad and a planned viral Apocalypse meant to bring about a new world order?

No, those aren't the minutes from the most recent Bilderberger meeting, it's the plot to Hammer's 1974 horror classic, The Satanic Rites of Dracula, starring Christopher Lee, Grand Moff Tarkin and the recently deified Joanna Lumley.

The film has some brief nudity so is probably NSFW. Available for viewing and download Google here.

And in a related story:

Marshfield, Mass- James P. Riva, who he was sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder for the killing of his disabled grandmother in 1980, said at the time that he was a 700-year-old vampire who needed to drink her blood.

That was in 1980. A year later, he was sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder and arson. Tuesday, he is up for parole.

Riva’s mother, Janet S. Jones, was the first to hear his sordid confession.

Jones, in tears, testified during the trial that her son believed a 200-year-old vampire he met in Florida told him to paint the bullets he used for the murder gold. He also told her he tried to suck his grandmother’s blood, but could not because she was too old.

AstroGnostic: Imprisoned by the Luminoids

The planet Luminos: A minor planet, sultry and simmering. Incapacitated. Earth scientists have concluded that there could be no life on Luminos, that it is too close to its own sun, and that its inhabitants would be victimized by their own blighting atmosphere. But there is life on Luminos — life that should resemble ours, but doesn't.

Desperate life, suffering a great and terrible need. The Luminoids have begun to search the universe in an effort to gratify that need. They seek a planet on which life is healthy, vibrant, strong, and mobile. They need such people to do their work, to labor and slave for them, to manufacture their splendored dreams. The Luminoids need slaves, and they have chosen the planet off which their slaves will be abducted...

You really have to wonder about The Outer Limits sometimes. The show was very cheaply produced and the crude effects don't hold up to modern standards, but underneath it all are some pretty startling concepts and plot devices. We recently looked at "The Invisibles," which dealt with the control of secret societies over the highest levels of government, but there's plenty more where that came from, believe me.

Though not one of my favorite episodes, "A Feasibility Study" presents us with a 300-proof blast of Gnostic theology. A deformed race from a dying planet called the "Luminoids" (!) kidnaps entire neighborhoods from Earth to work as slaves. It's only when people unwittingly travel to the edge of their new reality that the illusion is shattered. And yeah, I think at least one of the witers of Dark City saw this episode once or twice..

We're going to be looking further into the Gnostic subtext of the original Star Trek shortly, but The Outer Limits predates it. In fact, many of the concepts that came to define sci-fi on TV and in film got a test-run during this series, as well as some of the more outre ideas we see in the Synchrosphere, UFOlogy, Fortean research, and even in some of the more radical precincts of theoretical physics.

As with the original Star Trek, the sci-fi conceit of The Outer Limits allowed the writers to explore concepts that would never be allowed on more conventional drama series. And it's remarkable even today to see how seriously it was all taken and presented. Again, the production values might dull the edge for younger viewers, but The Outer Limits packs a highly-weird and nightmarish punch that we wouldn't really see on TV again until The X-Files. Chris Carter has never been shy about singling the show out as a primary influence on his own work.

And though I've never heard him discuss it, there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that The Outer Limits had an immense influence on the work of David Lynch. After all, The Outer Limits' combination of old-fashioned American values and surreal, nightmarish horror is a pretty good description of Lynch's own work, isn't it?

Non-US readers- if the vid doesn't load, track it down through other means. In fact, get a hold of the entire first season, if you can.

Eye (of Horus) in the Sky

This image provided by NASA this July 23, 2009 is a photo made by the Spitzer Space Telescope of the galaxy, called NGC-1097 (=17, CK), is located 50 million light-years away. It is spiral-shaped like our Milky Way, with long, spindly arms of stars. The 'eye' at the center of the galaxy is actually a monstrous black hole surrounded by a ring of stars. - Yahoo

Out of Egypt

OK, this is interesting. This little bit of evangelizing starts with a cute premise, goes on a bit too long and then ends with a thud. The chap on the right bears a very striking resemblance to Marshall Applewhite circa the mid 70s (which merits a post in and of itself) but the central conceit of the skit- two angels weighing the virtue of the confessions of those seeking entrance into the Pearly Gates didn't sound anything like I was taught in Sunday School.

I know there are a couple metaphorical references to scales (judging the living, not the dead) in a couple of the later books of the Old Testament, but certainly nothing like this little skit.


This scenario is actually straight out of Egyptian theology, not Christian. Surely a coincidence, but there have been a lot of similar coincidences popping here and there (not the least of which is all of the Solar imagery popping up in church logos and icons.)

Some of you have probably seen quite a few depictions of the Weighing of the Ka in the Egyptian afterlife, where Anubis and Thoth weigh the heart of the dead to determine if they should join Osiris in the afterworld or be devoured by the demon Ammit. Here is a an excerpt from the writings of Setna (son of Rameses the Great) which dates to the 13th Century BC:

So each Ka passed through the doorway and in the Hall Thoth was waiting to receive him, saying: 'Come with me. Yet why hast thou come?'

'I have come here to be announced,' answered the Ka.

'What is thy condition?'

'I am pure of sin.'

Sounds a bit like modern Masonic ritual, no? The liturgy read by the hopeful applicant is now known as "Negative Confessions" from the Papyrus of Ani, aka The Declaration of Innocence which is included in The Book of the Dead.

But before the Weighing of the Heart, each dead man's Ka spoke in his own defense, saying: 'I am pure! I am pure! I am pure! I am pure! My purity is as that of the Bennu bird, the bright Phoenix whose nest is upon the stone persea-tree, the obelisk at Heliopolis...

