Looking for Signs at the End of the Age

"Tell the king; the fair wrought house has fallen.
No shelter has Apollo, nor sacred laurel leaves;
The fountains are now silent; the voice is stilled.
It is finished."- The Delphic Oracle, 393 AD

When you reach the end of an age, the myths and the symbols that once defined that age begin to turn against it. Often in horrifying and merciless ways.

Trailer Trash: Nic Cage is KNOWING

 

Annihilation and human extinction coming to a theatre near you! Directed by Alex Proyas (The Crow/Dark City/I, Robot) and starring good ol' Nic "Ben Star-Gates" Cage. Bonus Synchronicity plot device! 

And don't forget Roland Emmerich's 2012 starring John "Superstar" Cusack. Man, we're getting wiped out on the silver screen! 

A Very Sirius Election: Strange Shapes in the Sky

I was reading a post a while back on Spelunking thee Ideosphere when a comment pointed to the "Issues" section of Obama's campaign website. And that's where I found this: 

The First Christmas and Three/17

Man, the hits just keep on coming. The Telegraph reports:

Astronomers have calculated that Christmas should be in June, by charting the appearance of the 'Christmas star' which the Bible says led the three Wise Men to Jesus.

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre, pt. III

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

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

"Behold, Atlantis Rising!"

I am absolutely speechless: "Dubai has thrown a spectacular light show to celebrate a new $1.5bn marine-themed resort built off the Gulf coast on an artificial island in the shape of a palm tree. Organisers claimed that the fireworks display for the $20m party could be seen from space," the BBC says.

The Eternals: "Will the Gods Return One Day?"

Kirby was just warming up with The New Gods...

I stumbled across an interesting editorial Jack Kirby wrote for the first issue of his mid-70s comic series The Eternals. This is one of the few comics from my childhood that I still remember buying and reading for the first time.

Jack Kirby, Astro-Gnostic: The Devil Enters Eden

Hey Kids- A Tech-Gnostic Alien Eden!

Apparently, two 70s titles about ancient astronaut theory were not enough for Jack Kirby. Aside from 2001:A Space Odyssey and The Eternals, Kirby managed to work some alien-based Biblical revisionism into a title that would seem to be completely inhospitable to it.

A Very Sirius Election: My Turn to Be the God

 

This is all getting much, much too strange. When you do this kind of work, you often pull on a semiotic string that unravels the veil, and leads to a chain reaction of connections that call to mind images of thousands of dominos tumbling in a pattern like a DNA helix. 

The last person you expect to trigger it all is someone like Bruce Springsteen.

A K2 (Kotze-Knowles) Flow

 

Jake Kotze reviews the basic tenets of his Synchromystic exegesis in this must-see video. Jake's muse Robin Tunney is heavily featured as is The Wizard of Oz. As Synchronicity would have it I'd been poring through some old YouTube clips of The Brady Bunch Hour (don't ask) just when Jake unleashed his new manifesto. 

So just like the old days, I thought I'd celebrate Jake's new vid by offering up a taste of the old school K/K flow.

Fringe (sic)

Fringe is TV's latest attempt to redo The X-Files. This time Hollywood enlisted the ultimate inside ballplayer, JJ Abrams, to get the job done. Which was probably what will ensure this show's doom.

  Fringe is competent TV- and too competent at that. It is almost suffocatingly overproduced. Like nearly every network TV show I've seen for the past several years, it's over-lit, over-shot, over-casted, over-edited and underwritten. I don't believe a single one of the characters. Oh, they're all fairly competent actors, but everyone looks exactly like everyone else on every other network drama. 

The X-Files was so revolutionary precisely because the producers went out of their way to cast ordinary looking people. The point was to believe what you were seeing was really happening. The X-Files also had the wisdom to shoot in Vancouver, which was a decidely-unpretty town in the early 90s and had a rich, velvety blanket of mist all year round. 

 The point here is that The X-Files sought to be real, while the kind of TV Abrams and his cohorts specialize in seeks to be sexy. There's a big difference. Network TV dramas are shot to seamlessy blend in with the commercials, and I was often confused while watching the show online when the commercials kicked in, since they were lit and shot exactly like the show itself was. 

