Angels of the Abyss, Part 2: The Transhuman Delusion

It's weird: when the whole Titan thing went down in June I just thought, "Ho hum, a bunch of rich daredevils finally run out of luck." Then James Cameron had to insert himself into the story, and all of a sudden the pieces started falling into place.

Before we get started, don't forget to dive into the decoding of the Barbie-Lon Working and all that it portends!

And most certainly don't forget Part One of this epic spellbreak!

I made a mental note to re-watch The Abyss, but got caught up in other issues, on account of ADHD. Then Fate herself intervened in the form of an Abyss Special Edition DVD at my local library. I complied to her wishes.

The extended edition is curiously similar to the Close Encounters of the Third Kind in that the restored material heightens the religious nature of the films in question. 

As discussed in the previous installment, the aliens in this film are nothing if not godlike and the tsunami plot-point is eerily - and perhaps uncomfortably - similar to the Flood narrative in Genesis, with the aliens usurping God's power and the Ed Harris character playing a New Age Noah. Or inverted Noah, let's just say.

With the aliens explicitly identified as watchers (they monitor humanity by watching our TV stations) and inarguably presented as angelic, one must then contemplate exactly what James Cameron was trying to present here. It's worth mentioning that Watchers also showed up in Darren Aronofsky's Noah, so the connection is hard to dismiss.

So the question then becomes what do the Watchers (AKA Titans AKA Anunnaki) mean to Cameron? Sure, there's The Titanic and Ghosts of the Abyss, but those are just someone else's naming conventions (or variously, someone else's rituals), but are there any other indications that Cameron has some affinity for the Fallen Angels AKA the Angels of the Inky Abyss?

Let's have a look at the man's CV then:

Oh. "Dark Angel." 

Interesting. 

OK, Dark Angel was arguably just a transhumanist propaganda wankfest, but what's the connection to the Watchers?

Oh. Right. 

OK, whatever. That's just one project. That doesn't prove anything.

Let's keep looking...

Oh. That.

Looks vaguely familiar...

Then there's what Mr. Cameron has chosen to make his magnum opus, the Avatar series of films. 

Which depict advanced beings coming down from the skies and taking possession of primitive beings and saving the natives from the wrath of their fellow advanced beings. 

Like, um, the Watchers. Huh.

And then there's this curious connection, with Avatar star Sam Worthington playing the character in the same basic story, only in this case in a crappy Netflix picture no one watched. 

But still, you can't argue the thematic resonance here.

THE DIVINE FEMININE

But let's play a bit of Secret Sun Scrabble and dive a bit further in Mr. Cameron's hobby-horses...

Hooray! You win 666 points! And yes, the Angels are all... well, let's just they're all a bit on the non-binary side.

Remember, the Greek word for transvestite temple prostitute (Malakoi) and the Hebrew word for angel (Malak) are essentially the same, a fact Church artists seem to have been read in on for millennia, if officially-sanctioned depictions are any indication.

Which is why I often wonder if the men of Sodom might have gotten a bad rap. How were they to know these Malakoi were in fact actually Malak? 

Malakoi were literally everywhere back then, all over the ancient world. In fact, the term Qadeshim, which is read as "temple prostitute" in the Torah and is translated as "sodomite" in the King James, actually literally means "the Divine Feminine," coming from the Semitic root for "Holy Things."

So essentially all of the pagan temples across the ancient world were little Bangkoks. But it's not like Lot covered himself in glory either:

⁴ Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. ⁵ They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

⁶ Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him ⁷ and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing.⁸ Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

Yikes. What the eff, dude? 

OK, so what does this have to do with James Cameron?

Well, there seems to be a thruline in the mogul's work, of violent androgyny. 

Note first that the Dark Angel uses the traditionally-masculine name, "Max."

Then we have Ripley, the kicker of alien ass in Aliens.

And Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Hamilton is one of Cameron's exes, by the way.

And rumored-hermaphrodite Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies. Curtis raised one of her daughters trans, incidentally. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I guess.

Speaking of rumors, there's also Angela Bassett in Strange Days. Look her up with "Bobbi Kristina Brown." 

Not saying I endorse such rumors, just sayin' is all.

And there's also Michelle Rodriguez in Avatar. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio played a not-dissimilar character in The Abyss. 

The message of all this seems to be that woman are OK just as long as they're as much like men as humanly possible.

So what's the problem? It's all just make-believe, right? What's wrong with a little female empowerment in fantasy and science-fiction movies?

Well, there's a major problem with it being so ubiquitous that people start to believe that women can kick ass as well as any man can. It's simply not true, and it's a fantasy can lead to tragedy in reality.

Witness the path of destruction trans-MMA fighter Fallon Fox wreaked on biological women, literally smashing one's skull in a fight and instantly dispatching others in different matches.

OK, so that's a trained fighter. No biggie, right? The exception that proves the rule, tright?

Well, leaving aside the fact that Fallon Fox was an also-ran before transitioning and absolutely destroyed female fighters afterwards, there's also the example of Joey Buttafuoco - a friggin' mechanic, for Heaven's sake - doing much the same damage to Chyna, who was herself a highly trained athlete.

I don't want to step on anyone's toes (don't cancel me, yo!) but biology is still a thing, despite literal thousands of depictions over the past 40 years of 90-pound waifs dispatching teams of Navy SEALs without breaking a sweat. 

Not to be a buzzkill or anything, but it's all just delusional transhuman brainwash in the end.