...with the good man the Feather of Truth sank down and his heart rose up, and Thoth cried aloud to Osiris and the gods, 'True and accurate are the words this man has spoken. He has not sinned; he has not done evil towards us. Let not the Eater-up of Souls have power over him.

Surely a coincidence, right? But there's one little detail towards the end that caught my attention- when "Jesus" takes the humble do-gooder (a white male, of course) by the hand and leads him to God's waiting room. It turns out that this too has a precedent in Setna's account:

Then Horus took the dead man by the hand and led him before Osiris, saying, 'I have come to thee, oh Unnefer Osiris, bringing with me this new Osiris. His heart was true at the coming forth from the Balance. He has not sinned against any god or any goddess. Thoth has weighed his heart and found it true and righteous. Grant that there may be given to him the bread and beer of Osiris; may he be like the followers of Horus!'

"Followers of Horus" is the English translation of Shemsu Hor.

Is Acharya S in the house?

17 Pictures (UPDATED 7/28)

Well, the Secret Sun Picture Parade rolls on, taking a look at some of the recent images injected into the Memestream and their connections to recent topics on these blogs. A bit of lightness as we wind our way through the midsummer doldrums...

17s are popping up like mushrooms all over the news, though often in bummer stories like the recent Iranian planecrash or the LHC reboot. But we're also seeing the Magic Number assigned to more benevolent contexts, like this Yahoo(ccultismus) headline. The hidden chevron is thrown is as a bonus.

Soapie pointed out the faint 17 in the Henry Louis Gates arrest photo. The arresting officer was a Sgt. Crowley, believe it or not- that's him in the upper right. We don't see his chevrons, but the officer posing in front is kind enough to show us his.

I'm not sure what this controversy is all about, since I'm trying desperately not to pay attention to anything in the mainstream media. But I did hear that the charges were dropped and Barackobamun invited the parties to the White House for a brewski. Terrific, but how about getting the economy moving instead? Just putting that out there.

UPDATED 7/28: OK, we saw the other day that Barackobamun did his big science policy speech exactly 50 years after Gus Grissom was tapped for NAZCA NASA. Now he's invited "Gates" and "Crowley" to the White House to pop open a couple cold ones and bury the hatchet. This will all go down Thursday, July 30, at 1800 EST (that's 6 PM). Funny coincidence here:

The LM-10 Falcon, with astronauts Scott and Irwin aboard, undocked and separated from the Endeavor (CSM 112) with astronaut Worden aboard. At 6:16 p.m. EDT July 30, the Falcon landed in the Hadley-Apennine region of the moon 600 meters north-northwest of the proposed target. About two hours later, following cabin depressurization, Scott performed a 33-minute standup EVA in the upper hatch of the LM, during which he described and photographed the landing site.

So, the Falcon moon-buggy touches down on the Moon on July 30, 1971 around 6 PM. Then we have this meeting between King Tut, Gates and Crowley over some brewdogs 38 years later.

Huh. Interesting.

Hey, you know what else went down on the 30th? The first Masonic grand lodge was established in 1733. Where? In Boston, Massachusetts - just a stone's throw where all of the excitement with Gates and Crowley went down! You gotta love all of these zany coinkidinks! Speaking of which, Officer Crowley's favorite brewski is Blue Moon.


Bonus factoid: the Apollo 15 mission patch pictures three chevrons.

Lost in all the manufactured controversy hijinks was this wink-wink headline: "Hylas dumps Falcon." In case you don't get the joke, re-read this Space/Gods article. Then read this headline from January: "SpaceX erects Phallus Falcon 9 rocket." Dig these wacky numbers:

SpaceX says it took only 30 minutes to get the 17 foot diameter, 180 foot long rocket to stand stiffly at attention after mating the craft with a transporter erector system. That's a big improvement over older rockets which need considerably more time and effort to get up.

Over and over and over again. The Falcon 9 is launching from Cape Canaveral in January 2010. Anyone wanna bet it will be on the 27th? Or perhaps the 17th...

UPDATE 7/27: Check out "17 Names" over at the Satellite for some syncholicious 17-ery.

Of course, being a hopeless X-Files geek, the whole thing inappropriately flashed me back to this shot, where Fox Mulder meets a Man-in-Black (played by Alex Trebek, of all people). That's the way my brain works, everything ends up being back-referenced to the Mighty X. Of course, this humorous episode has a darker undercurrent; how the military manufactures fake UFO flaps to provide cover for black project chicanery. Don't know exactly what made me think of that...

The chevron was a part of my strange childhood supraconsciousness as were owls, which we discussed last week. And lo and behold Fergie shows up in the celeb sites this mind-numbingly tacky outfit.

Now I found this pic while poking around for information on Blondie, since the missus and I were talking about going to see Debbie and the boys in a couple weeks. This single is from Debbie's Koo Koo solo album, the art for which featured the ol' Egyptian/alien motif, courtesy of HR Giger, who also directed the video for this song (watch it with the sound turned down here).

So what's the connection between Fergie and Debbie, never mind Egypt and aliens? Well, the two singers dueted on "Call Me" for the Fashion Rocks benefit last September, which boasted a stage set eerily resembling the eponymous dimensional portals from the Stargate franchise, only sans chevrons.

"Call Me" was Blondie's hit from the soundtrack for American Gigolo, which launched Richard Gere (Mothman Prophecies) into superstardom. Bonus factoids: Fergie performed writhing on a new Chevy Camaro, the original model of which made its debut the same day John Cusack was born. You can see Beyonce, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus and other Synchrosuperstars in a chorus line from FR here.

Back on the Egypt/Aliens meme, here's a quick grab from the Egyptian gallery from the kids at one of the schools that those creepy UFO-abduction drills were held at. Fascinating coincidence there.

Another similar Secret Sun meme showed up on Yahoo with this Apophis-looking character I'm not familiar with. So all you gamers out there, educate me.