 The show is fairly interesting, though, and important in that it goes after the biotech industry in the same way that The X-Files did. The only problem is that I don't feel any passion or conviction in it. It all feels like commitee. 

Someone said, "You know, there were all these really great X-Files standalones- 'F Emasculata', 'Wetwired', 'Pine Bluff Variant'- about field experiments being done on civilians. I think we could build a show around that." 

And everyone smiled and nodded and thanked God they'd made it this far in Hollywood where they were sitting around with JJ Abrams doing his X-Files, and hoped they'd never go back to doing cereal commercials. 

 Chris Carter fought tooth and nail to do his shows his way, for better or worse. Most producers today would geld themselves before they pissed off an exec. So all the guys who play ball get a shot to do their Chris Carter shows -- Invasion, Threshold (the most egregious of the bunch), Dark Skies, The Eleventh Hour, Fringe -- and most of them will die. 

None of them will ever make any dent in the Collective Unconscious because Carter and Co. broke all the old rules and wrote new ones and then the power players come in and play by them.

PAPERBACK

KINDLE

THE SECRET HISTORY CAN NOW BE TOLD!

The Gnosis of Pain

The great Alex Grey

A lot of people in the general orbit of the Synchrosphere have been writing eulogies for Kent Daniel Bentkowski, aka Kentroversy. I didn't know Kent and I wasn't all that familiar with his work. But I listened to a conversation between the great Greg K of Occult of Personality about the enormous suffering Kent had endured as the result of his hemophilia (which resulted in being HIV+ and having Hepatitis C, apparently because of a bad blood transfusion) and realized Kent and I were members of the same fraternity- The Brotherhood of Pain. 

Ten Thirteen: Grill Flame

Investigating an air crash and finding 

a psychic, from "Exegesis" (1998)

Get your innerspace suits on, we're going for a ride... 

 Droidy had a post up last week with a clip from the Millennium episode, "Owls," which had Peter Watts (played by Terry O'Quinn) explaining the worldwide Masonic conspiracy to Frank Black (played by Lance Henriksen). 

The Obligatory Southland Tales Post

 

 This is very, very untimely, but it's a movie I've resisted seeing. Donnie Darko is one of my favorite films of the new millennium (particularly the director's cut) and I didn't want anything to tarnish that. 

Worse, everything about this film set off my personal alarm bells. It's very common for young directors to go over the top with the followups to their sleeper/cult hits (Mallrats, anyone?) and the cast was not over-populated with my favorite thespians. 

Bruce Timm, Funnybook God

Thor for Thursday, along with Sif and Him! 

Just spreading the objectification around!

I've been having a lot of trouble falling asleep every night, so I've been taking the opportunity to meditate. 

It's been a blessing in disguise (and I believe that that's how all blessings come) and it's also helped me sort through a lot of things that I wouldn't necessarily address in my waking, working hours. 

The X-Files & the Spiritual Malaise of the West

The new X-Files film got destroyed by Batmania Redux, but at their core the two films address the same root problem: how bad religion, bad politics, radical selfishness and the canonization of materialism have destroyed the heart and soul of Western Civilization, and replaced it with something dead, hard and extremely cold.

The Obligatory Dark Knight Post

Well, I finally saw it. After all the hype, after all the analysis, after all of the speculation, what's left is a technically-impressive, entertaining summer film that has been hyped, praised and speculated-upon far beyond what is actually on the screen deserves. 

Chav Culture and the Brave New World

 

 Here on the Secret Sun - and in the wider Synchrosphere as well - we like to look at examples of pop culture prophecy. It's interesting to note that these examples tend to arise in instances of symbolic significance; it seems that when an artist really plugs himself into the Memestream, extraordinary perception is often the reward. 

Dark Knight Templar

Of course the big story in pop culture this week is the record-breaking opening of The Dark Knight, the second installment in Christopher Nolan's radical re-imagining of the Batman franchise. Being the obsessive-compulsive that I am, 

I can't help but notice that the film was released at the same time of the year that Sirius rose in the night sky in the ancient world. The iconic poster tagline "Why So Serious?" takes on added significance in that light. 