DELUSIONAL TRANSHUMAN BRAINWASH

As is Avatar. Here's an excerpt from a Cinematique essay titled "Avatar and Transhumanism":

 James Cameron glorifies secular transhumanists’ idea of technological utopianism in Avatar. Human consciousness (“the soul”) could be uploaded and shared in computer hardware, like the USB cords connecting the Na’vis and the spiritual tree, Eywa.

The few good humans, such as Dr. Augustine and Jake, also believe in the transhumanism utopia of Eywa. Avatar idealizes the Na’vi people’s soul-sharing relationships with Eywa and each other. With the help of technology, Cameron suggests that these depictions serve as the ideal template for future societal relations in real life. Audiences will only need to wait for sequels of Avatar to understand this utopia better.

Note that there's minus-infinity basis for any of this in practicable science, yet tons and tons of it in religious texts. Like, for instance, the work of Alice Bailey. 

Y'know, the same work that seems to articulate the essential belief system of the worldwide Watcher cult.

Here's the crux of the matter:

On the other hand, transhumanism has been heatedly debated in the field of bioethics. Jake’s ability to escape from his human responsibilities and achieve spiritual salvation is inseparable with his decision to break entirely from the human body. While Jake’s humanoid could exhibit the same emotions, knowledge, and psychological conditions as his old body, many scientists contest this possibility. 

Opponents of transhumanism thus believe that becoming an Avatar could eradicate parts of the non-uploadable “soul,” such as human emotions.  

One is given to wonder if the Watcher cultists believe that the "gender binary" must be eradicated in those chosen to become avatars for the Fallen Angels. It sounds insane, because it is. But when you're filthy rich, powerful and utterly unaccountable, your fantasies inevitably drift towards insanity.

YOU SAID KNOB

Then there's the 2002 adaption of Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, which was directed by Steven Soderbergh and produced by Cameron. Here we see yet another immersion into oceanic fluidity on the latter's part. 

Solaris is a 1961 science fiction novel by Polish writer Stanisław Lem. It follows a crew of scientists on a research station as they attempt to understand an extraterrestrial intelligence, which takes the form of a vast ocean on the titular alien planet. The novel is one of Lem's best-known works. 

So far, so good. Mind you, Solaris is definitely a Soderbergh film, and shows off all of his trademarks, like the use of montage and messing with chronology. Astonishing soundtrack by Cliff Martinez too.

But there is one bit that always struck me as curious: when we first meet Rheya (played with characteristic enigmatic-ness by Natascha McElhone), we actually focus on her carrying a doorknob between her legs. 

And the first words we hear her speak are...

Huh. See what I mean?

Remembering that Rheya's namesake was identified with Cybele in later antiquity - and that Cybele's priests were the itinerant eunuchs called the Galloi - it's worth noticing that Chris Kelvin's symbolic castration is what summons Rheya into the story. 

Rheya and her knob, I might add.

We also see the avatar of Solaris - in the form of a Harpocrates-like boy, mind you - bestow immortality onto Kelvin while the planet is consuming the space station (named "Prometheus," of course).

This definitely seems like a Cameronian insert, given that we see Neo-Noah and the Watery Watchers replay the same Creation of Adam bit in The Abyss. In both cases, we're seeing a rebirth, or a recreation, if you prefer.

Ponder on the implications of that for a spell.

It's also interesting to note that nearly all of the technology in The Abyss is entirely fictional and things like massive deep sea habitats are in all likelihood never going to exist due to our grinding civilizational collapse and subsequent loss of expertise, which is reaching the point of being irreversible. 

Hollywood brainwashed us all for decades to believe in all that nonsense, thanks to the magic of SPX and CGI gurus.

The final scene of Solaris has Kelvin cutting his finger and summoning the goddess Rheya, who tells him that....

It's never really explained what she means by that, nor are we given any indication where this is all taking place. But given the symbolic castration, the message seems to be that Kelvin is now above binaries like being alive or dead, and that he doesn't need to think in those terms anymore. 

Rheya then tells him that everything is now forgiven, whatever that means.

It's all very much like the ending of Annihilation, when the Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaacs characters realize they're just copies made by the Shimmer. And hey: they're OK with that. What are you, a Shimmerist or something?

All kidding aside, you can take all of this as metaphor. In fact you should take it as metaphor. The problem is that millions of people who don't even know what a metaphor is have been raised to hate being human, largely by Hollywood and video games. We're seeing that this has real consequences, most often through various means of self-harm. 

Which is exactly why we need to break all these spells and put them back where they belong - solely in the realm of childish fantasy. In fact, it may even be a good idea to put all this comic book-tier nonsense aside for a while, so we can reboot our humanity. Think of it as kind of a fast, a way to reset our expectations back to plausibility.

Otherwise, I don't know what is going to happen, especially to troubled young people. Many of whom are openly tortured by their humanity and by their inability to achieve in reality what they experience so completely in fantasy. The data speaks to the consequences of all of this in the starkest and most unambiguous ways.

The good news is that you can help move this amelioration along. That's how real change happens, by concerted and sustained effort, not with superpowers.

The fascinating thing about all of this is how so many themes and subtexts in James Cameron's films also tie in- you might even say embody - with many of the ideas expressed by two lesser-known Camerons.

Lesser-known, perhaps. But it seems no less influential when it comes to the belief systems of the rich, powerful and delusional.

So if you want to stay on top of all the madness - and help break some of these malefic media spells - listen to the following words by our sponsors...

Even if the old platforms are fading, The Secret Sun Institute of Advanced Synchromysticism is still very much alive and kicking. So if you've been wondering where all the action is these days, wonder no more.

click on the Moon for details

For as little as $3 a month and access reams of information that will entertain, enlighten and fortify your spirit in these troubled times. 

Come for the scholarship, stay for the fellowship.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • •