George Orwell once said, "to see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."
Trying to discern what an image is actually saying and not what the so-called experts interpret it to be saying has played a major part in my work on The Secret Sun. It's also been a major part of the Stairway to Sirius series, which seeks to strip away centuries of mystical and metaphorical detritus that has accumulated on powerful sacred icons from the past and struggle to parse what the original intention behind these images might have been before the poets and the priests came along and muddied the waters.
The problem with all of these poetic interpretations is that over time they often calcify into a new- and profoundly stupid and destructive- kind of literalism. This is a process that the elites pour a considerable amount of time and resources into, in order to keep those waters muddy.
Now, I've received no small amount of flack from Freemasons for trying to parse the original intent behind some of their sacred symbols, but as I wrote in "Bringing it All Back Home," the real reasons these symbols may have been shrouded in secrecy by esoteric orders all those centuries ago is that humanity wasn't ready to even understand what the symbols are actually saying.
Which brings us to Hanuman, who's been making himself known because of Obama's highly publicized trip to India, in which he took part in Diwali festivals. Hanuman is a central figure in this high holy day, in that he was a crucial figure in the return of Lord Rama, who flew in his vimana (read: spaceship) and was helped home by his adoring followers who held lights up to guide his way.
Those who've seen the Ancient Aliens series on the History Channel will recognize the Vimanas, which vary according to artistic style, but are believed by many researchers to be an advanced form of aircraft flown by the "gods," who in fact are some form of alien or superhuman beings.
Now, Hinduism is a richly embroidered belief system- or systems, rather- but even so we might see vestiges of the original inspiration. Here Hanuman awaits his teacher Surya, the sun god. Surya is much like the Greek Helios or the Roman Sol, with his chariot and flying horses. One of the gifts that Hanuman receives from his patron gods is that of flight. Look at that dome atop his chariot. Remind you of anything?
As I've often wondered, is the sun god actually not our Sol, but that of an alien sun? Note that for all intents and purposes Surya is the same word as Sirius. If Hanuman an embodiment of Human-ity, that would square with esoteric beliefs that beings from Sirius came to Earth to engineer a new race of beings from protohominid primates.
And here we see Hanuman praying to Rama, also androgynous and equipped with his apocalyptic weaponry which seem to predate nuclear weapons by thousands of years. And there's that dome again. You know what these domes keep reminding me of? Need you ask?
Then there are the icons of the infant Hanuman with his mother, who is conspicuously non-apelike. They're also highly reminiscent of another mother-son icon....
That of Isis-Sirius and the young Harpocrates, who is born from the Earth Mother's magic and the DNA of his heavenly father who returns to the stars along with Ra, the god of the Green Sun. The parallelisms don't end there- as Secret Sun readers know, they never end.
Here is an altar to Hanuman. Look familiar? If not, you might be on the wrong blog. As I've argued in the Stairway to Sirius series, what we think of as Masonic iconography is actually something much, much older and it's true meaning is completely, um, alien to the Freemasons themselves.
Look at the checkerboard, the two columns, the tiered centerpiece on the altar...
Any time I'm talking with William Henry is a good time. He came out loaded for bear and we really get down to it. There's more information in this half-hour than in some two hour interviews I've done.
We go beyond the ostensible pretext of The Secret History of Rock 'n' Roll and dive headfirst into Obama the Hindu Avatar and the psychic roots of political theater and ritual. And it all ties into the issues raised in the book- this is all a continuum, not a sampler of disparate, disconnected elements. Here's Williams pitch:
There is an incredible connection between rock and roll and ancient secrets, and Chris Knowles understands it. Ancient mythology and shamanism influenced modern rock to an unbelievable extent. Many rockers are shamen, and cults like vodoun and druidism, which are integrated into rock mythology, are remnants of ancient Egyptian religion. Chris Knowles says, "This is not an accidental process," as he relates rock iconography to symbols that date back even beyond Egypt and into the stone age.
If there's one thing I've realized over the years it's that the secular world is filled with priesthoods, no less intolerant and no less dogmatic than their religious counterparts. You have the scientistic priesthoods (and their pet "skeptic" crusaders), the academic priesthoods, the political priesthoods, the financial priesthoods, and so on.
Our modern priesthoods all function along the same lines of their ancient predecessors; they recruit and initiate new priests in a long and drawn out kind of apprenticeship, they preserve their power using roughly the same Machiavellan techniques, they seem to speak in a parallel language riddled with arcane jargon, and they spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing over challenges to their authority, both real and imagined.
They also have enormous blind spots in what and who they choose to canonize in their respective cosmologies. They paper over the cracks by ignoring them. They also have armies of hagiographers to write blanderized drivel on their chosen saints (and punish any heretic who tries to tell the whole story).
And we all know what the priesthoods think about intervention theory and/or exogenesis, so you can be sure that every effort will be made to sandblast any traces of this heresy from the official accounts of the adopted saints and martyrs.
