The X-Files: Babylon Working

Well, I've been saying it for years- since well before I started blogging- that The X-Files was basically a ritual drama based on the ancient Mysteries,the religions that arose in the Greco-Roman world during a time when the people had lost faith in the old gods and emphasized ecstatic experience over dogma.

The Mysteries are now widely believed to be based on the ingestion of powerful hallucinogens, particularly potions made of ergot and magic mushrooms. 

For years, I've been pointing out the many, many X-Files storylines that deal with hallucinogenic drugs, both explicitly and symbolically, and rigorously detailing the endless parallels between the storylines of the show's Mythology and the mythology of the ancient Mysteries. 

Indeed, I began an entire new career by painstakingly detailing the parallels between the Mytharc of the last three seasons of The X-Files with that of the Egyptian Mystery religions, parallels I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of. 

Indeed, I've pointed the two are intimately connected. From 2009:

Modern scholars like Gordon Wasson and Terence McKenna have shown that the "mystery" behind the Mysteries was the use of powerful hallucinogens like LSA and amanita muscaria, which led to rituals including everything from wild dancing to group sex.

As mentioned before, X-Files episodes that delve into ancient astronauts and alien identity were always preceded by unconnected stories about hallucination or hallucinogens. 

I'm never quite sure how seriously people take me; maybe they think I'm just projecting all over the material the way so many people on the Internet do. But I don't make such statements in public unless I'm confident in my research. And after all, not only are there several open references to psychedelics in the show (see 'Excelsis Dei', 'Field Trip' and 'Via Negativa', to name just a few), there's been also crucial references made to Zeus, Pandora, Orpheus, Demeter and Isis as well.

And Chris Carter not only comes from the psychedelic friendly subculture of Southern California surfing, he's also on record as having attended a Navajo peyote ritual on invitation of tribal elders in 1995. I've also heard reports about TenThirteen Productions to the effect of that, well, let's just say those hallucinogen stories didn't just magically appear by themselves. 

Inanna descends to the Underworld to rescue Tammuz

Well, here we are with the X-Files revival and what does Chris Carter do? He produces an episode that not only explicitly deals with magic mushrooms it does so in the context of the QUINTESSENCE of the ancient Mystery cults: the Descent to the Underworld to gain knowledge from the dead.

I called this out a very long time ago, though in a less explicit manner:

And just as The X-Files has always done, ancient mythology seems to be part of the mix as well. in particular, the motif of the"descent to the underworld" that was an important theme in the Mystery religions.

What is the Descent to the Underworld? Not only the absolute cornerstone of the ancient Mysteries but also one of the oldest mythemes in human history. From the Wiki:

"The descent to the underworld is a mytheme of comparative mythology found in a diverse number of religions from around the world. The hero or upper-world deity journeys to the underworld or to the land of the dead and returns, often with a quest-object or a loved one, or with heightened knowledge. 

The ability to enter the realm of the dead while still alive, and to return, is a proof of the classical hero's exceptional status as more than mortal. A deity who returns from the underworld demonstrates eschatological themes such as the cyclical nature of time and existence, or the defeat of death and the possibility of immortality."

All the bullet points from the Mysteries are here: Mulder as Dionysus, partaking in ecstatic music and dance, Hermes (Skinner) as psychopomp, the companions of Dionysus (why don't the Lone Gunmen speak here? Because the companions of Dionysus were called the Sileni) the ritual thrashing of the initiate (straight out of the Villa of the Mysteries), the River Styx, Chiron (who Carter uses his Dante research from The After for), the mother goddess and her lost child, the life-altering knowledge brought back from the depths of Hell, the benedictions calling on the Earth Mother. 

It's rather breathtaking.

We also hear and see important clues that Carter is once again invoking Isis, or perhaps more accurately, Isis-Sothis-Demeter, the Earth Mother of the Roman Mysteries. 

DNA Scully and Miller descend

And if that were not enough, Carter does all this in a politically-charged, deeply-polarizing episode that draws upon a real-life terror attack in Garland, TX by two gunmen on a controversial art exhibit of cartoons of Muhammad. ISIS claimed credit for that attack and promised more like it and Babylon envisions that very scenario. And this story is unmistakably about ISIS, not random terrorists. Certainly not ordinary Muslims.

Not content with poking at all these tender spots, Carter then encapsulates some of the reactions to the attack in the form of a bigoted Homeland Security agent and paranoid IC nurse. Sure enough, conservatives have attacked the episode for being PC and liberals have attacked it for being Islamophobic. 

And these scenes are all very provocative and uncomfortable, and seem wildly at odds with the surreal whimsy that surrounds them (Carter has nearly all the Texans decked out in cowboy hats), but in his usual sphinx-like way, Carter explains exactly why at the episode's conclusion.

L to R: Uras, Adonis, Osiris-Dionysus, Minerva, Isis-Sothis-Demeter

To confuse matters more, Carter takes the two actors FOX wants as possible future X-Files leads and makes them doppelgangers of Mulder and Scully, at least ostensibly. He's being intentionally mischievous here, since we soon find out they are surprisingly well-rounded characters all their own (the woefully-named Agent Einstein, especially). Even so, some of the 'Shippers now are outraged. 