Secret Star Trek: Occult Entrainment Masked as Sci-Fi

OK, last month we were looking at Star Trek in the context of high initiate symbolism and its role in the transformation of our culture. We also puzzled over the phenomenon of a group of strange, disincarnate entities who have supposedly meddled with our dimensional reality. In between all of that, we were looking at the possibility that the sun the Egyptian god Ra represents is not our own.

Jonas Brothers or Oannes Brothers?

Why do they do this to me? Saturday we looked at the weird montage of the starlet and the distant star on Yahoo, which led us to the Oannes Brothers, those squeaky-clean Jersey boys who themselves are superstars with the 'Tween set. The Brothers are a Disney project, which usually means deeper weirdness can be found lurking somewhere in the background. 

 Time and time travel seem to be pressing concerns with the Oannes Brothers. Their first CD, It's About Time, includes titles like "Time for Me to Fly," "One Day at a Time," "6 Minutes," and "7:05." Their first big hit was a cover of "Year 3000" by the UK band, Busted (who themselves also cut a track called "Thunderbirds are Go!")

 

For our purposes, the "Year 3000" could be 3000 BC, the dawning of the Imperial Age in the Middle East and the dynastic eras in both Sumer and Egypt.

 

This stela is of Narmer, the pharaoh believed to have succeeded the Scorpion King somewhere around 3000 BC. Note the classic pose taken from the Constellation of Hercules on the obverse and a strange image of two animals with intertwining necks oddly reminiscent of a DNA helix.

 

Strangely, that same motif is seen at the same time in the seal of the Sumerian king Uruk. Seeing how these animals are not known to have existed, what meaning could they have to two kings hundreds of miles apart? Since these creatures are used to identify kings, what significance is there with these strange animals to the royal bloodlines? 

THE HITS JUST KEEP COMING In "Year 3000" the Jonas Brothers chirpily sing, "I've been to the year 3000/Not much has changed but they lived under water." 

Three guesses who lived under water in 3000 BC...

"(Oannes) was accustomed to pass the day among men; but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences, and arts of every kind. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. 

He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and shewed them how to collect the fruits; in short, he instructed them in everything which could tend to soften manners and humanize their lives. 

From that time, nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions. And when the sun had set, this being Oannes, retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep; for he was amphibious. After this there appeared other animals like Oannes." - Berossus, from Ancient Fragments

The latest Jonas Brothers record shows them "living under water" as it were, in a stylized version of Times Square. Note that they could share their strangely royal JB logo with John the Baptist. We see the crown again over the sign for "The Wykcoff," a reference to their hometown in New Jersey, which is tucked in the crowded area between routes 287 and 17. 

 We see a reference here to the "Love Bug," whose video features another time travel motif, only this time towards the past. As the boys warble, "Called her for the first time yesterday/Finally found the missing part of me/ Felt so close, but you were far away," we travel back in time to the 1940s where we are first confronted with this strange image...

 

The lighthouse is a stand-in for an obelisk, and has the added advantage of the beacon of light ("beacon" is a favorite motif in Barack Obama's speeches), and of course the water sacred to Oannes and his successors. But this lighthouse looks quite odd, nothing like the familiar kind we see a lot in modern Christian iconography. 

Check out Todd Campbells's post on maritime iconography for deep background, no pun intended.

 

It looks a bit more like the famous Pharos Lighthouse at Alexandria, Egypt. Which - as with Barack Obama and the beacon- brings us right back to the Stairway to Sirius imagery we've been looking at lately. Hmm, can we find any imagery of the Oannes Brothers tying back more explicitly to the Stairway to Sirius?

 

This is from the June 21, 2008 issue of Billboard magazine, featuring the boys brooding with their scarves on a stairway. OK then, where's the Sirius? Well, June 21 is the Summer Solstice, and was also the date of the heliacal rising of Sirius in Ancient Egypt. 

BONUS ROUND Speaking of the lighthouse, Alexandria was sacred to Isis, and coins were minted there showing the goddess riding a dog, a reference to Sirius. The Solstice is also the time of year sacred to Ioannes the Baptist. 