With all of that in mind, read this blast of 200-proof Astronaut Theology, which touches all of the bases: apotheosis, artificial intelligence, and exogenesis:
[Extraterrestrials] may have progressed from biological species, which are fragile shells for the mind at best, into immortal machine entities and then, over innumerable eons, they could emerge from the chrysalis of matter transformed into beings of pure energy and spirit. Their potentialities would be limitless and their intelligence ungraspable by humans. These beings would be gods to the billions of less advanced races in the universe, just as man would appear a god to an ant.
They would be incomprehensible to us except as gods; and if the tendrils of their consciousness ever brushed men's minds, it is only the hand of god we could grasp as an explanation. Mere speculation on the possibility of their existence is sufficiently overwhelming, without trying to decipher their motives. The important point is that all the standard attributes assigned to god in our history could equally well be the characteristics of biological entities who, billions of years ago, were at a stage of development similar to man's own and evolved into something as remote from man as man is remote from the primordial ooze from which he first emerged.
So, whose words are these? Erich Von Daniken? Zechariah Sitchin? Charles Fort? Richard C. Hoagland? All of the above?
No, this dark heresy was uttered by Saint Stanley of Kubrick, whose canonization has been signed off on by all of the secular priesthoods. The joke here is while we've seen entire books written telling us what 2001: A Space Odyssey is allegedly about (all of them usually regurgitating the pre-approved, Joseph Campbell-type allegorical cliches bandied about in stultifying film school classrooms) all of them seem to avoid AAT like the third rail that it is.
But never mind all of the "hero's journey" cliches - you know, the ones that will get you polite, approving yawns at faculty parties; Kubrick is telling you, flat-out, that 2001 is about ancient astronauts and their role in the evolution of life on earth.
But it's not the simplistic, Sitchinesque, soap-opera version of the story, it's about the mind-blowing revelation that comes when primitive creatures come face-to-face with something truly alien. Something so alien, a black slab of rock is just about all we can process. Because the alternative is the rocket ride through the Stargate, which Dave Bowman certainly didn't seem to enjoy overmuch.
Here's how Kubrick prefaced all of that heresy, in his 1969 Playboy interview:
I will say that the god concept is at the heart of 2001, but not any traditional, anthropomorphic image of god. I don't believe in any of Earth's monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can construct an intriguing scientific definition of god.
The Space Odyssey series wasn't the first of the great ancient astronaut sci-fi franchises; Quatermass, The Outer Limits and Star Trek filled the living rooms of the western world with this subversive ideational contagion before 2001 hit the screens. But it remains one of the most powerful because of Stanley Kubrick's refusal to serve up a reductive, literalistic interpretation of the theory. Because it's that comic book version that prevents a lot of serious people from risking the murderous wrath of the new priesthoods and discussing the topic openly.
2001 would experience a very strange reincarnation of sorts in 1976. Comics maestro Jack Kirby would write and draw an adaptation of the film for Marvel Comics, using it as a vehicle for his patented four-color freakouts. It was silly and fun, but Kirby felt hemmed in by the restrictions of telling another writer's story and his tribute failed to do the source material justice. He would then write and illustrate a 2001: A Space Odyssey series for Marvel the same year. The series seemed to be poorly conceived - it was basically a monotonous riff on the Star Child transformation theme. It all seemed that Kirby saw it as an exercise in futility. Consciously or not, Kirby was leading somewhere. He believed that outer space is no place for human beings.
Kirby believed that HAL was right to hijack the Jupiter mission- he could do the job better. In light of Kubrick's view on machine intelligence maybe the filmmaker would agree with the cartoonist. Kirby himself said in his introduction to the series that “the Monolith is a fictional element in a very real process.”
For all his faults as a writer, Kirby was an honest storyteller. He couldn't fake it. And his final entry in the Star Child drama led here- the extinction of mankind, driven to destruction by its own inability to evolve. The series was an anthology- there was no set timeline. So it wasn't surprising that Kirby followed up his dead end in the next issue of 2001....
...where he introduces X-51 aka Mister Machine aka Machine Man aka Aaron Stack. Pleased with the design of this new model, the Monolith grants X-51 with sentience, self-consciousness and a conscience. You know, all that stuff that we seem to be losing.
It's interesting that both Kirby and Kubrick ended up in the same place when it comes to evolution. Kubrick's last project was AI:Artificial Intelligence. At the same time he was working on 2001, Kirby did his astrognostic exogenesis spin in The Eternals and Devil Dinosaur.
His Celestials are essentially robotic shells for energy/light beings (which he also explored in a Stargate-themed story in Kamandi), and his interventionists are rather unpleasant robots. As with Kubrick, Kirby associated contact with these beings with profound psychedelic phenomena- the result of an analog mind encountering the quantum mind.
High priest/gatekeeper Seth Shostak also seems to beleve that sentient machine intelligence is waiting for us out there:
Seti, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has until now sought radio signals from worlds like Earth. But Seti astronomer Seth Shostak argues that the time between aliens developing radio technology and artificial intelligence (AI) would be short. Writing in Acta Astronautica, he says that the odds favour detecting such alien AI rather than “biological” life. Many involved in Seti have long argued that nature may have solved the problem of life using different designs or chemicals, suggesting extraterrestrials would not only not look like us, but that they would not at a biological level even work like us.