This is a man who loves to poke at hornets' nests. 

You'd almost think he threw all this stuff up in order to take the onus off the rather radical message he's putting forth in the story here.

The plot is simple: two young agents ask Mulder and Scully for help with a terrorism case, the aforementioned bombing of an art gallery in Texas. The surviving bomber is technically but not actually dead and the agents are desperate because there's a cell out there planning more attacks (again, patently ISIS). 

Scully, who just lost her mother, has an idea to use an ECT to communicate with the bomber. Mulder, in one of his battiest leaps yet, decides the best way to reach him is to dose up on magic mushrooms and try to reach the bomber psychically.

DNA Scully (the Alien Isis) will end up teaming with the believer Miller and Mulder will team with the aggressively and very realistically skeptical Einstein.

This is Carter in WEIRD mode--think 'Post-Modern Prometheus', 'Triangle', 'Improbable'-- so things get weird fast (for what it's worth, I have very mixed feelings about his weird-mode). Einstein arrives at the hospital only to find Miller working with Scully so in a fit of pique decides to take Mulder up on his offer to administer psilocybin to him. I like this character. Don't like her name, like her quite a bit. Feisty.

Carter references Mulder's previous trip, his

exposure to "Dr. Sandoz's alien tablets"

Mulder is only supposed to take one tablet but takes two and ends up leaving the hospital and crashing a honky-tonk bar (the ecstatic, celebratory phase of the Mystery rite) in the funniest scene of the season. Duchovny's well-honed comedy chops shine here.

Pictured: Hermes, Dionysus, and the Sileni

As these things go the party gives way to darker, deeper currents, beginning with the ritual flagellation (used to induce trance in the Mysteries) at the hands of Agent Einstein before then taking the down escalator to the night sea journey (literally) portion of the Mystery experience.

The ritual flagellation is colored red. Why? Well, it may have something to do with the fact that one of the most famous ritual flagellation images comes from the Villa of the Mysteries, dedicated to Dionysus, who Mulder seems to be playing here (Dionysus took a lot of abuse himself).

But then things get grim with a depiction of the River Styx, with Cancer Man playing the part of Charon. Carter goes for the Dante version, the mean, gaunt old man beating the inattentive passengers.

(Since everyone on the Internet has to bitch about everything, we've seen people complain that "mushroom trips aren't like that." Right, this is about the Greco-Roman Mystery cycle, not you sitting around tripping with your bros.)

And straight to the Pieta, with the bomber and his mother. Carter insisted this was not a strictly Christian image and he's right; in fact this very version in the underworld was also familiar in ancient Babylon itself, with popular icons depicting Ishtar cradling Tammuz in the Land of the Dead.

Mulder awakens to meet Skinner (Hermes-Thoth) in the real world, just as he did before his voyage to Hades. This couldn't be more orthodox if it came straight out of Homer himself. From "Hermes as God of Liminality and the Guide of Souls" by Richard Stromer, Ph.D.:

“The Hermes image repeatedly enforces descents into personal and social underworlds of great power” observes (William) Doty, “into realms where one is lost without a hermetic guide who can recognize the importance of going into the darkness willingly, the importance of hearing the significances of the deathly side of things”  Moreover, because Hermes, again unlike Hades, has the knowledge with which to bring us back to the daylight world of consciousness afterward…"

Mulder tells of his visions but Einstein claims to Skinner- ie., her boss- that she just gave Mulder a placebo. This is clearly a lie (my X-Files maxim: "Everybody lies, everybody dies") as we'll see shortly, probably meant to please Standards and Practices.

As Einstein and Mulder leave the hospital, Mulder accuses her of lying to Skinner to cover her ass, which Einstein pointedly does not deny.*

 

Mulder then recognizes a woman at the door from his visions and takes her into see her son. She too has spoken with the dead. Mulder then remembers the message he was given in the Underworld (Hotel Babylon) and the ISIS cell is taken into custody.

It all happens quickly because Carter clearly doesn't care about that part of the story. But I think this is a major fault of the episode: Carter needed to sell Noora's story- to really bear down on it, to get right up inside her head like he did with troubled characters like Duane Barry, Lucy Householder and Harold Piller. 

I also wasn't crazy about the actress' performance, the whole thing reeked of television. I think a lot of the criticism this episode took would have been ameliorated had Carter given us more here, more of Noora and Shiraz's side of the story.† 

It's possible he thought he did in Mulder's visions, but sometimes you need to spell things out s-l-o-w-l-y and clearly for the audience, especially the kind of people who comment on sites like io9 or AV Club. Not everyone is as fractal as Chris Carter.

But Noora completes a circuit made by Agent Miller with his seemingly random citation of Madam Blavatsky at the beginning of the episode; not only do we see Noora in the role of Earth Mother in Mulder's vision, her headscarf provides us another important clue, seen above. What's the punchline?

Noora helps unveil the hidden ISIS cell.