Speaking of serpents, I found this Egyptian winged serpent charm while researching an upcoming Star Trek post. This is Wadjet and she is protecting Harpocrates, who some see as the archetype of this new aeon. What caught my eye, however, were the plants in the lower left- the look remarkably like opium poppies (in the front) and psilocybin mushrooms (in the back). Which speaks volumes about Egyptian religion, whether or not Uncle Zahi wants to hear it.

Speaking of Horus, the San Diego Comic Con is winding down as I write. I haven't been in a few years, 2004 to be exact. It was so brain-blastingly overwhelming I was frazzled halfway through Friday afternoon. San Diego used to be a wonderful Synchronicity hotspot, which may have inspired the Udjat logo there. Now it's just ShoWest south. Note the rays beaming over the skyline from that left eye. The left eye of Horus is the Moon...

...which recently obscured the Sun for the longest Solar eclipse we'll see for the next hundred-something years. The media got a lot of mileage blasting Asians- Hindus in particular- for their beliefs about the eclipse. Or at least some Hindus, we have no sense of what educated folks there think about it. Maybe this is inoculation for Western left-brainers troubled by an up-and-coming technological powerhouse that takes verböten topics like Astrology, UFOs and AAT seriously. Or maybe it's because our so-called "liberal" press is filled with racist assholes, I don't know. Either way the event came and went without incident, so whatever.

Speaking of the Moon, me and the missus just watched the remastered "Mirror, Mirror." I can't exactly tell what's so remastered about it, other than some superflous CGI establishing shots. But I was fascinated that this interdimensionally-themed episode had a "Barbara Luna" ("Foreign Moon") playing James Tiberius Kirk's ("Supplant the Roman Church") hottie-of-the-week, Marlena, a name derived from Mary Magdalene. Just more of the juicy Gnostic subtext in ST:TOS.

Speaking of spaceships, there's been a flood of daylight photos of strange objects flying around in the skies showing up on the UFO sites. This corresponds to the avalanche of UFO reports coming in, making 2009 already a banner year for sightings.

Couple interesting things about these photos. A lot of people are reporting that these objects- whatever they are- weren't visible when they were taking the shot but showed up when they looked at the pictures- most assumably digital.

Also, these pictures are often submitted to these sites anonymously and many sites are not identifying the photographers, putting lie to the usual dodge that these are just desperate people, who are simply seeking publicity or attention.

In fact, it's the skeptic/hoaxer types with their lame nightlights that are the ones desperately seeking attention, which the corporate media is all too happy to provide. Again, if the mainstream media (in the US, at least) covers a sighting, it's probably a setup. And if any so-called "UFO expert" says nightlights can't be faked, then ignore them too.

Are there any more of the the Stupendous Yappi's little boy wonders out there ready to yank any more cranks? Bet on it.

Maybe the skeptics and the media have a shared interest in keeping people's minds off more troubling objects in the skies, like these photos of unidentified craft spraying contrails. Who knows?

But we do know there is a tremendous amount of hardware being put up in the sky for purposes that aren't entirely clear, and perhaps if you embarrass enough people with over-hyped UFO hoaxes, they'll be too intimidated to pay any attention to it, never mind report it.

Ah, don't pay any attention to me- I've just watched too many X-Files reruns.

And for our 17th and last image, this is a closeup of a 170-foot wide crop circle from the UK that has this elaborate, seemingly uniform weave pattern. Whitley Strieber claims this is proof that some of these circles are definitely not man-made. I can't speak to that but it's worth taking a look at nonetheless.

Must-See TV: The Invisibles

What do you get when you cross Lovecraft's Chthulu mythos and Heinlein's Puppet Masters and throw in a dash or two of Darker Than You Think? You get this nail-biting episode of The Outer Limits. As detailed by Bruce Rux, The Outer Limits was created by Leslie Stevens, whose father was a US Navy Admiral, so the denouement of this episode has added resonance.

After a billion, billion years, the strange forces of cosmic energy have put together nameless nuclei that met and fell to Earth where, although deformed by the fall, they plan to rule by infesting the bodies of powerful and influential humans. These 'alien things' can grow into the body of a man who is useful to them, but form ugly growths and make sickness of the men they cannot use in their attempt to take over.

Luis Spain is planted by the Government Intelligence Agency to get inside the clique of once respected men who are still in positions of power although converted by the invisibles they carry in their systems.

My apologies if this video isn't available for non-US readers, but I strongly recommend you track it down. Grant Morrison obviously did. Here's the link for the (Cht)Hulu page.

Grissom/Obama meme going viral? (UPDATE 1920 EST)

In the past 36 hours this blog has been bombarded with thousands of hits, after a Drudge Report-type site linked to part one of the Gus Grissom/Barackobamun piece. There were the usual corny old jokes about "tinfoil hats" and all of the rest of the worn-out snark in the comments sections (along with some stunning displays of poor reading comprehension), but that represents only a tiny percentage of the traffic. Having been on the internet for the better part of the last two decades, I recognize defensive ironic distancing when I see it.

What's more, I'm noticing that other sites are picking up on the meme. It's too soon to say how resonant the meme will become, but it did get me looking at Obama's possible Grissom obsession again (and that's what I was writing about- not a conspiracy, per se.)

In the first few seconds of doing so, I found this speech to the National Academy of Sciences on April 27, 2009. Although it was a more general (read: "boring") gabfest on science and technology, Barackobamun spoke about his support for the space colonization program:

My budget includes $150 billion over 10 years to invest in sources of renewable energy as well as energy efficiency. It supports efforts at NASA, recommended as a priority by the National Research Council, to develop new space-based capabilities to help us better understand our changing climate.