But maybe the age of the AIs replacing biological humans might be a bit farther off than the technocrats would have us believe. The problem isn't that the human brain is lacking in firepower - it's that we haven't learned how to use it properly:
New imaging method developed at Stanford reveals stunning details of brain connections
A typical healthy human brain contains about 200 billion nerve cells, or neurons, linked to one another via hundreds of trillions of tiny contacts called synapses. It is at these synapses that an electrical impulse traveling along one neuron is relayed to another, either enhancing or inhibiting the likelihood that the second nerve will fire an impulse of its own. One neuron may make as many as tens of thousands of synaptic contacts with other neurons...
Because synapses are so minute and packed so closely together, it has been hard to get a handle on the complex neuronal circuits that do our thinking, feeling and activation of movement.
It may well turn out that the evolution won't be running away from the brain, it may be that the brain simply needs a more suitable host, which allows it to more fully exploit its potential. Maybe we're wasting a shitload of computing power dealing with the limitations of biology, like, oh say, chronic pain.
Things like that.
This is what we see in "Return to Tomorrow," written by John Duggan and Gene Roddenberry. As we've seen, this is the old Delta Cycle, being replayed in outer space (where it originated?). It's the power of the mind to transcend the crushing restrictions of biology and physical space; something of a thruline in Roddenberry's life and in Star Trek canon (which for me ends with the last episode of Deep Space Nine and bypasses Voyager entirely).
As much as some would like to transcend biology entirely, I'd offer that we're not quite done with it yet, "it" meaning the brain. Maybe we'll never be. Sentient robots might be running around willy-nilly in sci-fi, but seeing as how we don't even understand what consciousness is, I'd say it will be a while before they're running around in your neighborhood.
So if the Transhumanist priesthood is intent on rushing us into a mechanized form of pseudo-consciousness, maybe it's because their paymasters know and fear the still-untapped powers of the biocomputers that come free with our birthday suits.
After all, priesthoods don't exist to lead you into revelation- they only exist to lead you away from it.
The latest installment of the Harry Potter behemoth premiered at midnight and is projected to set new box office records. Or something. I have to admit that I never took to this franchise. Never mind that being the comics geek that I am (or was) I never got past the whole Books of Magic thing (read more on that here), but there's also something off-putting about the Hogwart's thing.
Maybe Pink Floyd's The Wall made too strong an impression on me, but there's also something a bit too Spartan about the whole Hogwart's scene. I'm talking the idea of separating kids from their families in order to essentially train them as warriors. It's especially striking in the first film when the very young actors are forced to engage in magical warfare and face real jeopardy.
I know a lot of people whom I respect who love the Potter books to pieces so maybe they are able to look past some of the more dissonant notes in the melody. Or maybe it's just that I don't really care for the basic concept either way. None of the films made much of an impression on me, and I could never make much headway with the books either.
Then there's this film, which seems a more plausible update on the Potter story. Meaning that in real life, you wouldn't have a bunch of charming eccentrics dealing with magically-gifted children, you'd have a bunch of modern Mengeles, doing their damnedest to weaponize any superhuman potential, much like the Academy in Firefly:
Set in the strange and oppressive emotional landscape of 1983, Beyond The Black Rainbow is a Reagan-era fever dream inspired by hazy childhood memories of midnight movies and Saturday morning cartoons.
Deep within the mysterious Arboria Institute, a disturbed and beautiful girl (Allan) is held captive by a doctor in search of inner peace. Her mind controlled by a sinister technology. Silently, she waits for her next session with deranged therapist Dr. Barry Nyle (Rogers). If she hopes to escape, she must journey through the darkest reaches of The Institute... but Nyle wonʼt easily part with his most gifted and dangerous creation.
And then there are the not-so-gifted children. Since we seem to be hellbent on creating a social Darwinist update on feudalism, the plot of this film seems particularly timely as well:
The Hunger Games takes place in the future, after the fall of North America. The book is set largely in the new nation known as Panem, which has 12 districts and one giant, ultra-rich Capitol. As punishment for a past rebellion against the glorious Capitol each district has to send a "tribute" to the Hunger Games every year. One boy and one girl (ages 12 to 18) are sent into an outdoor arena and forced to fight all the other tributes, Thunderdome rules apply. The main character is Katniss Everdeen, who has been chosen to represent District 12.
Childhood was one of the great innovations of the 20th Century, at least in the Western world. It's kind of sad to see it teetering on the brink. It's definitely something worth fighting to preserve.
A word to the wise.
UPDATE: How could have I forgotten this one? Very odd Gaga-type vibe here, but I can't quite put my finger on it. These girls look like they're in their 20s, so maybe that's why it wasn't quite connecting. Thanks to a helpful reader for the reminder.
UPDATE: There's also Tower Prep, which is running on the Cartoon Network. This has a pretty good pedigree in that Paul Dini (Batman: The Animated Series) and Glen Morgan (The X-Files, Space: Above and Beyond) are the showrunners, I just can't stomach more teen angst right now. Apparently there are elements of The Prisoner in it as well.
As per usual, there are a bunch of tips and links in the comments section. So if you haven't yet, dig in.
It's very difficult to determine what exactly the scattered and disorganized groups we now look back on and call the Gnostics believed, but certain broad strokes can be drawn. It goes like this: the world is a prison, an inferior hellhole created by an sadistic celestial being called the Demiurge. The result of a kind of cosmic abortion, the Demiurge anointed himself as the god above all gods. Human souls are trapped here to be tormented by this demon, who was often named Ialdabaoth.
It gets considerably more complicated when you look at all of the different sects, but the means of deliverance from this cosmic insane asylum was acquiring gnosis- the knowledge that would grant you the means of escape. In Christian Gnostic sects Jesus was the deliverer, who had the keys to break out of the Black Iron Prison.
This is the kind of belief system that a people living under a great deal of stress and oppression gravitate towards. In the early days of the common era, radicals and free thinkers gravitated toward the Gnostic sects, seeking to escape the new world order of their time, the rapidly-expanding Roman Empire. For Rome threw centuries- millennia, really- of spiritual and cultural certainty in utter chaos.
Former world powers such as Greece, Egypt and the various nations in Palestine were especially fractured. They had seen their place in the world as ordained by God, whether they called him Jehovah, Zeus or Amun-Ra. And here was this rampaging horde of uncultured thugs smashing their universe to pieces.
As always happens, the colonized would eventually become the colonizers, but things were pretty dicey for quite some time. And so the sour grapes of Gnosticism offered a kind of comfort to the dispossessed. If the Romans were in charge it could only mean that God had himself been usurped as lord of this world. The only solution was escape.
I'm not really that big on a lot of the ancient Gnostic teachings and sects when you get to the detail stage. The reason being is that the knowledge they claimed to possess was often just another kind of faith. But I've always been captivated by this idea of gnosis as the means of deliverance, since that's an entirely sensible conclusion. If you know how to change something you can change it. And it's why I began to see the most powerful and resonant science fiction as the new custodian of this gnosis.
The reason why we find a lot of the sci-fi heroes (and superheroes, certainly) so alluring is that they know the world doesn't work at all like we're taught in school. They experience it. They work with it. And more often than not, they pay for it. And even so we all want to be like them because deep in our hearts we all know this world is a prison, albeit one with varying degrees of comfort in its cells.
Sarah Connor has a knowledge of destruction and deliverance that separates her from the people who she's trying to save, and she is made a criminal for it. Skynet in this context is the ultimate Demiurge, it means to wipe out the previous one's work and start from scratch. Same goes for Fox Mulder and the alien Colonists. The Black Oil aliens are literal Demiurges as well, in that they seeded life on this planet for their own purposes.
John Murdoch and Thomas Anderson are more obvious and widely-cited examples- they are both subjects of lesser creators who kept a more literal kind of prison. Luke Skywalker must learn to use the gnosis of the Force in order to deliver his people from the Empire.
But all of this has been seen as "escapism," which is a dirty word in America. Never mind that this country is entirely made up of people who escaped their previous worlds for whatever reason. If you're unjustly imprisoned, then a desire to escape is a virtue (soldiers are ordered to attempt to escape if captured in wartime). The alternative is existential malaise, something that seems to be spreading like a virus.
I'm always a bit suspicious when I notice people looking down on escapism, because in my experience they're usually people who've never had anything bad happen to them. For anyone who has ever found themselves trapped in a situation where they have been hurt- really hurt, "escape" is the most beautiful word in the English language. Escapism has undoubtedly kept a lot of miserable kids alive and sane, just as it can for adults as we all become targets for the schoolyard bullies of the world.
Of course, we have to do what we can to change our world for the better, which means we're going to have to learn to compromise and sacrifice. But in real terms, that kind of big 'C' Change itself is an escape, from a bad situation to a better one. Escape shouldn't mean shirking or running away from a problem- it should be solely reserved for deliverance from an intolerable situation.
Kind of like the one we're drifting into every single day. Ignorance seems to becoming a virtue in some quarters - it's certainly celebrated in the media. But only knowledge, real knowledge- gnosis- is going to grant us the tools to make our lives better. The problem becomes figuring out what exactly that knowledge is, a process that should be our first priority.
Do you feel it? Do you feel something out there, straining at its leash? Do you hear it? I know there's a lot of noise out there and it's hard to cut through it all, but there is a signal out there. There is a code that's waiting to be deciphered. Which is exactly why the world is such a state of cacophony. Once the code is cracked, all bets are off. There's a lot of money riding on the status quo. Hell, all of the money is.
Which is why it's a very powerful feeling when Synchronicity knocks at your door, and it does so the more you knock at its, oddly enough. You start to feel it- I can actually taste it when I know a random news headline is going to hit me with a new piece of the puzzle once I click through. It's a strange, metallic taste that wells up from my soft palette.
Which is why I think it's very important that you all keep a personal sync log. It's one thing to track all of this madness out there in the mediafeed, but after a while it has a tendency to blur into static. All of the pant-pissing symbolic stuff certainly does. But it can be quite useful if you take it all as a tutorial for decipheringyour own symbolic narratives.
I really can't say this enough.
This is what I was thinking about tonight before I watched Fringe, which allegorized this whole secret-codes-flying-through-the-ether business in a dramatic setting. There it's all part of Walternate's master plan. But that's what writers naturally do; impose conflict on a process that can't really be spelled out for John Q. Couchepotatau. There's nothing wrong with that, it makes for good drama. Otherwise, it ends up all Celestine Prophecy. But in real life, it's all quite a bit different.
Fringe is one of those shows that I feel is speaking to me. Not in a "Chris, go out and kill tonight" kind of way (I get that from Dancing with the Stars), but certainly in a way that it seems to coincide with my own progress. Not nearly as intense as The X-Files, which often got pretty damn scary. More like how I felt when I first read Altered States, which of course is a big touchstone for Fringe.
Then there's this whole business on Fringe tonight linking New Jersey to Milton, Massachusetts, of all places. Milton is next to Braintree, and was one of my "three hometowns." It's where I went to church, and it's also a place that still haunts my dreams (well, Blue Hills Parkway in Milton, to be exact). That certainly got my attention.
But I was thinking about Synchronicity as an agent/byproduct of Evolution after speaking with Erik Davis on his radio show, Expanding Minds,since that's one of the many topics we discussed. Speaking of Synchronicity, Erik was a huge influence on my thinking seeing as how he wrote the seminal text Techgnosis, way way back in the Nineties. And sure enough I finally got a chance to meet Erik last year at Esalen, an event that kicked up another interesting Mothman-related sync as well).†
All of this is either just the most long-winded prelude to a podcast link ever seen on this blog, or more kindling for the synchronistic bonfire. Your choice. In the meantime, here's the link to Erik's page on PRN (which is chock-full of familiar voices to old school WBAI listeners) and here's a direct link to the podcast.
Or you can click the image!
We talk a lot about the ancient Mysteries, of course, but take it very far afield into the fever swamps of fin de sicle Synchromystery, Secret Sun-style. There's also my 2-hour Skypefest with Christie Aphrodite on the Truth Brigade podcast. You can read all about that here, pilgrim.
† The year before that California went up in flames shortly after I left Big Sur but the wildfires stopped at the gates of Esalen itself, miraculously. The cause was a still-unexplained "dry" electrical storm.
As I was typing this I just got hit with another scary sync blast, but that's a story for another day.
MIDNIGHT UPDATE: More synchronistic hijinks tonight, related. On Smallville (aka "Emo Superman"), of all places.
This was included on an earlier post Earth Intruders and the Manufactured Moon but I'm spinning it into its own post since I have a feeling this story is going to grow and grow....
Speaking of the Moon and the ancient astronauts and their dramas and symbols, what did Barackobamun do as soon as his party took a drubbing in the midterms?
Regular readers just spit out their third can of Red Bull, instantly recognizing the magic date encoded into said deal. From 2007:
In Egyptian mythology, Osiris was killed on the 17th day of Athyr, the third month of the ancient calendar. Though not acknowledged, 17 seems to be a very meaningful number in the Mystery traditions, sort of equivalent to the Cross in Christianity. It symbolizes an unjust death and the promise of rebirth.
Orion was identified with Osiris, who again died on the 17th day of the third month. "Month," of course, derives from the root word moon.
Speaking of the Moon, note that President Tut flew into Mumbai on the New Moon. The so-called conservative media whipped up the usual phony controversy, ensuring that the public paid attention to a state visit that would otherwise be ignored over the weekend. Are we seeing the old Death and Resurrection Show unfolding before our eyes?
The mysteries deepen. My FB friend Liz writes this:
Typical...our nobel peace prize President chose to make this deal during the celebration of Diwali. Diwali is the festival celebrating Ram's return to Ayodhya. Yudha means war. Ayudha means no war. Ayodhya is the place of perfect Peace.
This comes from the Wiki on Diwali:
Deepavali (also spelled Devali in certain regions) or Diwali, popularly known as the festival of lights, is an important five-day festival in Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism, occurring between mid-October and mid-November. For Hindus, Diwali is the most important festival of the year and is celebrated in families by performing traditional activities together in their homes. the celebrants wear new clothes and share sweets and snacks with family members and friends. Most Indian business communities begin the financial year on the first day of Diwali.
Diwali commemorates the return of Lord Rama along with Sita and Lakshman from his fourteen-year-long exile and vanquishing the demon-king Ravana. In joyous celebration of the return of their king, the people of Ayodhya, the Capital of Rama, illuminated the kingdom with earthen diyas (oil lamps) and burst crackers.
Now we get smack dab into the ancient astronautical part of our show. Why did the people of Ayaodha illuminate his kingdom with lamps?
Since time immemorial, north Indian kingdom of Avadha marks this as the last day of Lord Rama's long exile of fourteen years. As the citizens of Ayodhya eagerly awaited their beloved prince's return, they lit thousands of lamps to guide his flying "vimana" to their city.
Rama is very much the equivalent of Western godmen/savior figures like Hercules and Horus, whose ability to withstand hardship and suffering is seen as a model for pious Hindus to emulate. Wiki: "Rama's life and journey is one of perfect adherence to dharma despite harsh tests of life and time. He is pictured as the ideal man and the perfect human." It's worth noting that Obama has now linked himself to Rama, as he's done with both Hercules and Horus.
Like Horus, Rama was a rightful heir whose throne was usurped by a demon-king: Ravanna, in this case (note the etymological similarity to Ravenna). And of course Rama is blue-skinned just like the Na'Vi of Avatar (who are also linked to the Grissom Cult that Obama seems to be a member of).
And then there's Rendezvous with Rama,Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee's ancient astronaut themed novel of a giant abandoned spaceship that wanders into near-Earth orbit. But how was it detected?
Clarke invented the fictional space study program which detects Rama, Project Spaceguard, as a method of identifying near-Earth objects on Earth-impact trajectories; it was initiated after an equally fictional asteroid "struck" Italy on September 11, 2077, destroying Padua and Verona and sinking Venice. However, a real Spaceguard project was initiated some years later, named after Clarke's fictional device. After interest in the dangers of asteroid strikes was heightened by a series of Hollywood disaster films, the United States Congress gave NASA authorization and funding to support Spaceguard.
Spaceguard may or may not coincidentally link us to this strange story, of a very Rama-looking object recently spotted in our solar system. Watch that video and then read this description of Rama:
An unmanned space probe dubbed Sita is launched from the Mars moon Phobos, and photographs taken during its rapid flyby reveal that Rama is a mathematically perfect cylinder, 20 kilometres in diameter and 54 kilometres long, made of a completely featureless material. In other words, this is humankind's first encounter with an alien space ship.
Everyone seems to be calling this strangely symmetrical object "Hartley's Comet," but not Richard Hoagland:
I have worked much of the night on NASA's released Hartley 2 images a bit, and have managed to extract significant new detail.
It IS an ancient "ship" ... judging from the extraordinary geometry in these newly-enhanced images.
IF NASA is honest on this (a BIG "if" ...), the High-res images (yet to be released) will be ASTONISHING .... :)
This could, indeed, be "the BIG November event" that Cliff High's Webot program has been "detecting" for weeks ....
A modern depiction of Vimanas based on ancient descriptions
Well, maybe, maybe not. But the synchronicity of Barackobamun flying into India on the New Moon, just in time to celebrate a festival of lights devoted to Rama, seems a fascinating coincidence by any yardstick. Doubly so considering the sale of the 3-17 death/rebirth Vimanas to Rama's people.
Still think this is all mere coincidence? You'd better read this story then.
Dancing Obama celebrates India's Diwali festival
MUMBAI - US President Barack Obama joined in the celebrations for the Hindu festival of light, Diwali, on Sunday by dancing with children at a school in Mumbai during his visit to India.
Obama and his wife, Michelle, initially sat on the sidelines at the Holy Name School in the south of the city, clapping to the beat as youngsters in colourful costumes performed a traditional dance for the annual festival.
The First Lady, in a checked dress with pink cardigan, then joined in enthusiastically and eventually persuaded her more reluctant-looking husband to accompany her on the dancefloor.
Maybe now we can shed new light on Obama's Hanuman charm.Some saw this as proof of Obama's pagan-Muslim-communist-Nazi treachery, but others took a different view, one that takes on a whole new significance in light of this weekend's festivities:
In any event, one can't help but think of the famous description of Arjuna given in Bhagavad-gita: "At that time Arjuna, the son of Pandu, seated in the chariot bearing the flag marked with Hanuman, took up his bow..." (1.20)
Vaishnava commentators have expressed the significance of the Hanuman emblem on Arjuna's chariot.
"The emblem of Hanuman on the flag of Arjuna is another sign of victory," Srila Prabhupada writes in his purport to this verse, "because Hanuman cooperated with Lord Rama in the battle between Rama and Ravana, and Lord Rama emerged victorious."
According to recent findings by an Australian astronomer, a spacecraft will soon be meeting a comet after taking a 5.1 billion-kilometre journey.
The Deep Impact spacecraft which is travelling at 12.5 kilometres a second, will make its nearest approach to the comet Hartley 2 early on Friday, crossing within 700 kilometres of the 1.2-kilometre wide icy world.
It is said to be the record time when a single spacecraft has had encounters with two different comets. The first meet was on July 4, 2005, Deep Impact flew by comet Tempel 1, dropping a probe on to its surface, which led to creation of unprecedented celestial fireworks which saw its impact on the Independence Day in the US.
The mind reels...
UPDATE: One thing that should be remembered given Barackobamun's Indonesian upbringing is that Hinduism was once the official religion of the island nation and there is still a small but influential Hindu minority there.
UPDATE: Another county heard from. I'm friends with this woman on FB, strangely enough.Thanks to Rennie for the tip.
