Secret Sun Year in Review: Lightships Over Babylon

As much as I've tried to make the blog a haven from the media noise machine, I couldn't keep Samsara at bay forever. But events conspired to dovetail the horrors outside with revelations I'd discovered in my studies.

The Secret Sun Year in Review: 2014 Edition

I started blogging again after a ten-month break with the piece "These are Gnostic Times." This was a confession as much as an article, and I do try to make everything I post here read as much like a proper article as much as possible.

Graphic Depictions

Ever since I started this blog, I knew I didn't want to spend the rest of my life doing someone else's laundry. I came into this having published a couple comics series (unfortunately during the bleakest years of the downturn) and having serious interest in a couple screenplays I worked on (one of which was apparently of very serious interest to certain parties, as longtime readers will remember).

Pretending that the Wars are Done

I've been saying for many years that we don't really have a two party system in this country, and certainly we don't really even have the appearance of one like we did when I was young. Back then you had bonafide working class Democrats like Tip O'Neill, who opposed the Republicans based on substantial economic differences. 

These Are the Days of Miracles and Wonders

As some of you might be aware I'm blessed with the joyous gift of Myofascial Pain Syndrome, the so-called "rabid dog" of chronic pain disorders. In point of fact, it's technically classified as debilitating, though I chose not to let it be. 

But it comes with all kinds of wonderful side effects aside from the huge ropey cords of en-spasmed muscles, one of which is chronic fatigue and various sleep disorders.

The Numinous Power of Night Slaves

.I have several essays in the pipeline that I am currently wrestling with, perhaps having bit off more than I can chew. In the meantime I wanted to repost this film, which I had post a while back on The Solar Satellite.  It seemed to get lost in the shuffle and really deserves a much closer look. 

This is a perfect film for a cold, rainy weekend, like the kind we're suffering here, and its theme of sleepless nights is apropos for daily savings time tonight. There's a strange kind of numinosity that I don't think you'd see in many films today.

Telling Tales Out of School: Hiding in the Light

One of the more fascinating figures of the collision of 20th Century pop culture and future-science is Otto Binder. 

The prolific writer was not only one of the most influential writers in the history of the comics medium he was also a forward thinker on the topic of rocketry and space, creating one of the first- if not the first- magazines dedicated to the space program, Space World. 

First Born Unicorn

David Duchovny's long-running sex comedy Californication wrapped this past summer. We looked at some of the symbolism in the series in a Stairway to Sirius post a few years ago (and another here) but I thought this past season was worth a Picture Parade, y'know, just for the giggles and grins.

Covered by the Sacred Fire: Philip K. Dick's Divine Madness

So, what's the difference between madness and true magical thinking? It's a question that needs to be asked. For me, it's simple: the difference is the result. Usually, it's the only yardstick we have at hand.

Songs of the Siren on the River Styx

Jeff Buckley's family is producing a bio-pic on the late singer's life, provisionally entitled Mystery White Boy. Penny Dreadful star Reeve Carney has been cast as Buckley and Medium/ Gospel of Thomas channel Patricia Arquette has been cast as his mother. 

For those of you who may not know, Buckley died by drowning in a river in Memphis, TN in 1997, just as he was celebrating the completion of a new group of songs for the follow-up to his 1994 breakthrough album, Grace.

I don't know if they'll include former Cocteau Twins singer Elizabeth Fraser in the story; if they've read my posts on Buckley's relationship with the Siren, they may very well not. It's not a story a family would want to tell. 

But it's the only story that's true.

Bring on the Serpent Gods

Earnest, well-intentioned scholars like Elaine Pagels and Gilles Quispel worked very hard to bring Gnosticism back into the public consciousness in the past 40 years but presented a Gnosticism that I'm not sure the ancients would have necessarily recognized. 

Fragments of an Alien Faith: Ancient UFO Religion

Paging Dr. Clelland....

We looked at the remarkable literature of the Mandaeans, who are currently in exile from their native lands in Iraq. Their religious texts are filled with beings and ships of light as well as the very clear, lucid and oft-repated insistance that they are just vistors here, that their true home is on another world, a more perfect world.

AstroGnostic: The Mandaeans' Elusive Companions

There is a lot more going on in Iraq and Syria than almost unimaginable carnage and human suffering, from the looting of the Sumerian artifacts from the Baghdad museum in 2003 to a more current situation in which the Islamic Caliphate is blowing up ancient archaeological sites and shrines, a practice begun by the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

Propaganda in the Classical Sense

Throughout history, cults of all sizes and shapes have created exciting dramas to spread their doctrines to the uninitiated. Many of the same elements we see in comic books, paperback SF and fantasy novels and Hollywood movies were first introduced in these stories, not as entertainment per se, but as literal propaganda, meaning as messages designed to 'propagate the faith'.

HP Lovecraft's Strange Travels

I've been thinking about the Lovecraft issue, and the curious simultaneity of Lovecraft and Bailey's parallel update on forty year-old Theosophical doctrine, which is especially strange at a time when the Theosophists themselves were locking crazy old Grandma Blavatsky up in the attic in order not to scare the rubes away from their chosen one, Krishamurti.

Did You Hear? UFOlogy is Dying. Again.

New York Magazine spends the slow weeks of midsummer declaring "The End of UFOs!" The title is a major misnomer, as the article in question is actually about the latest death of UFOlogy (or UFOOLogy, as it's alternately known). 

Theatre of Futility: Channel Four's Utopia

In 2007 I began looking at the uncanny prophecies of Jack Kirby, beginning with the Face on Mars splash that Richard Hoagland and others had brought to light. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Even more startling were his prophecies of the Gulf Wars, which I began to unravel in 2007.

Everything Old is New Age Again

Though I didn't realize it at the time, the New Age movement was my entry point into the world of alt.whatever some 30 years ago. And it was also an object lesson in how the sandblasting power of consumer culture can reshape everything in its own image. This may seem like a weird detour to be writing about the New Age in these apocalyptic times, but I hope to convince you that it's anything but.

These Are Gnostic Times

It's been nearly a year since I've posted here, having been overwhelmed by the two irreducible realities in my life: work and chronic pain. 

Many a plan and project has been sacrificed on the altar to these unrelenting gods. I've lost count of the times I've gotten started on a project only to have to back burner it when the need to pay the bills rears its head.