And he even snuck in the Magic(k) Number:

America's young people will rise to the challenge if given the opportunity -- if called upon to join a cause larger than themselves. We've got evidence. You know, the average age in NASA's mission control during the Apollo 17 mission was just 26. I know that young people today are just as ready to tackle the grand challenges of this century.

So what's the big deal about this speech? Nothing, really. Except it took place of 5o years to the day after Gus Grissom was chosen by NASA for the Mercury Project.

So, is that really the Sun in the Obama logo?

Not being a round decade interval, Obama didn't mark the Liberty Bell 7 mission in any noticeable way. But he did cut $1.7 Billion from the F-22 program, a move the fastidiously-ethical Grissom would have applauded.


UPDATE 1920 EST - Interesting Timing Dept.:

Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has failed to declare the presence of 30 ancient tombs on his land, according to newly published recordings said to be of him.

The recordings allege Mr Berlusconi told escort Patrizia D'Addario of 30 Phoenician tombs at his Sardinia villa.

The tombs date from 300BC, a man said to be Mr Berlusconi was heard saying. - BBC

Hey, guess what else? Berlusconi is a P2 Mason!

UPDATE: Tommy looks at the decline of Fark and the kneejerk reactions to the post. I'm not surprised by any of it. If the post was truly nonsense, they wouldn't have spent any time on it. But it obviously got under their skins- that is, those few who read above a 8th grade level. I've seen this process over and over again. But it ties into a wider issue...

We're in a period of reaction following long years of political dominance by forces tied to the religious right. Now we're seeing a kind of dyspeptic, dogmatic materialism and radical adherence to scientistic authority become the default setting not only for the Left, but also for the marginal types looking for bandwagons to hop. It's a temporary thing- I've seen these kind of mass memes come and go on the Web at an increasingly brisk pace. But these movements always overstep their bounds, because they inevitably attract non-thinkers with their own axes to grind. And soon even people within the cult become bored and frustrated by the declining quality of discourse and the Great Wheel turns yet again.

Unwisely, the skeptic/atheist crowd have tied their wagons to Obama and the Democrats (ie., the left wing of the Neo-Feudal oligarchy) in a big way, but are forced to watch them disintegrating at an only slightly-slower pace than the Republicans. If Obama continues to fail, not only will the Fundamentalist forces be re-emboldened (and cut loose from the slight bonds of politesse that the GOP insisted upon), so will very angry types in the Libertarian and Patriot undergrounds. All of these people not only supremely resent the kind of mocking and dismissal that they have to deal with from the Left, but a lot of them are being squeezed economically -- and are also armed to the teeth. Not a good situation for anyone, and we've already seen the horrible results of this recipe.

Now, anyone who spends more than five minutes on this blog knows I'm not some wild-eyed hysteric. But the very word "Freemason" is a red flag to some non-thinkers, who have no concept of the history or continuing influence of the Craft or affiliated groups, all of whom are very well represented in Washington and other capitals. And there is so much hysteria about Masonry - a lot of which I believe is self-generated- that no one can discuss the topic without inspiring knee-jerk reactions.

This blog looks at esoteric themes primarily in the entertainment sphere, and there's no arguing the increasing prevalence of these themes. Believe me, if the Michael Schermers and Phil Plaits of this world had their way, there would be a skeptic/atheist version of the Hays Commission, policing and censoring esoteric and supernatural content in TV, video games and movies. And soon after, America's entertainment industry would collapse.

But as Frank Zappa said, politics is the entertainment wing of the Military-Industrial Complex. Perhaps when we see politicians toying with esoteric iconography (or worse, the shenanigans at Bohemian Grove and the like) we're subconsciously confronted with the unreality of our political clownshow, which millions of people- liberal and conservative- regard with the utmost seriousness.

To acknowledge the power of secret societies is to doubt the American myth of the sovereign citizen, and to acknowledge the possibility that these groups may wield some unexplained power mortally challenges the scientistic myth of the primacy of the conscious, left-brain mind and the illusion that the scholars and scientists are born to rule.

Ironically enough, the last two were the original mandate of the Illuminati, before they entered into the mythic realm.

Mindbomb: OK, this is completely insane (UPDATE)

UPDATE: Speechless. Thanks to Eleleth and everyone who caught this.

In my most recent Solar Seminar extravaganza (yes, I know it's been a while since I updated but I've been busy), I asked this impertinent question:

Is creativity a form of shamanic communion with forces beyond our ordinary experience? Are there certain individuals who are able to tap into the deepest recesses of consciousness where the gods are waiting? Does visionary experience allow one to see traces of reality unbound by time and space? There are the questions that lie at the heart of my own work and have led me to obsess further on an already long-standing obsession- the American godfather of the modern superhero, Jack Kirby.

Longtime readers are familiar with the eerie prescience of the late King of Comics, such as this issue of a comic (that was drawn in 1959 but not published until mid-1966) that depicted a strange foreshadowing of the Monolith and Stargate of 2001: A Space Odyssey...

...or this startling depiction of a nuclear-armed jet slamming into a skyscraper 17 years before 9/11...

...or this prescient allegory of the Gulf Wars and the arrest of Saddam Hussein in OMAC (drawn 17 years before the Gulf War), written contemporaneously with a story about a Stargate in another Kirby comic, Kamandi.

Drawn 17 years before the Viking mission

OK, if you haven't read those stories, be sure to check them out. But let's rewind to Moonday, where we were looking at the various theories on the Apollo Hoax meme that the media was shoving down our throats:

Now, let me go on record as believing the Apollo landings were real (they were too ritually important not to be), though perhaps not quite what we saw on TV. However, there's another possibility here that the media is not shoving down your throat- the landings were real but some of the photos and film from them were faked.

