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 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. 

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