Star*Ships Have Landed: Interview with Gordon White

Gordon White has written a foundational text for the new millennium. Star*Ships is nothing less than a long-overdue door kicking in the halls of academic history and anthropology. But what is this book about and how did it come to be, you may ask? 

Jack Kirby, Mindbomb: Break on Through to the Inner Side

 From 2001: A Space Odyssey #2

 I realized I left this series hanging and didn't adequately wrap it all up. 

Seeing as how Synchronicity insisted I do so- in its own inimitable way- here's the coup de grace for what was an unexpectedly popular breakthrough series.

Ockham, the Occult and the Ultraterrestrials

Ockham's Razor is one of those famous dictums that people use in arguments and often do so incorrectly. 

The whole story of it is pretty tangled and is better explained elsewhere, but for our purposes let's stick to the common distillation of it, being that the simplest answer to a problem is usually the correct one.

The Star Wars Symbol Cycle: A Long Time Ago

Isis became a slave during her search for Osiris

Return of the Jedi is generally seen as the least of the three original films. A lot of this has to do with the Ewoks, the feral teddy bears that are featured heavily throughout the film.

 

Star Wars Symbol Cycle: Gary Kurtz, the Force Behind the Force

 

At their best, movies once offered us gnosis of a kind that the ancients could only write their weird apocalypses about.

It's part of a larger phenomenon- the most enthusiastic adopters of any new communication technology are people selling either religion or sex. Both offer an escape from the grinding boredom of life.

The Star Wars Symbol Cycle: The Irresistable Force

In 100 years everyone will have forgotten the prequels and the sequels and the spinoffs and focus solely on the original Star Wars movie. Why? Because there's nothing said in anything that came after that wasn't said best in the first film. 

Nightmares in Camelot: Sometimes We Can See Them

 

Perception has been a major part of what I puzzle over on this blog. Specifically, how perception determines reality or at least how we describe reality.

Alien Dreaming: In Excelsis, Part 10/13

By the time you read this, the headlines will be screaming about mass UFO landings all across the globe or it will be just another ordinary day in October. 

Children of the Flaming Wheel, Part 2: The Solar Phone

In the previous post, we looked at what reads like the minutes from an technoccult ritual in which young hippies contact alien artificial intelligences over the vast reaches of space using psychic projection. Jack Kirby seemed to like the idea so much that it included it in a contemporaneous story, starring none other than our old friend, Jimmy Olsen.

 

"Children of the Flaming Wheel"

I could try to preface or frame this photocomic somehow, but there's no way I could make it any less strange and wacked out than it already is. 

Longtime Secret Sun readers know all about Jack Kirby and the absolute incongruity of his obsessions with the highest weirdness imaginable contrasted with his almost stultifying suburbanite life. I'd argue that the latter not only enabled but fueled the former.

Breaking Open the Pinchbeck

All of the recent talk about 2012 kicked loose a connection I'd been processing subconsciously but hadn't yet been able to nail down. When researching a recent post on the 2012 film, I came across a documentary in which Daniel Pinchbeck appears...

Wham-Bam, Thank You, Elam

Having recently discussed Hercules and shamanism and voyages to the underworld, I was flipping through one of my Essential Thor's, where I can upon this splash-page from one of the crucial comics of my early days. 

I was quite chuffed to see 'The coming of Hercules' plastered on a picture of Thor wrestling a 'witch-doctor' who found Thor's 'Norn-stone' and developed the powers of a 'demon'. I figure Kirby was plotting these stories by this time and Stan was scripting them. The connections then make perfect sense, given whatever Jack had tapped into. 

Then there was the Eleusinian bit with Thor descending into the underworld to rescue Hercules, who'd unwittingly signed on as king of Hell. Interesting spin, there.

 

Journey to the Underworld- Cover dated July 1966

Which brings us to this story, that still boggles my mind: Falcons’ Elam has a ‘frustrating day’

Jason Elam left it in the bullpen on Sunday. After what he said was his best practice week of the preseason and a good pre-game warm-up, the Falcons kicker had one of the worst days of his 17-year career. Seven points went missing.

Falcons? Elam? This is a joke, right? The great Egyptologist Flinders-Petrie wrote that the Falcon tribe - who brought Horus into Egypt - came from the land of Elam:

The distinctive character of the 1st dynasty, which separates it from all that went before, is the conquest and union of the whole land of Egypt. It became thus subject to the falcon-bearing tribe of Horus, which was the natural enemy of the Aunu, the Set-bearing tribe. This falcon tribe had certainly originated in Elam (modern -day Iran), as indicated by the hero and lions on the "Araq knife handle". They went down the Persian Gulf and settled in the "horn of Africa."