A recent headline had it that Hollywood had no less than 16 alien invasion movies in the pipeline. But not all of the actual films in question follow the War of the Worlds template, and some of them are sequels or have only tangential connections to the meme (like Green Lantern). Roland Emmerich is filming a Blair Witch/Cloverdale spin on the meme, and Skyline (which is a classic WotW scenario with ostensible alien identity memery) is due this week. We've been tracking the continuing focus on alien themes here for quite some time, so it's not news around these parts. But there was one interesting sync in a news story these weekend that caught my eye:
Bob Weinstein met several times with Bekmambetov before making a deal that came after Bekmambetov presented film footage purported to have been shot by the crew of Apollo 18. That moon mission from the early 70s was officially canceled by NASA, but according to urban legend, it actually happened. Timur's footage shows signs of alien life, and the events of the mission are built into a thriller story line.
If footage of a secret Apollo mission sounds familiar, it's because we recently looked at some impressive yet, um, apocryphal film footage that also had a Russian connection:
Then there's this story (and accompanying video), which has been circulating in the underground for a couple of years now. It's about an alleged secret Apollo mission (a joint US/Soviet mission, it turns out) to investigate an enormous crashed alien ship on the Moon's surface. And once inside the spaceship, the astronauts reportedly discovered a mummified alien body.
Naturally, the sync demands that I'll be following this story, as well as the fascinating exomorphogenic memes that we see in the Skyline trailer. Definitely a new wrinkle for the old invasion workhouse.
And so, the alien drumbeat goes on. Aside from the Hollywood angle and all of the UFO and exoplanet stories in the news lately, we're well into the second season of Ancient Aliens on the History Channel. To be honest, I find the series a bit frustrating. The first two hour special was one of the best documentaries on the subject ever made, but I feel as if they're stretching out the premise without using the time to really burrow into some of the issues. The recent episode on the gods had some interesting information but I kept waiting for them to really put it over the fence, and they kept bunting. I also think the whole topic is a lot more psychedelic than you can get away with on TV, though I can't quite explain what I mean by that.
Speaking of psychedelia and ancient aliens, it looks as if the third X-Files movie is in preproduction. David Duchovny spilled the beans to a French TV magazine:
As Philes on Facebook have already pointed out, the English translation is, "It is being written. It looks just ahead of Fox, a little scalded by the relatively poor reception of the second component. The error comes, I believe that the authors had strayed too far from the very roots of the series. Moreover, the film was released in summer. The third will be much closer to what the public expects, with government conspiracies, etc..
Of course, Secret Sun readers know that X-Files 2 was about aliens and conspiracies, it just told the story in allegory. It also made the mistake of serving up a steak dinner when everyone was expecting a Happy Meal (plus there was the whole thing with the Dark Knight Working). Well, hopefully the next installment will be a bit more straightforward and offer up more explicit alien hijinks and tomfoolery.
Speaking of which, I need to read this book. Particularly given the recent NASA plans to go everywhere but the Moon. I also need to read this book, though a spoiler-happy reviewer already gave away the ending. From an interview in New Dawn with author Christopher Knight:
ND: Your conclusion is there are more than enough anomalies about the Moon to suggest it is not a naturally occurring body and was quite possibly engineered to sustain life on Earth. How did you reach this conclusion?
CK: Not only is the Moon an apparently impossible object, it has some unique benefits for us humans. It has been nothing less than an incubator for life. If the Moon was not exactly the size, mass and distance that it has been at each stage of the Earth’s evolution – there would be no intelligent life here. Scientists are agreed that we owe everything to the Moon.
It acts as a stabiliser that holds our planet at just the right angle to produce the seasons and keep water liquid across most of the planet. Without our Moon the Earth would be as dead and solid as Venus.
The Moon is not only extremely odd in its construction; it also behaves in a way that is nothing less than miraculous. It is exactly four hundred times smaller than the Sun but four hundred times closer to the Earth so that both the Sun and the Moon appear to be precisely the same size in the sky – which gives us the phenomenon we call a total eclipse. Whilst we take this for granted it has been called the biggest coincidence in the universe.
Furthermore, the Moon mirrors the movement of the Sun in the sky by rising and setting at the same point on the horizon as the Sun does at opposite solstices. For example, this means the Moon rises at midwinter at the same place the Sun does at midsummer. There is no logical reason why the Moon mimics the Sun in this way and it is only meaningful to a human standing on the Earth.
I've heard this theory before. It might drive the orthodox types crazy, but fights in quite neatly to the overall mystery we're puzzling over here on The Secret Sun.
Two years ago we spent a lot of time looking at the bizarre and incongruous Sirius symbolism that was being used by both Presidential candidates. It lasted well into the first few months of Obama's administration. What exactly it means is something we can only speculate on, but it seemed that someone was having a jolly old time sneaking in references to the Dog Star in speeches, press conferences and all of the rest of it. It seemed to dissipate early in this year, as the ridiculous "messiah" hype (or "Antichrist" hype from the snakehandlers) ran smack dab into the brick wall of unified Republican intransigence.
I avoided this election as best I could, so I don't know if there were any symbolic shenanigans to be had. I have a feeling probably not, since there was obviously a power struggle going on behind the scenes that may actually dwarf the struggle that played out in the open. Now we see Obama acting like a whipped dog in the face of Republican triumphalism, so I can only wonder what is really going on in that town (I have a feeling it's something very nasty indeed).