We then see Miller and Einstein ruminate on the caseº, leading Einstein to quote Albert Einstein: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious, the source of all true art and science." 

"The Mysterious." OK, now we're getting somewhere.

Carter spoke, in his usual oblique, evasive fashion (seriously, he's driven fans nuts for decades now with his evasiveness), about his intent for this episode, saying:

“Science is a search for gods and a search for truths. While Mulder hasn’t been a believer in God or in any particular denomination, he believes there’s a greater mystery out there. "

"Mystery," again.

As we reach the benediction of the ritual cycle, Carter gives us this shot, of Mulder and Scully framed by stalks of tall grass. Or maybe wild wheat, perhaps. Looks like it to me.

Why is this important? I'll tell you in just a moment.

Then the rest of the benediction, Mulder and Scully trading platitudes about how the God of the Bible and the Koran inspires violence and the Tower of Babel and so on in the middle of a rural landscape:

Mulder: Well, think about the immense power in those prophecies, the power in those words to convince young men to put on suicide vests today and murder for their angry God.
Scully: What are you getting at?
Mulder:Those boys, they just swallow the pill. It's the power of suggestion.
Scully: Is this received wisdom from your magical mystery tour?
Mulder: Yes. Courtesy of... the 'shrooms, something else, something to trump all hatred... Mother Love.
Scully: Whoa.

Mystery, yet again. 

Then fade out on a beauty shot of Earth. Or Mother Earth, if you prefer.

Now about that framing with the wheat: while the benediction was delivered during the Mysteries at Eleusis, dedicated to Demeter (meaning "Earth Mother"), a stalk or sheaves of wheat were presented to the congregants. Carter has Mulder and Scully deliver theirs in what looks very much like an entire field of wheat.

How interesting that the show then ends with the Earth.

Now, this "Mother" business. Carter mentioned "Mother Love" again in his interview:

“I believe there is no stronger force on earth than mother love. That bond is almost superhuman. Mother love is a common and even universal language that transcends race, culture and borders. It is the language even God couldn't destroy.”

"The language even God couldn't destroy?" 

Well, that's very interesting, Chris. Except you just spent 45 minutes talking about effin' magic mushrooms. Where does this "Mother Love" come from?

 Let's see; Mother, Earth, mushroom: wait, it does sound vaguely familiar...

"As soon as I had made that decision I felt my fear subside and I journeyed deeper and then out of the patterns, and – formed out of them – appeared the beautiful, glittering, sinuous form of a serpent seeming to radiate compassion and concern for me and I sensed the presence of the great spirit, mother goddess of our planet, who I think of as Mother Ayahuasca, and I felt her healing energy. She worked on me for some time, swirling around my body, fixing parts of me that were broken, right down to the deepest level of my DNA and of my psyche."

Oh, I know: every single Graham Hancock lecture and talk over the past 15 years or so. 

I thought as much.

So whatever Carter says in his interviews what he actually shows us is that visionary experience through hallucinogens can help solve the world's problems. It solved this problem, right? It was a doozy. It brought these FBI agents together with this would-be terrorist and his mother and broke up an ISIS cell. It provided them with a common experience, a common language, if you will.

This is a rather bold statement for a network TV show to be making, don't you think? To show us the horrors of terrorism and the intractable problems of tribal antagonism and then show that the answers lie in the mystical revelation of the magic mushroom, the ancient "Earth Mother" of the Mystery traditions from time immemorial? 

Basically what "Babylon" is is a forty-five minute informercial for Terence McKenna's archaic revival. Give or take.

I think the Cheetos n' Hentai set would hate it even more if they figured that all out. If I were running FOX, I would have insisted on the placebo business too.

†The mother's name is Noora and the boy- who we know now refused to set off his bomb at the last minute- is named Shiraz. I'm sure it's totally coincidental that the Sumerian earth mother was named Uras, or "Ooras." if you prefer. Or that Shiraz means "sweet" in Arabic and that Uras' son was known as "Enki of the Sweet Waters." 

No, that doesn't sound like Chris Carter at all. 

*Instead she laments her future in which she'll be stuck in a basement like Mulder and Scully, clearly indicating she believes she'll indeed be found guilty of administering the drug. 

Mulder: So I did... I-I.. I did dance then? 

Einstein:According to a whole bunch of very frightened, middle-aged Texans. 

Mulder:(sighs) You're just covering your ass. 

Einstein: Well, either way. I'll be looking at disciplinary action over my own dismal failure of authority.

Why would she possibly be found culpable for Mulder's behavior if she administered a placebo?

ºMore clues as to the "placebo" lie

Einstein: Although something is clearer to me now, as a result of the experience. 
Miller: The value of an open mind? 

Einstein: The nature of reality. I'm now convinced that words and ideas do have weight, the weight to move people to do the most psychotic things. 

Miller: Giving someone magic mushrooms? 

Einstein: I was talking about Agent Mulder. 

Miller: (disbelieving) Right.

Again, Einstein declines to deny giving Mulder the drugs and her attempt at deflection is dismissed by Miller.