Solar, 17, Bla Bla Bla

Sometimes there are stories that you can't help but wonder are planted in the media for some strange ritual purpose we're not meant to understand. This is one of them.

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. 

Sunday Matinee: Star Wreck

 

We discovered this brilliant film at last year's Dragon*Con. Double-click if you want a full-screen version. This was made by a bunch of Finnish sci-fi fans, who seem a bit hipper to the imperialist undertones of Star Trek than your average Trekker in this country. They also toss in a Babylon 5 parody to sweeten the deal. 

Suffice it to say that this is how the whole Trek fantasy would play out in reality...

Sync Log: Matt Groening

I'm not out at the San Diego Comic-Con this year, which is fine by me. The last time I went (2004) I was completely exhausted by the middle of the first day. And I must say that last time was sorely lacking in that San Diego magic; those wonderful syncs that used to pop up like mushrooms after a rainstorm at that con.

 

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. 

I Do Believe...

... the new X-Files movie is great. This is not an effects bonanza- it's a very dark, disturbing and intimate thriller. It's getting a lot of negative reviews, so I was prepared to be disappointed. I drove home not only not feeling disappointed, but feeling extremely angry - yet again- at the reviewers, who seem more and more like lemmings every year. 

There's no doubt in my mind that most of the critics decided to hate this film a very long time before they saw it (and it was a terrible idea to open it a week after the new Batman). I don't have to tell any of my readers here that the media is full of shit, but I guess my vestigial idealism always gets the best of me. I've rented several movies in the past few months because they got good reviews, and without naming names, I pretty much hated every single one of them. 

And watching the coming attractions tonight - how the hell does Vin Diesel have a new movie out?- I thanked God that The X-Files is a black sheep in our enervating and soul-deadening pop culture. PS: 

Check out this interesting site- A Jungian exploration of the X-Files.

Praying to the Aliens

 

"Praying to the Aliens" is one of my favorite Gary Numan songs, but the video for it is extremely unsettling. I'm not sure what this is supposed to be- is it primitive video art or some leftover MK-Ultra demo reel?

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

Barackobamun to be Initiated at Obelisk

Obama Camp Chooses Site for Berlin Speech

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign said today that his speech in Berlin on the future of trans-Atlantic relations will be delivered in front of a Prussian war monument, rather than the Brandenburg Gate.

Sit on It and Rotary

A lot of bloggers are looking askance at a new think tank for young people called the Zenith Global Citizenship Conference, which has been created to promote "(t)he concept of a ‘cosmopolitan citizenship’ (often interchangeable with global citizenship) suggests an allegiance to a new form of global civil society and a new global consciousness that conceptualizes a ‘cosmopolitan order transcending state boundaries and focusing on the rights of individuals.’" 

This Week in Weirdness: Picknett and Prince Revisited

Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince have a new book called The Masks of Christ coming out.  While I loved The Templar Revelation, I think their work on the Nine- The Stargate Conspiracy- has some outstanding research hobbled by some extremely unconvincing conclusions, some of which they touch upon in their interview. 

Heroes: The Nine (Wonders of the World)

Hayden Panettierre did a little impromptu striptease on the set of Heroes (you can see the whole thing here). As eye-catching as that is, there was something else I found a bit more interesting- where she was doing it.

Illuminated Pyramids and Obelisks Across the World

Our recent look at the EU meeting in Siberia got me thinking about Masonic architecture. You know, obelisks, pyramids and benben stones showing up in unexpected places, particularly modern cities. But I wasn't just looking for any old pyramid or obelisk, I was looking specifically for illuminated pyramids. This is just the result of a brief search. Double-click images to enlarge for detail.

Atlantis, Georgia has an interesting kind of step pyramid benben (far left) a more standard benben to the right of it and yet another eight-sided -or octagonal benben to the right. Don't know if the Atlantis Hawks basketball team or the Atlantis Falcons football team tie into any of this symbolism.

Boston, home of America's first Masonic lodge, has an interesting truncated pyramid roof and a glowing light above it. If you're thinking "all seeing eye," I got your back. The Monolith next to it is the Hancock Tower. Note: The Atlantis Braves were originally the Boston Braves.

Chicago has an illuminated benben obelisk.

As does Cleveland, largest city in the 17th state of the US.

Des Moines is no slouch in the illuminated benben department.

Here's a surprise- Dubai has an illuminated-benben obelisk. Or maybe that isn't a surprise.

Neither is Frankfurt, the financial capital of Germany.

By that token, neither should Kowloon's Asian twist on the step pyramid and heavenly beam.

Reader Mark alerted me to this illuminated pyramid at London's Canary Wharf.

Minneapolis has a green illuminated capstone.

What's more, the ever-reliable Yahoo! News put up a beauty shot of it on its front page while I was preparing this article. How about that for Synchronicity?

Montreal has a obelisk without an illuminated capstone. What's that about?

Of course, we all know about the illuminated pyramid at the Louvre in Paris from The Da Vinci Code.

New York's got all sorts of interesting architecture, including the illuminated-benben obelisk on the left there.
As does Philly, the new City of the Sun.

Heading for the West Coast we see another truncated pyramid (this one eight-sided) and floating all seeing eye, similar to Boston's.

San Francisco is famous for its pyramid, which is actually more of an obelisk. Appropriately ambiguous for a city with so many gender-bending citizens.


Seattle has its own space age conflation of the obelisk/dome motif. Kind of like the Masonic lodge that George Jetson would belong to. There's an interesting green benben stone behind it, but the Space Needle is interesting for another reason...

...the Heavenly Beam it shoots out from time to time.

Shanghai goes for the obelisk/dome motif with an unbelievably phallic looking building in the center there.

Toronto also does the whole illuminated obelisk/dome thing, both of which reflect on Lake Ontario. Quite an interesting array of examples of this type of symbolism. What could it possibly all mean? Are they trying to tell us something?

Maybe the people who create these buildings aren't trying to tell us anything. Maybe they're only talking to each other. Maybe they don't care what you think about it at all.

There's a thought, huh?

Latest Developments in Sumer

The Helsinki agreement, which was hammered out over meetings in September and April, was signed by 33 politicians from Sunni, Shiite, Kurdish, Turkmen, Communist and other parties.

The document consists of 17 principles, as well as strategies to ensure compliance with those goals. The principles included a commitment to eventually limit arms possession to the government, respect for minority rights and opposition to international and regional influence in Iraq’s internal affairs.

The agreement also included a pledge to integrate the so-called Awakening Councils, and others who have fought against extremists, into state institutions. - NY Times