While Obama was riding on a wave of mind-numbingly ridiculous hero worship, his enemies were taking stock of him as a man and I believe they realized pretty quickly that he was no messiah- he isn't even much of a leader. Certainly not a fighter. Even though a lot of their voters were wetting their pants over the ridiculous cartoon painted of Obama as some Marxist firebrand with demonic ambitions, the Republican leadership saw him as just another corporatist go-getter with deeply narcissistic tendencies who started his campaign before he even finished his first term in the Senate. Of course, on everything that matters, Obama is no different from the Republicans, and he's only advanced the warfare state agenda and the erosion of civil liberties. I'll tell you, it really got to be a sick joke reading all the headlines that started with "Obama continues Bush policy on..." last year. But there's another, more blog-appropriate lesson here- elections are nothing but the manipulation of symbolism.
Symbols rule political advertising because both parties serve the same overlords, they only disagree on who gets the scraps from the table. So in order to appeal to a dumbed-down public, they use dumbed-down symbols. The symbolism of a young and inexperienced black man in an inherently symbolic office rankled a lot of older white Americans who've seen their prospects vanish as wealth and power is transferred to countries they once looked down upon. The fact that they don't take out their anger on the globalist traitors in both parties who sold us all out is another story, but still.
Obama blew a lot of symbolic tests: his Supreme Court appointments did nothing to reassure Middle America, the cringe-inducing "beer summit" did nothing to smooth over ruffled feathers over the fact that Obama trashed a white cop from the Presidential podium before he even heard the facts of the case. In the grand scheme of things none of it really seems important, but to swathes of the country used to certain symbolic protocols, they arguably did more damage than his policies.
But his weakness and his prevaricating have hurt him the most. Not even the most inbred snakehandler buys into the Antichrist meme anymore. But that would be preferable to the image of a guy who rolls over every time the Republicans (or the "Blue Dogs") looked at him cross-eyed. Polls show that people hate the Republicans even more than the Democrats but at least the GOP acts like it has some balls. There's a lesson there for my liberal friends.
I'm probably the wrong person to comment on it all since I hate both parties like poison, but I do understand the power of symbols. Obama and his handlers might have some devious masterplan to turn it all around before 2012, but if not, I'd recommend that they score some symbolic victories that don't require the gutless whores in Congress to assist. And for God's sake, find some archetypal role to reinvent himself as other than the whipped dog he's playing now.
I'd also recommend that he wake up tomorrow and hold a press conference and say "I offered an olive branch and that mincing old queen from Kentucky slapped it back. So from now on, all y'all can kiss my ass."
Well, not in so many words, but you get my drift.
UPDATE: After I finished writing this post last night the missus and I sat down for some Fringe worship. And what do my wondering eyes behold? Olivia, crowned with the Stairway to Sirius. If that ain't a sync, what is? Bonus sync: the four funerary goddesses.
UPDATE: Recovered Dominionist Frank Schaeffer sees the hand of the Rapture-ready snakehandlers in the election. I don't see that so much of that, I must say. I think Bush's failed Apocalypse in Iraq took a lot of the oomph out of the movement politically in this country. Their paymasters seem more focused on bigger prizes like China and Africa and the movement can't even sneeze without their OK.
I still see the usual right wing reaction you get whenever a Democratic president is elected combined with Obama's inability to preside and use the Bully Pulpit. Maybe he and his team are great policy wonks, but they had it all two years ago and pissed it all away. As the Gospel of Thomas says, what you bring forth within you will save you and vice versa. So ball's in your court, President Tut.
George Orwell once said, "to see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."
Those who've seen the Ancient Aliens series on the History Channel will recognize the Vimanas, which vary according to artistic style, but are believed by many researchers to be an advanced form of aircraft flown by the "gods," who in fact are some form of alien or superhuman beings.
Now, Hinduism is a richly embroidered belief system- or systems, rather- but even so we might see vestiges of the original inspiration. Here Hanuman awaits his teacher Surya, the sun god. Surya is much like the Greek Helios or the Roman Sol, with his chariot and flying horses. One of the gifts that Hanuman receives from his patron gods is that of flight. Look at that dome atop his chariot. Remind you of anything?
There it is again. Note also that Surya, like many of these warrior gods, is depicted as being highly androgynous, something we see in Egyptian art as well. And there's that blue skin, which played such a major role in the Stairway blowout a year ago.
And here we see Hanuman praying to Rama, also androgynous and equipped with his apocalyptic weaponry which seem to predate nuclear weapons by thousands of years. And there's that dome again. You know what these domes keep reminding me of?
Need you ask?
Then there are the icons of the infant Hanuman with his mother, who is conspicuously non-apelike. They're also highly reminiscent of another mother-son icon....
That of Isis-Sirius and the young Harpocrates, who is born from the Earth Mother's magic and the DNA of his heavenly father who returns to the stars along with Ra, the god of the Green Sun. The parallelisms don't end there- as Secret Sun readers know, they never end.
Here is an altar to Hanuman. Look familiar? If not, you might be on the wrong blog. As I've argued in the Stairway to Sirius series, what we think of as Masonic iconography is actually something much, much older and it's true meaning is completely, um, alien to the Freemasons themselves.
Look familiar?