Iran, the Persian Gulf, the Horn of Africa? Why, this Horus tribe seems to have hit all of the hotspots circulating in the news these days, no? Finally, speaking of Horus, there's this story:

Nev. man accused of DUI for 3rd time in 17 days RENO, Nev. – A 50-year-old Reno man has been arrested on suspicion of drunken driving for the third time in less than three weeks. Reno Police Sgt. Tom Robinson said the man was stopped Monday afternoon on a U.S. Highway 395 off-ramp...

Oh Synchronicity, such a saucy maiden... 

 UPDATE: This just in from Dubai... 

 UPDATE: Actually, this just in from Dubai. Seven stars for synch-searching SoapFan. 

 UPDATE: I'm sorry, this is f***ed.

The 43-year-old told the AP in a series of interviews this week that by the time the sweat lodge ceremony began, the participants had undergone days of physically and mentally strenuous events that included fasting. In one game, guru James Arthur Ray even played God.

At one point, someone lifted up the back of the tent, shining light in the otherwise pitch-black enclosure. Ray demanded to know who was letting the light in and committing a "sacrilegious act," Bunn said.

The account marks a significant revelation in the investigation because it portrays Ray as driving participants to stay in the lodge despite signs all around him that the situation had gone horribly awry. Until now, few details had surfaced about Ray's actions inside in the sweat lodge.

Interesting timing, given that Elizabeth Clare Prophet just passed away. Prophet's apocalyptic, authoritarian, neo-Theosophist, Christo-Buddhist cult was big in the late 80s but her predicted Apocalypse never came, as is so often the case with those stubborn ol' Armageddons. 

The problem was is that her followers quit their jobs and holed up in Montana with guns and such for the occasion. Speaking of the Gyre, Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant was most likely a model for the 'Church of the Red Museum' from The X-Files. Prophet was stricken with Alzheimer's for the last decade or so. 

 Here's an MP3 of Prophet's 'Invocation for the judgement against and destruction of rock music'. Enjoy! 

 UPDATE: Can some explain to me what this woman is saying? Does she think the sweatlodge deaths were a blessing? 

 UPDATE: From luxury to heartache:

VALHALLA, N.Y. — Former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik is now just another number in the county jail. Westchester County jail spokesman Justin Pruyne says Kerik was given the number 210717 and a single-bed cell when he arrived Tuesday afternoon.

And of course Valhalla ties back to the Thorniverse, doesn't it?

Hercules. Ancient Astronauts. Human Sacrifice. This is Happening.

 

Here's the pitch, cobbled together from a couple IMDB reviews...

An alien race from the moon lands in ancient Greece, terrorizing the nearby city of Samar, and taking the population’s children as human sacrifices.

The True Eye

Truer words...

I've been neck-deep in the Mystery religions, which are pretty well-documented by ancient sources.

A Deep Dive on The X-Files: I Want to Believe, part 1

If you asked most people what The X-Files was about, they'd probably say something about aliens and conspiracies and monsters of the week. If you asked me, I'd tell you The X-Files was about Acid, Abuse and Ancient Astronauts. 

Lee Perry: Rest in Dub

There was a time in my life when I lived Dub morning, noon and night. I'm talking the old school Dub mainly, but also a lot of the work that people like Adrian Sherwood and Jack Dangers were putting out there as well. 

Back From The Edge of the World (2009 Edition)

Front row: Christopher Partridge, Jeff Kripal and Michael Murphy 

Second row: George Stephanopolous, Ed May, Dulce Murphy, Dean Radin, Victoria Nelson, Mason Gamble, Erik Davis. 

Third row: Doug Moench, Paul Selig, Mitch Horowitz, Larry Sutin, CK, Collin Eyre and Scott Jones.

Well, Time flies and Time crawls. But sometimes you enter a state in which Time flows in such a manner that it seems to expand and contract in an entirely different and yet totally satisfactory fashion. 

Souls Traveling in Starlight

In that Kirby 2001/mushroom/star travel story, the astronauts are transformed into light for the journey through the furthest reaches of space. Which is fascinating to me, since that concept is at the core of the X-Files Mythology's cosmology- the transformation of souls into energy.

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre, Part 2

In the first installment of this series- which I had not intended to be a series- we looked at the book and film Altered States, and its references to the work of John C Lilly. The premise of Altered States dealt with a Harvard professor who believed that genetic memory was stored in our DNA, a theory that's gaining wider acceptance these days.

 

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre

2009 is the Year of the Alien, innit? Well, at least in the movies. X-Files producer/director Bob Goodwin goes old-school with his tribute to classic BEM sci-fi with Alien Trespass. 

Goodwin enlists John "Anubis" Doggett (aka T1000, aka Robert Patrick ) and Eric McCormack (Will of Will & Grace fame) for the invasion, as well as the delightful Jenni Baird, who added a bit of smolder to the last season of The 44oo.