Why? Possibly because the real nature of and equipment used in the Apollo missions are highly sensitive and not meant for public consumption...As as I said before, some researchers like Chris Everard believe that there are still active alien bases on the Moon.

Then Jay Weidner posted a long article presenting his theory that Stanley Kubrick helped fake the Apollo mission footage to hide the true mission, which used Nazi saucer technology. This project was worked on simultaneously with production of 2001:A Space Odyssey, according to Weidner. There was some discussion of that story on The Solar Satellite.

But in pondering the third option in the Apollo controversy, I asked this impertinent question about the Apollo 11 crew's quite bold pronouncements that NASA forget about the Moon and focus on Mars:

I wonder if that has anything to do with the strange explosions and flaming debris we've seen falling from the sky over the past few months or the fact that June began and ended with two jetliners mysteriously dropping into the sea.

OK, to recap: Jack Kirby, Apollo 11 hoax controversy, Stanley Kubrick, war in space...

In 1976, Jack wrote and drew Captain America's Bicentennial Battles, in which Cap encounters a sorcerer named Mister Buda. The mini-Magus sends Cap on a trip through time and space, revisiting some crucial moments in America's history such as the Civil War, the White Sands Atomic Test (the same date as the Apollo 11 launch, incidentally) and the Great Chicago Fire. Cap encounters notables such as Adolf Hitler, John Brown and Benjamin Franklin, and winds up in some pretty interesting locations...

...such as the Moon, where he discovers "it isn't as dead as it seems to be," and in fact is the setting for a major firefight...

...between forces Cap can't identify. "But this is impossible," Cap thinks to himself, he's heard nothing about this in the corporate media! How could it possibly be happening?

But no sooner does he try to get a hold on what's happening than he ends up in one of Buda's psychic time portals. Kirby's description of Cap's voyage is almost identical to the language he'd use describing another astronaut's unexplained voyage...

...in Jack's other 1976 Treasury Edition comic, his adaptation of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Just as with OMAC and Kamandi, another strange link between two contemporaneous Kirby comics.

Because sure enough, Cap finds himself back on Earth, smack dab in the sights of a camera lens. Given the You Are There conceit of Bicentennial Battles, it must for a newsreel, perhaps the Hindenberg disaster or something. After all, Astro-Cap is the "truth-seeker" in this story...

...no, Cap goes from the unreported secret war on the Moon, through a Kubrickian Stargate, and straight into a movie studio.

The Phoenix Has Landed: A Picture Story

You know how it goes- click pics for the story behind the imagery.

Space/Gods: Mars, Moonshots and Masonry (UPDATED 1400 EST)

Check out the Telegraph's gallery of Apollo UFO imagery

OK, I've got a lot of ground to cover here - I'm going to try to cover some of the weirdness aspects of Apollo 11, as well as all of the varying theories and controversies over it. But I did want to hit this story. Some have claimed that the reason we've not returned to the Moon is that there are alien bases there, and we've been warned off. Sounds crazy, some might say.

But those who subscribe to that theory might find Buzz Aldrin's attitude about going back there quite interesting:

In an op-ed in The Washington Post on Thursday, Aldrin wrote that "a race to the moon is a dead end," and that "the moon is a lifeless, barren world, its stark desolation matched by its hostility to all living things.” Instead, Aldrin argues not only for a manned mission to Mars, but for a long-term program to build a human colony on the planet in order to research whether it once supported—or currently supports—life.

"Its hostility to all living things." Fascinating.

Aldrin had put forth his proposals at a Mars summit in Plymouth, England, a fact which definitely caught my attention. For some reason, Plymouth and Mars seem to be very intimately linked. I uncovered this strange connection back in December:

Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has finally spotted rocks on the Red Planet that bear carbonate minerals....

It turns out that this crucial mineral was discovered at the Nili Fossae, named for - you guessed it - The Nile River:

The results were presented Thursday at an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco and will appear Friday in the journal Science.

Scientists planning the next Mars landing — the Mars Science Laboratory — initially considered Nili Fossae as a potential landing site, but it did not make the final cut.- AP

So this was announced on Thursday the 18th, which is the 388th anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth... And how were the sacrifices of those brave and dedicated Christian pilgrims commemorated?

That obelisk is in Plymouth, England but it has a cousin in Massachusetts. The cornerstone of that obelisk was laid in an elaborate ceremony, involving a Naval regatta and the President of the United States. Oh, I forgot to mention- it was an elaborate Masonic ceremony:

“In the name of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts I now proclaim that the corner stone of the structure to be here erected has this day been found square, level, and plumb, true and trusty, and laid according to the old customs by the Grand Master of Masons..."

The carefully planned ceremony had begun early in the morning of August 20, 1907 when the presidential yacht Mayflower, with President Theodore Roosevelt aboard, sailed into Provincetown Harbor around 10 o’clock. As it rounded Long Point and entered the harbor, it passed down a passage created by eight battleships composed of two squadrons.

And guess what else happened on August 2o? Well, in 1975 the Viking Mars Probe was launched.

How many of you think that the selection of Plymouth for this Mars Summit was coincidental? Yeah, me neither. Bonus factoid: Aleister Crowley was brought up in the Plymouth Brethren, who also brought us the Rapture craze and Dispensationalism.

Speaking of which, apparently for some "For some, the first Moon landing in 1969 was “almost a religious experience”

Forty years later, Debbie Rogers of Hingham vividly recalls the thrill of watching the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969 – and not just because one of the astronauts, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, was a friend.

“It was almost a religious experience,” Rogers said this week.

Of course, the media was hitting those nefarious "conspiracy theorists" pretty hard this past week, "debunking" all of their dangerous theories about the Moon landings being faked. Yet all of the various news agencies spent so much time frothing at their collective mouths about it that it set my hidden agenda detector a-pinging.