 In The Sirius Mystery Robert Temple pointed out the etymological similiarity between "Sirius" and "Siren." 

Like Oannes, the Sirens were half-fish, half human. Just to bring it all full circle, I posted quite a few Siren-related posts here that no one seemed to have read, but incorporate this weird semiotic juncture of pop music, esoteric symbology and UFO theory. All sorts of themes and memes I once thought unconnected become intimately connected when you take the time to trace them back to their roots. 

However, the problem is that it all ties back to some strange event in prehistory that is somehow related to a distant star system. And that's beyond the pale of polite conversation in both mainstream circles and the so-called alternative media, despite all of the tantalizing evidence- semiotic and otherwise- pointing directly to it. 

UPDATE: Michael and Droidy pointed out that in the comments that It's About Time was a show about time-traveling astronauts (read: time-traveling Freemasons) that premiered- wait for it- on September 11, 1966. 

The show was produced by Gilligan's Island creator Sherwood Schwartz, which of course then syncs us back to The X-Files. Which in turn syncs us to Hancock, which then thematically syncs us to The Eternals. Oh, such a small world. 

 UPDATE II: The Oannes Brothers at the White House? (thanks to Astronut for the tip)

The White House, which boasts 55,000 square feet and 132 rooms, is set on 18 acres filled with magnolias, dogwoods and maples. When the Obamas move into the White House, they will primarily use the mansion's second and third floors and have access to a solarium and a movie theater.

For the Obama daughters, birthday parties could include surprise appearances by the Jonas Brothers. And their grandmother, 71-year-old Marian Robinson, a lifelong Chicago resident, is preparing to pick up and move to Washington to help shuttle the girls to soccer games and recitals, according to The Associated Press. -Seattle Times

"For Seventeen Days..."

The 17 Enigma deepens- The Olympic Games run for 17 days, both Winter and Summer. 

 Now go watch that 1984 Olympics closing ceremony again...

Yahooccultism: Tut Tots

Awww, look at little Demetria (Demeter) and Angelica. Buying their tickets for the Tut exhibit on St. John the Baptist's Feast day. The show opens on October 3rd. 

Yahooccultism: The Maya, 2012, and Ovarygate!

I think I need to create a new tag for Yahooccultism. News on the Maya that won't surprise Graham Hancock readers and more on the 2012 thing (which I may take to calling the Y2012K thing). 

Congratulations, Your Credit Score is 17!

Yes, 17 is excellent! It wears the Sun as its crown! Its excellence is proclaimed from the River, which is the source of all life!

Secret Star Trek: Sisk-O-Bama and the Council of Nine

Following the smash success of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Paramount created a new spinoff series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The story took place on a space station abandoned by the Cardassians, who had occupied a planet known as Bajora. The planet was crucial since it guarded an interdimensional wormhole that allowed intergalactic travel. 

You can call it a Stargate if you like. Same difference.

 

Philae-Delphi-A: The New City of the Sun?

The Sun's been popping up so much in so many strange contexts that it's really getting past the point of brushing it all off as a design fad. Especially when you look at advertisements like this.

Ritual Olympics: "Making This Magic Begin"

 

Ever wonder what an Olympic ceremony would look like had it been produced by Aleister Crowley? 

Well, neither had I until a Rik Clay turned me onto this unbelievable video from the 1984 Summer Olympics. Now, of course, there's no earthly reason to assume this was some mass-scale occult ritual, but boy, it sure plays out like one. 

Cargo Cults of the Gods

OK, so the same day we're promised a glimpse at a real-live Grey we get pictures of a very exotic looking undiscovered tribe in the Amazon. An expert tells us this tribe is trying to remain hidden, and I can't look at those pictures without thinking of the Cargo Cults that got Van Daniken started with Chariots of the Gods.

Freudian Funnybooks: Bizarre Love Triangle

In the 1950s, the gruesome excesses of horror and crime comics provoked a public outcry, resulting in the suffocating strictures of the Comics Code Authority. In point of fact, most publishers were already pumping out comics that were completely inoffensive, but the threat of censorship seemed to have a bizarre effect on comic creators.

