This is part 3 of a series: Heart Shaped Coffin, Opening the Stargate, The Journey Back Home, Purification, and Bee Seeing You Through the Veil.
At this point it should not be surprising that Odin hung himself from the branches of the World Tree for 9 days which resulted in him being granted divine wisdom; specifically, he discovered the runic language. At some point on Fool's journey, the Fool (you & me on our journeys), is faced with the fact that the world is far different than he has grown up believing, for him "the world has been turned upside down." This is symbolized by the Hanged Man tarot card. From Secret Teachings: "Esoterically, the Hanged Man is the human spirit which is suspended from heaven by a single thread (the silver cord - my note). Wisdom, not death, is the reward for this voluntary sacrifice during which the human soul, suspended above the world of illusion, and meditating upon its unreality, is rewarded by the achievement of self-realization." The inversion, or "pole-shift" of the spinal column with it's 33 degrees/spinal bones of initiation, is similar to the practice of hanging a Christmas tree upside down, a tradition which made a comeback recently. The tree with it's roots Above reminds us that we are also rooted in heaven and are only lowered down here temporarily. In Secret Teachings, Manly P. Hall mentions a few traditions where the pine tree is connected to the Mysteries of the Virgin Mother. (There's just so much great stuff in that book that I could spend all day quoting it, but you might as well read it yourself.) The art of alchemy is represented at Notre-Dame by a woman seated on a throne. She holds a closed book (esoterism) and an open book (exoterism). Her "head is in the clouds." Fulcanelli holds that she represents the first matter which God used for his creations. The Virgin was glorified under the names: the "House of Wisdom," and the "Gateway to Heaven." On her chest rests a ladder of nine rungs which Fulcanelli claims represent the "nine successive operations of the hermetic labour." I'm seeing 9 months of labor here as the path into life, and the 9 rungs of the ladder as the path back to Heaven.
Most months are 4 weeks long, plus a few days, and pregnancy lasts for about 40 weeks; a length of time used in preparation or purification time-lines in the Bible. The Ark of Noah floats about for 40 days and nights, the Hebrews wander the desert for 40 years before coming to the Promised Land, Jesus spends 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by the Devil, Moses spends 40 days fasting and writing down the commandments, and there are probably a few more examples I don't know about. The number 40 is analogous to 9 as both represent the period of human gestation (in weeks and months), and therefore are metaphors for the descent of the Soul into material existence, or any other similar themes, such as preparation for initiation, or the "birth" of something new. I think it is very possible that the number 40 is actually related to the number 42. There are 42 Principles of Maat, a sort of list of negative confession one must say upon death and descent into the Underworld in Egyptian mythology. If the deceased answers all correctly they become Osiris, God of resurrection and eternal life. By changing the value slightly, from 42 to 40, the true meaning is hidden from the great unwashed masses or whatever. Dalet from The Dawn of Aquarius left this comment for me on the previous post: "I saw your comment on Live from the Logosphere about 40 being code for 42. Just thought I would tell you what i have read recently in Symbols, Sex, and the Stars by Ernest Busenbark. He has a few paragraphs on the significance of the number 40 as a period of turmoil followed by transformation. He follows up by saying this, "The number 40, by the way, is employed interchangeably with 42 in ancient numerical systems, thereby making an even multiple of weeks." Check out Live From the Logosphere for much more on 42 (check older posts for videos too).
I was planning on mentioning my idea that the Light of God, upon passing through the water Veil of Isis/Iceis, was split into it's individual parts, like white light passing through a prism. Thankfully, other synchromystic bloggers have noted the fact that light splits into a rainbow at 40 to 42degrees. The way I see it, the 7 colors are the 7 planets, and the 7 gates of Heaven. Light is split passing in one direction through the Veil, and recombines coming back in the other direction.
From Live From the Logosphere:
The Land of Oz in the Wizard of Oz is said to be Over the rainbow, or the spectrum of Light. Interestingly the Land of Oz has been said to be the Underworld or Duat of the Egyptian Mythology. Osiris was the rebirth god of the Duat, going over the spectrum of light, into the only color that is the absence of light; Black. The Night-Time or Twilight hours, the Twilight Zone is between the worlds of Night and Day, the Duat is the evening hours of dark knight where the sun goes into unconscious and imagination or Moon rule. Going over the rainbow is symbolic of going into the underworld or unconscious, symbolized by the Moon, gestation cycles connected to the female eggs, eggs connected to rabbits, and solar easter rebirth also resonate the lepus-duats 42 gods and principles and 42 degrees of the rainbow. Going over the rainbow, into Oz or OZIRIS, is approaching the twilight zone of Rebirth.
The Crab is the symbol of Cancer, the Summer Solstices movement of the Sun into the Underworld or into the Lessening Daylight Hours of Fall and Winter. The Underworld or Unconscious is ruled by the Moon, as seen on the Moon Tarot Card is the Scarab or Beetle, the Beetle Sign or Egyptian Zodiac Sign of Cancer is the Beetle or Scarab.
underworld of Hell, Oz & Eden
When Lucifer was struck down by the Archangel Michael, the emerald jewel in his crown was cracked and knocked down to earth. John Milton describes Satan and his demons as falling for 9 days (And Hell is closed by "thrice-threefold gates"). The Emerald City lies at the heart of Oz, much like the capital of Hell, Pandemonium. In The Matrix, the "last human city" is called Zion, and is located "deep underground near the earth's core, where it's still warm." "Zion" is an anagram of "In Oz." Also, "zo" means life in Egyptian, so we might see the reverse of zo, or "oz" to mean death. Both Oz and Hell are sectioned into 4 slices, and even the Garden of Eden is broken up by it's four rivers. The lands are all surrounded by a desert (Remember in Constantine, Hell is specifically shown to be void of water), this is the land Adam and his children had to work upon expulsion from the Garden. The bottom right is a more idealized Eden from the Hollow Earth theory, a fitting allegory for Oz/Underworld/Eden or the Land of Eternal Life.
The Christian Holy Day of Palm Sunday represents Jesus riding into Jerusalem on Ass and Colt shortly before the Passion. The sign of Cancer is represented by two stars for the two donkeys which Jesus rode (an ass and a colt). There are Egyptian depictions of a rider on 2 donkeys as well, and there is the masonic neophyte who "rides the donkey," and at the third degree is symbolically killed and resurrected.
Solar Myth of Cancer: In the Babylonian zodiac the sign for the house of Cancer was the ass and foal. Two bright stars in the constellation of Cancer still bear the names "northern Ass" and "southern Ass", with the "southern ass" lying directly on the ecliptic. The sign [for Cancer] was afterwards known by the symbol , which stands for these two asses. [...] Hence as the Sun travels through the constellation of Cancer, it figuratively rides two asses, or an ass and colt, into the middle of summer. Of course everyone is happy to greet the arrival of summer. It's the best time of year, and the harvest is just around the corner. Comparing this with our Jesus story, a high point of the Jesus story is Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, awkwardly riding both an ass and colt. "They brought the ass and the colt and put their garments upon them, and he sat on them. (Matthew 21:7) Jesus rides an ass and colt into Jerusalem.
In the top-left of the above image, a circular graph records the length of day and length of night during the year. The result is the familiar shape of "yin & yang," the dark and light spirals which contain a seed of each-other; typically represented in black and white. The astrological sign of Cancer looks very much like this yin-yang, or taijitu, symbol. It is also representative of the sexual position of "69," where top and bottom meet.
Cancer, the Crab, June 22-July 22:I'd like to point out that the crab, like the scorpion and lobster, has eight legs and two claws. Further down you'll read about Philip K. Dick's theory of crab-claw aliens, but for now let's check out the crab and the underworld. The Logosphere informed us that the lessening hours of daylight following the Summer Solstice represents the sun moving into the Underworld/Duat, and the power of the Moon taking over. Crowley's Moon tarot card features a scarab beetle, representative of the Crab, and in place of the traditional 8-legged lobster. The crab sits atop the helmet of the Charioteer in Crowley's Chariot card. The rider carries the Grail in his lap. Cancer is the sign of water, and the tarot path represents "the influence of the Supernals descending through the veil of Water (which is blood)." His helmet is closed, and whole body covered, because "no man may look upon his face and live." This is a quote from God in Exodus: "for there shall no man see me, and live." (Recalling the Mysterious Veiled Goddess of Divine Wisdom who no mortal Man hath ever unveiled.) Cancer is the house of the Moon, and Crowley states that analogies exist between this card and the High Priestess (I show a picture of this card later on).
The sun has crossed a major divide; darkness starts to increase. Crabs walk in a zigzag path, sideways and backwards at the same time in a kind of a backsliding movement. This is a time for assessment and division. From Numbers 11 to 20, Moses brutally suppressed a string of complaints and rebellions.
In the Bible, Numbers 13-14, Moses sent a small party of spies to assess the Promised Land. When they came back they reported that the land was inhabited by giants and powerful kingdoms. When the people expressed their fear and wanted to go back to Egypt, God sentenced them to wander forty years in the desert. "According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day a year, you shall bear your iniquity, forty years, and you shall know my displeasure." (Num. 14:34)
Bartholomew, who commented on a later post of mine which also brings up and elaborates on the crab symbolism, had this to say: "Cancer was for the ancients 'The gate of man' meaning where from we got incarnated in this world."
i got crabs
Besides the various aspects of Captain Jack Sparrow's personality, the only other inhabitants of Davey Jones' Locker (Underworld/Oz) are crabs. The crabs carry Sparrow's ship to the ocean where, upon the emerald green flash, the ship passes through the veil. Above, Lisa Simpson sits on a circle divided into 4 parts, and is surrounded by 8-legged crabs and lobsters. The neon crab restaurant sign from The Last Mimzy points out Lisa's predicament, where the "crab trap" of life precedes her (mental) journey into a fantasy land "over the rainbow." The combination of opposites incarnate that is Dr. Zoidberg (Jewish-shellfish, poor-doctor), becomes a cross & cube, rides the milky seed of life in Fry's body, and plays at being Christ. I thought the top-right picture was funny. Why are monsters always trying to carry away human women? In the last post, I had a picture of monsters, but left out most where they carried women away, though I purposely left in one where Gort the robot-alien carries a woman - what does he expect to do with her? And what does the giant crab expect to do with a human woman in the picture above? Even Dr. Zoidberg is unable to find a mate on his home planet in an episode of Futurama. Anyways, monster sex aside (the Gregori Angels mating with humans?), let's move back on topic before I get carried away.
Opening the Stargate ended with a story of the Kingdom of the Nine Gates (the human body) from the Bhagavata Purana. "Seven of the gates are on the surface (the two ears, two nostrils, and mouth), and two of the gates are subterranean (the anus and the genitals)." This is similar to the Egyptian belief in 7 heavens and 2 earths (the "two lands") = 9 total: Climb through the Seven Heavens and sit on Cloud 9. The suggestion of many mythological allegories is that the divine soul that exists in us descended into material existance from another non-material realm. The King Puranjana ("one who enjoys in a body") represents the soul (Sulfur in alchemical symolism) and the Queen is "the subtle material element called intelligence" (Mercury), and the Body is the third element, where the material interaction takes place (Salt).
In the Egyptian belief system, we are located on the second earth, with the other one below us. The Divine Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus, 17 writings gathered into one work, describes a dialogue between Hermes and Poimandres which explains how Hermes recieved his divine wisdom. Hermes (Thoth/Mercury) is told that upon death, the soul ascends back to it's origin, the Eighth Sphere. (Thoth was called "Master of the City of Eight") Including the "sphere" we are on (2nd earth), the eighth sphere above would be the ninth sphere/7th heaven. While passing through the 7 rings or planetary powers something is given back, whatever it was that each planet gave to the soul on it's way down. This calls to mind the stories of the goddess who descends to the underworld (moving down past 7 or 9 gates) who removes an article of clothing at each gate.
The "Book of the Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows" is a fictional book from the movie The Ninth Gate. The history is that a book written by the devil was copied in year 1666 and put into at least three slightly different versions of the "Book of the Nine Gates." The book is supposed to be able to summon the devil according to lore. The cover has the ever appropriate pentacle (connected to the Apple of Knowledge of Good and Evil). The "Book of the Nine Gates" is read by an orgy-happy secret society called the Order of the Silver Serpent, probably fashioned after Crowley's Silver Star, Argenteum Astrum. The altar for their ritual is even a bed where the orgy would take place (No, there's no orgy scene in the movie incase you haven't seen it and were about to run out and rent it!). Above the bed is a version of the books logo seen below.
thus shines the light
As the movie begins, the viewer is brought through the nine gates as the camera moves forward, ending with the last doors opening to a bright light. The same thing happens at the end of the movie when Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) opens the ninth gate and steps into the "Door of Light." Corso begins his adventure when he goes to meet Boris Balkan who is giving a lecture on witches. Here we are introduced to "The Girl" who might be a witch, though I think she's an angel or possibly Lucifer his/her self. The Girl has supernatural powers and seems to always know whats going on and constantly helps Corso solve the riddle of the nine gates. Corso refers to her as his guardian angel (her green eyes glow like angels in other movies such as Constantine). At one point The Girl steals a Dodge Viper which has the pentagon and snake for a logo (referencing the Nine Gates logo and story of Adam and Eve and the serpent; or Adam and Lilith?), the car is devil red as well.
corso tracks engravings made by lucifer with
the red side of a red+blue pencil
The Girl leads Corso to the real Ninth Gate engraving, which was taken out of the book and replaced by book dealers and forgers, the Ceniza brothers (identical twins). The Ceniza brothers both have names that start with a "P," and the door to their shop says "P y P CENIZA" (P & P, PP/77). Below, in the 7th Gate, a black and white dog fight while the moon is seen outside (probably referencing the Moon tarot card (#18)). Each of the engravings in the book have one difference that signals that they are the real engraving made by Lucifer. In this engraving the chess board is all white, and you can see in the bottom edge of the kings robe that it is a "LCF," or Lucifer engraving. The other two books with this engraving have an all black chess board.
"The disciple outshines the master"
Corso outshines Balkan when he finds the ninth gate
After Corso examines the third book he is knocked unconscious and wakes up with the room on fire. He escapes, knocking over the secretary coming back from her lunch and knocks a bag of 7 oranges out of her hand which go tumbling down the stairs. Oranges have appeared several times in the synchweb, and in normal symbolic interpretation they are "Golden Apples" (which give immortality), and are sun-resonant. They show up in other films such as the fourth Indian Jones where an orange blocks the refridgerator door from closing while Indie climbs into the fridge to save himself from a nuclear explosion. Perhaps these 7 oranges represent 7 suns such as the Pleiades? Corso stays in a hotel with a Shell gas station logo on the outside, and also visits a Shell station later in the movie. The Shell is a solar symbol, and this particular logo looks like a sun rising between two pyramids. The sun rising in the east represents the dawn of a New Age, or a change in the social order (the symbol was used by Freemasonic communist movements).
Boris Balkan tries to summon the devil, but his ninth engraving is a forgery and he dies thinking he is immune to fire. I realize while typing this that Balkan wasn't expecting to see an apparition of Lucifer, and describes the feeling as a power surging through his body - the seething energies of Lucfer described by Manly P. Hall in Lost Keys of Freemasonry. Just before this, Balkan tells Corso, "we have something in common, you and I. We share the same passion, you've developed the same obsession." If you've watched even only a few movies, you would have noticed by now that often times the antagonist claims to be a twin or mirror image of the protagonist: "We're not so different, you and I."
Albert Pike:It happens in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the French archaeologist says he is a "shadowy reflection" of Indiana, and that they have the same passion, exactly like what happens in The Ninth Gate. I just watched They Live, and the turn-coat homeless guy who thinks Nada has switched sides tells Nada something like: "I knew we had something in common the first time we met." The best example is in the Austin Powers movies where Dr. Evil claims that he and Austin "are not so different," and in Gold Member it is revealed that Dr. Evil and Austin Powers were roomates in spy school and are actually brothers! (See Too Long in This Place for more Austin Powers synchs as well as the Lion of Orion/Oiris) Another "twin" type theme, besides the protagonist-antagonist duality, is the good son and bad son theme. (Good as in Summer Sun/son and Bad as in the Winter Sun? Endless White & Black duality themes permeate movies!) A good example is in Walk The Line, where a young Johnny Cash outlives his brother, the "good son," to the ire of his father. In Eagle Eye, the good and bad sons are identical twins, and are both played by Shia LaBeouf which emphasizes the duality at play in each person. The good son dies (suprise!), but the "bad son" is redeemed through the sacrifice, and earns his fathers love at the end. There's even a theory that Jesus' twin brother was crucified in this place. Some interpretations of Christianity, such as Mormonism, have Jesus and Lucifer as brothers. Set and Osiris are brothers as well. In the popular depiction of the crucifixion there are two theives on either side of Jesus; the one who believes in Jesus is saved and the other is damned.