CNN covered the story in a fairly impartial manner, and ABC correctly headlined its rebuttal story "Refuting the Most Popular Apollo Moon Landing Hoax Theories" rather than the presumptuous "debunking," but several other outlets offered debunkings, such as the so-called Mythbusters, who already have decided that that the theories can be "busted" even before they even gather any new evidence.

Now, there's a whole cottage industry of so-called skeptics whose behavior is remarkably similar to petulant adolescents and whose attitude towards contrary evidence is indistinguishable from the Iranian Ayatollahs. Whatever kind of "punk" attitude these people present to the public, the fact is that they are all essentially shills for the Establishment.

That being said, I was still extremely puzzled by all the attention paid the Moon hoax crowd, which even in the relatively marginal conspiracy theory world, is a pretty small constituency.

And just to add to the cognitive dissonance, we also hear stories that an iconic photograph from the Spanish Civil War was itself a hoax and that NASA erased the original Apollo tapes and used a Hollywood production house to restore copies. You don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to sense some weird psyop agenda at work here.

Now, let me go on record as believing the Apollo landings were real (they were too ritually important not to be), though perhaps not quite what we saw on TV. However, there's another possibility here that the media is not shoving down your throat- the landings were real but some of the photos and film from them were faked.



Why? Possibly because the real nature of and equipment used in the Apollo missions are highly sensitive and not meant for public consumption. There are theories out there that there are ancient artifacts on the Moon, exactly the kind that the Brookings Institute recommended be kept secret in 1958 in their report on UFOs to NASA. As as I said before, some researchers like Chris Everard believe that there are still active alien bases on the Moon.

By pushing the Apollo hoax theme to death and then letting all of the skeptic mediawhores throw their tantrums at the theorists, the media is effectively shutting down any other speculation on the Apollo missions and why they suddenly stopped. Two prominent astronauts- Edgar Mitchell and the late Gordon Cooper- are both on record as believing that UFOs are real. And Aldrin's cryptic comment about hostility to all life might be interpreted by some as a coded warning or at least a Freudian slip.

And after a lot of noise made about the Constellation missions when Barackobamun took office, there are reports coming in that the future of the program is in doubt. And now the Centaur rocket will be bombing the Moon in October, allegedly to gauge the presence of water crystals.


I wonder if that has anything to do with the strange explosions and flaming debris we've seen falling from the sky over the past few months or the fact that June began and ended with two jetliners mysteriously dropping into the sea. It surely doesn't have anything to do with this summer's blockbuster hit which features humankind drafted into a war between alien factions.

Which, come to think of it, is the basic storyline in the new Star Trek film as well.

UPDATE: Wow, those Apollo 11 chaps are riding the Mars-not-Moon meme hard today:

Two of the astronauts who took part in the first Moon landing 40 years ago have called for renewed efforts to send a manned mission to Mars. At a rare public reunion of the Apollo 11 crew, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins said Mars instead of the Moon should be the focus of exploration.

Those who believe that mankind has been warned away from the Moon won't be exactly dissuaded by Michael Collins' remarks today:

Mr Collins, who circled the Moon alone while Mr Armstrong and Mr Aldrin walked on it, said Mars was more interesting than the Moon.

"Sometimes I think I flew to the wrong place. Mars was always my favourite as a kid and it still is today."

He urged further exploration, saying: "I worry that the current emphasis on returning to the Moon will cause us to become ensnared in a technological briar patch needlessly delaying for decades the exploration of Mars - a much more worthwhile destination."

And also a hell of a lot farther away. What do these guys know about Mars that we don't?

Those who believe that the Apollo missions were faked to boost national morale won't be discouraged by Neil Armstrong's remarks either:

Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, said the race to get to the Moon had been the ultimate peaceful contest. He said it was an "exceptional national investment" for the US and ex-USSR. Mr Armstrong told the audience: "It was the ultimate peaceful competition: USA vs USSR. "I'll not assert that it was a diversion which prevented a war, nevertheless it was a diversion."

And those who believe that the Cold War was itself a hoax meant to mask an ongoing globalist agenda won't be discouraged by these cryptic remarks by Armstrong:

"Eventually, it provided a mechanism for engendering co-operation between former adversaries. In that sense, among others, it was an exceptional national investment for both sides."

Both sides? I missed something- what cooperation was there in the Apollo program?

Apollo 17 skipper Gene Cernan offered a dissenting voice, of a sort:

"We need to go back to the Moon, we need to learn a little bit more about what we think we know already, we need to establish bases, put new telescopes there, get prepared to go to Mars. The ultimate goal, truly, is to go to Mars," he told journalists.

UPDATE: Remember those noctilucent clouds linked to both the Tunguska event and the space shuttle explosion? Well, it turns out they are becoming mysteriously more common:

“That’s a real concern and question,” said James Russell, an atmospheric scientist at Hampton University and the principal investigator of an ongoing NASA satellite mission to study the clouds. “Why are they getting more numerous? Why are they getting brighter? Why are they appearing at lower latitudes?”

Nobody knows for sure, but most of the answers seem to point to human-caused global atmospheric change.

Of course they do. The media decided that before they even heard of the phenomenon. Never mind the fact that they were observed after shuttle launches or that 2009 is already a banner year for UFO sightings.

I'm sure there's no connection.

Walter Cronkite 1916-2009

Walter Cronkite was an American icon, whose reporting of the death of JFK made him an American institution. It was a bit before my time and probably a lot of yours, but he seemed to be at the center of the action for some crucial moments in what many would see as the loss of American innocence- the various assassinations in the 60s, Viet Nam and Watergate and all the rest of it.