Golden Boy: Just Saying, is All

Here's a picture of Golden Boy when he stood vigil outside of AT&T's former world headquarters in Basking Ridge, NJ. The building is now owned by (former Baby Bell) Verizon, whose name is one of those corporate neologisms. In this case it seems to be a contraction of "true (veritas) horizon." Could horizon's true occult meaning be "Horus-Zone?"

It's an interesting question, given that Verizon's logo could be interpreted as containing a hidden 17. If you really wanted to get carried away, you might interpret it as Veritas, 17 (Horus) and On, the biblical name for Heliopolis (cult center of the Followers of Horus).

I may have mentioned this before, I strongly believe that the Mithras known to the Romans was no relation to Zoroastrian Mitra, but in actuality a culturally-appropriate adaptation of Horus himself. This is something I've researched in depth for my upcoming book on esoteric symbolism in science fiction film.

Suffice it to say that conservative Romans held a very dim view of Egypt, seeing it as corrupt and decadent. And they also thought the notion of animal heads on gods was offensive. But the Shemsu Hor obviously had a very strong interest in Rome, and it's my belief that the Mithras cult was created especially for those Romans whom they wanted to bring into the fold, namely those alpha males in business and the military. The Shemsu Hor's fingerprints are all over Mithraism, as we will look at in the future.

All of these figures - Horus, Mithras, Helios, Sol, Shamash, Ba'al, Hercules, etc etc etc - all represent the Sun as a symbol of phallic aggression, technology, hierarchy, and militarism, so any difference between them or their cults is academic, anyway.

Mithras is Alive and Well and Living in New Jersey

Daria Invictus recently blogged on a subject near and dear to my heart- the enigmatic Golden Boy, who has been passed like a torch from corporation to corporation. Daria explored the various connections to a host of pagan deities, but I had a nagging suspicion there was still another figure being celebrated in this composite icon; the Corporate Elite's favorite god, Mithras. We shouldn't be surprised at Mithras' showing up in corporate iconography - his followers were deadly serious, highly disciplined soliders and merchants. And what is the modern corporation if not the ultimate apotheosis of the "Business as War" paradigm? Mithraists worshipped in secret during the First Century, why not in the Twenty-First? Golden Boy was originally known as "The Genius of Electricity" when commissioned for Western Electric, then renamed "The Spirit of Communication" when sold to AT&T. His latest owner is the new AT&T, formerly known as Southern Bell. 

He currently resides on the AT&T campus in Bedminster, Nova Caesarea. You can see him while driving on Interstate 287 South (2+8+7=17). As Daria notes, he originally sat upon a pyramidical turret on the old AT&T building in Masonic Manhattan, giving us yet another depiction of the Heavenly Insemination. 

As you see in this ancient frieze of Mithras, Golden Boy is simply a modern take on the old sun god. The Snake of Time becomes an electrical cable and his staff becomes electrical bolts. The pose is almost exactly the same, only minor details differentiate the two icons. For instance, the globe Golden Boy stands on comes to us from another Mithraic icon...

...that of Aion, the enigmatic figure whom Jung identified as the Imageo Dei- image of the god within. As with so much Mithraic imagery, the meaning of the globe is unclear, but my own interpretation is that the Mithraists had intended to rule the world. It's open to debate whether they are succeeding in that ambition.

Whatever the intended message behind it, it's interesting to note that Golden Boy has been reintroduced in advertising for the new AT&T. Maybe it's simply because it's an amazing work of art with heavy-duty Syncromystic resonance. One thing's for sure- you can add this to the rapidly escalating use of Solar symbolism in corporate and church iconography.

Sia: A Voice Spun from Gossamer

 

 I spent years waiting for Elizabeth Fraser to drill a musical hole in the center of my forehead like she did back in the day. But Jeff Buckley's death ended the Cocteau Twins and practically speaking, ended her career. 

Where Is Your Tribe?

I spent an underwhelming weekend at the Pittsburgh Comic Con (actually held in Monroeville) and got to thinking about the comic book nation and my place in it. Or more accurately, outside of it.