Interesting conjunction of events, what with the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 next Mo(o)nday. Never having watched him- and not being particularly nostalgic for corporate monopoly media- I have nothing in particular to say about the man, other than his passing seems a bit of a coda to a vision of America that's long since been lost.

Nine Eleven Ten Thirteen: Addenda

Reader Horselover Phat chimes in with these astonishing X-Files factoids, vis a vis 9/11:

Just for openers...there is a span of exactly 3333 days between the first bombing of the WTC 1993 to the lights going out on the WTC memorial...those lights were on for a span of 33 days. Why are the premiere of "X-Files" and September 11, 2001, the same number of days apart as the birth dates of the two lead actors, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson? Why was Gillian Anderson 33 years and 33 days old on September 11, 2001? Why were there 33 years and 33 days between David Duchovny's birth and the premiere of "X-Files"?

Maybe the answer is that The X-Files is the key to all of life's great mysteries. Or at least that the key to all of life's great mysteries lurk within The X-Files. Who knows? Syncs like this swarm like genetically-modified bees all over the show, believe me. Maybe they are there so you'll pay attention to what the show has to say, certainly in respect to the Mythology. Maybe there's something that was using that show as a conduit for deeper messages. Again, who knows?

Click on the Chris Carter/X-Files tag and catch up with past musings on the Mighty X and related programs. I still haven't posted my X-Egesis of the last movie, but I guarantee it will blow your minds. Fans complained the story wasn't about alien abduction and colonization? That's all that it was about.

There'll be plenty of Ten Thirteen material in my Moon Landing extravaganza, which will be posted sometime on Mo(o)nday, including a stunning Gus Grissom/HAARP connection hidden within a standalone's storyline.

More on XF/911 here and here.

Owls

I had mentioned in the comments section of my Mothman post that my mother was obsessed with owl imagery when I was growing up. An anonymous commenter mentioned something that I had forgotten; that in alien abduction literature, owl imagery is often implanted into abductee's memories as kind of diversionary screen image. I do remember reading about that in either Communion or Intruders.


Here's just a small sampling of the owl imagery I grew up surrounded by. That's me, in a corner of the dining room, probably sometime around 1972 or 1973. Most of the imagery was in the living room- there was a kind of alcove set into the wall that my dad used as a bar and then my mother used as a kind of shrine, with all kinds of owl figurines there. Later we put the TV there.

Now, I have no reason at all to believe that my mother was an alien abductee, but there is one particular story I remember her telling me. She said that just before I was born she put my sister down for naps and then would often take one herself. But she would have this recurring nightmare that a "witch" was on the porch and was trying to come into the house while my mother was asleep on the sofa.

That was the same exact spot I had the leprechaun hallucination you're all so sick of hearing about.

I sometimes wonder if the neighborhood was once an old Indian burial mound. A couple years back a dolphin beached itself in the river right down the street. A fresh water river, mind you.

But what the owl discussion really reminded me of was my dad's Mustang Mach I. One of these days I'm going to get me a Mustang. Maybe when the midlife crisis hits.


UPDATE: Obligatory Ten Thirteen reference.

Transformers, part 2: Ultraterrestrials

Angels=alien androids

John Keel's work has been floating around in my head in a oblique way, as I continue to process all of the Keelian weirdness that's gripping the world. In particular, I've been thinking about Keel's "ultraterrestrial" theory. Ken Korczak wrote about Keel's UT theory in an excellent column from 2006:

People who support the Ultraterrestrial theory, such as authors Jacques Vallee and John Keel, point out that supernatural beings seemingly superior to humans have been reported throughout history. In previous eras they were called gods, angels, ogres, fairies, brownies, little people, demons, and more.

The Bible is filled with references to supernatural creatures, including giants, “wheels” flying in the sky out of which incredible creatures emerge, and more.But references to flying disks were recorded centuries before the texts of the Bible. Cave drawing dating to 30,000 B.C. depict disks floating around in the sky, remarkably similar to modern UFO photographs.

In the wake of the monster success of the new Transformers film, I've been thinking more and more Bruce Rux's theories that stories about the so-called "Greys" seem to describe androids rather than EBE's. And of course, this ties back to what I wrote about here back in March, dealing with the Igigi of Sumerian mythology:

AAT scholar Jason Martell notes that the Anunaki had a servant class called the Igigi, whom he believes could actually be the Greys of UFO lore. These creatures have been described as a kind of wetware, biologically-engineered androids:

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

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

This makes a lot of sense. Maybe the Greys are not from somewhere else- they were left here to keep an eye on the Project when the Anunaki were called back home. This would explain why these types of beings are in the world's folklore and mythology.

Maybe we're not projecting a technological viewpoint on elves and fairies and leprechauns after all. Maybe the folklore is the filter on a reality we had no framework for before we had technology (or maybe the Greys like to play dress-up and mess with people's heads)

Food for thought, and ties into Charles Fort's theory in Book of the Damned (1919) that the world is a UT plantation:

Why not diplomatic relations established between the United States and Cyclorea—which, in our advanced astronomy, is the name of a remarkable wheel-shaped world or super-construction? Why not missionaries sent here openly to convert us from our barbarous prohibitions and other taboos, and to prepare the way for a good trade in ultra-bibles and super-whiskeys; fortunes made in selling us cast-off super-fineries, which we'd take to like an African chief to someone's old silk hat from New York or London?

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.

Hmm, not a cheery guy, that Charles Fort. Now hypothetically, if that is truly the case the owners wouldn't just leave us unattended while they were off doing their godly business elsewhere. Could all of the strange discs and orbs and all of the rest of it could be highly-advanced versions of the cameras and drones and satellites our earthbound overseers are putting up to keep an eye on their own subjects?

I mean, as above so below, right?

Well, who knows. Maybe all of the hardware that people have been seeing up there for tens of thousands of years is all a big misunderstanding. But the UT theory makes a lot more sense to me than a bunch of humanoids jetting to and fro from the Pleiades. And it certainly sheds a new light on the abduction literature as well.

One thing I will say, though. It's fascinating to me that the American and Jordanian militaries- as well as the Egyptian government- were so keen to cooperate with the production of this film. And it shouldn't surprise anyone that the military was also closely involved with the Stargate series as well.

Interesting times we live in.

TO BE CONTINUED

John Keel, the Mothman and Me

Things have been pretty hectic around here and it's all I can do to keep on top of the blog. So when John Keel died I didn't write about it, since I was processing what Keel's work meant to me. Most of this is through osmosis, since I've only read The Mothman Prophecies, which I loved. This was following repeated viewings of the deliriously unfaithful 2002 film adaptation, but the book hit me with a strange kind of numinosity. But you can't poke around the World of Weird without running into Keel time and again. and his work has certainly had its effect on me.

So in that spirit, let me pay tribute to the late John Keel by pulling out some amusing Mothman syncs from my personal files. All of this kind of crept up on me when I was doing research on the topic when the 2002 film was released. I had only a passing familiarity with the topic before but found that in a semiotic sense at least, ol' Mothie and I seem to travel in similar circles.

Let's start with what is considered the first solid eyewitness account of the Point Pleasant Mothman from 1966:

November 14, 1966 - A gentleman by the name of Newell Partridge was home watching television one night around 10:30 P.M. when the TV picture turned to static and a loud whining noise started. Bandit, Newell Partridge's German Shepherd, was on the porch when he began howling towards the barn. Partridge shined his flash light towards the barn and picked up the glow of two red pulsating eyes like bike reflectors. The dog ran towards the eyes snarling and Newell went inside and locked his door. He was very shaken and terrified.

The next morning, Newell went outside to find Bandit, but all he saw of the dog were a lot of tracks that looked as if the dog had been chasing his tail, something the dog had never done before. Bandit was never seen again.

This story caught my eye back when I was researching all of this because Newell is a variation on Knowles, the partridge was traditionally a symbol of Christ, and I was born in 1966. And from then on Mothman connections would show up at pivotal points throughout my career, such as it is...

My first job in what you might call the entertainment business was working as a store manager and house artist for New England Comics. When I worked there it was just a hole in the wall in the Patriot Building in Quincy, across the street from the "Church of the Presidents," the Unitarian Church were John and John Quincy Adams were buried.


NEC started a publishing line a few years after I worked there and their cashcow was The Tick, created by future TV producer Ben Edlund. And, of course, The Tick's sidekick was a moth-man.


Edlund quit comics for the greener pastures of TV, landing a gig on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer (as well as co-writing the atrocity men call Titan AE with John "The Nines" August). After leaving Buffy, Edlund signed on the Fox series, Point Pleasant. However, this was a different Point Pleasant (set in Secret Sun stomping-ground New Jersey) and featured the brain-meltingly gorgeous Elisabeth Harnois as a Manga-eyed devil's daughter (Harnois also appeared in the Strangers with Candy movie and her next project is as an alien in Mars Needs Moms, an animated adaptation of Berkeley Breathed's 2007 children's book).

When I finally did my own comic series, Halo: An Angel's Story (published by Sirius), I was smart enough to get myself a lawyer at the time, the incredibly awesome Jeff Rose. One of Jeff's other clients was Doug Tennapel, creator of the Earthworm Jim video game. Doug actually did a movie called Mothman, released in 2000 but filmed (in Point Pleasant) around the time I was working on H:AAS.

I met Doug in 1997 at the San Diego Comicon when I was pitching my new comic series, Rivets & Ruby. Doug and his team were stunned when I showed them the pitch material because they had been working on a character almost identical to Rivets. I'm not sure if he ever saw the light of day. Doug also does comix for Top Shelf, who published Comic Book Artist when I was working on it.

As mentioned before, this string continued when Crossroads jerked me around for a few months with the H:AAS film project. Crossroads' ad superstar Mark Pellington later directed the film of The Mothman Prophecies, which is more an X-Files adaptation than a John Keel one (funnily enough, TMMP co-star Will Patton played an "Ox Knowles" on Ryan's Hope in one of his earliest roles). There are some scattered syncs thoughout the TMP movie but I won't bore you with those.

Anyhow, all of the Mothmany goodness came to a head with the publication of Our Gods Wear Spandex, since my editor (and friend) on that project, Brenda, is actually from Point Pleasant, WV and remembers not only the Mothman flap, but the Silver Bridge collapse quite well. Brenda also landed me the X-Files book gig, which of course has its own Mothman (and MIB) tie-in.

And the cherry on top of the Mothman sundae is the frequent guest appearances on this blog by the esteemed Loren Coleman, a good friend of Keel's and the inheritor of his neo-Fortean mantle.

So what does it all mean? Well, let's just say it's all grist for the mill and incorporating (or at least considering) some of Keel's theories has been a major boon to my own research. Keel is one of a generation of Forteans who became exasperated with the UFO phenomenon, since whoever's up there doesn't really care much about our theories about them. But a few theories Keel put out there have become increasingly important to my own speculations, which we'll be looking at in the future...



PS- Heh. Well, I just went upstairs to take a little break and picked up my copy of Bruce Rux's Architects of the Underworld and it opens up to page 153, which ends with this sentence "what are we to make of such creatures as the 'hairy dwarves' or the infamous Mothman?" Then as I came back into the office that little fella you see in that photo (taken with my crummy old cellphone) flew in with me. Synchromysticism on demand- you gotta love it...