The Shemsu Hor, or Following the Followers

Terry Melanson of ConspiracyArchive.com raised this very important issue in the comments to yesterday's posting...

So what you seem to be saying, as far as I can tell, is that these "Followers of Horus," the secret priests of the secret society of Shemsu Hor which, according to Egyptian records, existed before time was recorded, are the real string-pullers even today. They have constructed all the competing hermetic and kabbalistic occult doctrines and have been the real "Unknown Superiors" alluded by the Elus Cohen, the Strict Observance, the Golden and Rosy Cross, and Theosophy. And further, that it is these Shemsu Hor who are behind the pervasiveness of sun symbolism?

 

My Newsstand Oracle

When I was a kid my life revolved around Valles' News (pronounced Valis' News). It was one of those old-school variety stores that even had a lunch counter in my early days.

Sync Log: Astronaut Theology

Well, Yahoo is also celebrating the beginning of Ancient Astronaut Week by featuring some NASA space colonization puff pieces on their front page. The conditioning process is certainly picking up speed.

Superman's Girlfriend, Eloah-Isis Lane

Here's the remarkable cover to the first issue of Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane, published in 1958. Lois is yet another of these early Christian names of "uncertain" origin. Me, I always look a little west of the Holy Land for clues when trying to figure these names out. 

Ten Thirteen: "The Search for God"

This past weekend, Chris Carter reiterated that The X-Files was "about the search for God." Interesting statement for a show about the search for extraterrestrial life. What did Chris Carter happen to discover about God in this search? 

1013: Millennium and the Song of Salome

Still from "Skull and Bones"

Now that Ten Thirteen Productions is back up and running, making its grand re-entrance on the day before one of the more overtly Masonic Academy Awards ceremonies in recent history, I wanted to finish some long-brewing posts on the ostensible use of Masonic and Templar themes in Ten Thirteen programs. 

True Religion

On Saturday, Heath Ledger's friends and family bid the actor a final farewell in his native Australia. Following the private funeral and wake, mourners -- including Heath's ex-girlfriend Michelle Williams -- jumped into the waters at Cottesloe Beach and watched the sun set as one final send-off. - AP

In the late 70s, my church began to celebrate the more elemental aspects of Christianity- services at midnight for Christmas, sunrise service for Easter, lakefront sunset services for our Fellowship retreats.

The Convulsive Power of the Dreaming Mind

Not only is it no accident that a Jung stand-in pushed Captain America into the ether just before Kirby's return, it may have even been intentional on the part of the writer, Marv Wolfman. 

The 70s were a pretty dreary decade, but it didn't lack for pop intellectualism. Marvel was full of writers who came in from the counter-culture, and a smart cookie like Marv Wolfman may well have realized that Kirby's obsession with the gods resonated with Jung's work. 

Jack Kirby, Psychedelic Shaman

Jack Kirby may not be a household name, but we all are immersed in his visions. So many of the Hollywood wizards people celebrate today - not to mention video game makers - were raised on his comics. 

New York 17- New England 14

After beating the New York Giants in Week 17, the New England Patriots are undone by a touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress (# 17) for a final score of 17-14. New England finish with an 18-1 record.

18-1=17.

Killing Joker: Heath Ledger and the Dark Knight Working

Well, the story is out: Leave it to Page Six, the gossip page of Murdoch's New York Post to go there first. But given the eerie parallels between Heath Ledger's death and that of former Killing Joke bassist Paul Raven, the fact that Page Six ran a shot of Ledger wearing a knit cap made me sit up and take notice, since that was Raven's trademark look.

The Eternals: Pyramid Power

Radiohead's 2001 classic "The Pyramid Song"- 

the future Atlantis in a year of Revelation. 

 

My two biggest influences from the pop art world are Jack Kirby and Chris Carter. 

Not so much stylistic influences that I want to emulate, but artists who completely changed the filters on my life-lens. And both of whom deeply explored Astronaut Theology (aka "Ancient Astronaut Theory") to the point that it's a fair bet that they believed in it. So what does that say about me? 

Don't Take My Word for It...

Sometimes there is a point when the Collective Unconscious answers your incessant knocking at its door.