"Yes, Lucifer is God, and also Adonay is also god. For the eternal law is that there is no light without shade, no beauty without ugliness, no white without black, for the absolute can only exist as two gods: darkness being necessary for light to serve as its foil as the pedestal is necessary to the statue, and the brake to the locomotive."
the good theif's soul ascends with an angel, the is other taken by a devil
note the octagonal star on the separate capstone
The two theives represent the two pillars in the description of the almost certainly fictional Solomon's Temple: Boaz & Jachin. The two pillars are ancient symbols of the basic duality of this world: black and white, summer and winter, good and bad; sometimes one is shown as being topped with fire while the other is topped with a fountain. Like the Yin & Yang symbol, where the light half has a seed of the dark half, and vice versa; each pillar implies the condition of the other. Once the sun reaches the summer solstice (Boaz), it begins to decline in the sky until the winter solstice (Jachin), then back again, and so on continuously. So, in Tarot card number 2, the Boaz pillar is black with a white "B" and Jachin is white with a black "J."
two penises are better than one?
boaz - booz (booze/beer) - bo+OZ
From an old post of mine: "In the Book of Enoch, in speaking of the fallen angels it is said: "The name of the first is Yekun: he it as who seduced all the sons of the Holy Angel; and causing them to descend on earth, led astray the offspring of men...and the name, as Yekain, is fitly represented by a phallic column" "The very word phallic comes from phalos which meaning "white" or "bright." It is akin to phaos that also means "light." By the very name, it (the phallus) was connected with the Sun" - Albert Pike (Book of the Words)
click for larger
The dark twin represents the prima materia which becomes the Philosophers Stone. The Wise know that it must be perfected through their Great Work, and do not scorn it's existance. Most people however are quick to cast it aside. Even at the end of Goldmember, Dr. Evil becomes good. Man exists as a duality, split into male and female.
fry and amy share a heart...
This quote I found at the Celtic Rebel explains the duality of Man (which is combined in the androgyne or alchemical rebis above):
"Zeus gathered the gods in council to express his concern that these unusual creatures would one day challenge their hegemony. He was loath to exterminate them with his thunderbolts, though, because there would be no one to bring the gods offerings. He solved the problem by putting each creature into a trance and then splitting it down the middle…Upon awakening, each half only dimly remembered what it had been prior to being cleft in two. Zeus explained to the assembled gods and goddesses the cleverness of his scheme. These creatures would no longer pose a threat to the gods, because they would dissipate their considerable energy by spending the rest of their days searching for their missing halves." - Leonard SchlainIn Philip K. Dicks VALIS, Dick's alter-ego Horselover Fat develops a Gnostic inspiried cosmology/cosmogony that he spells out in his journal which is included as an appendix to the book. Many of the themes of this book appear in synchromystic research, so I will add some relevant points now, starting with a quote on the cosomogony:
The One was and was-not, and desired to separate the was-not from the was. So it generated a diploid sac which contained, like an eggshell, a pair of twins, each an androgyny, spinning in opposite directions (the Yin and Yang of Taoism, with the One as the Tao). The plan of the One was that both twins would emerge into being (was-ness) simultaneously; however, motivated by a desire to be (which the One had implanted in both twins), the counterclockwise twin broke through the sac and separated prematurely; i.e. before full term. This was the dark or Yin twin. Therefore it was defective. At full term the wiser twin emerged. [...] The next step in the One's plan was that the Two would become the Many, through their dialectic interaction. From them as hyperuniverses they projected a hologram-like interface, which is the pluriform universe we creatures inhabit. [...] The name of hyperuniverse I, is Nommo. The name of the sick twin, hyperuniverse II, is Yurugu. These names are known to the Dogon people of western Sudan in Africa. (footnote: Nommo is represented in a fish form, the early Christian fish.) The primordial source of all our religions lies with the ancestors of the Dogon tribe, who got their cosmogony and cosmology directly from the three-eyed invaders who visited long ago. The three-eyed invaders were mute, deaf and telepathic, could not breath our atmosphere, had the elongated misshapen skull of Ikhnaton (Akhenaten/Amenhotep IV), and emanated from a planet in the star-system Sirius. Although they had no hands, but had, instead, pincer claws such as a crab has, they were great builders. They covertly influence our history toward a fruitful end.Horselover Fat believes that the unhealthy-twin produces all the suffering in the world and influences the world with it's insanity, and has created the Iron Age which he calls the Black Iron Prison. The Iron Age will end when the healthy-twin kills the unhealthy-twin (which has already happened outside of our hologram, and resulted in myths of a dying woman (perhaps the descent of the goddess into the underworld or Isis' beheading?)), and then the healthy-twin splits into two recreating the original condition the universe was supposed be in. He sees the Immortal One as Jesus, incarnated into our chaotic world to try and save it, who was killed by the nature of the unhealthy-twin. He also sees the Immortal One as a "plasmate," a kind of parasite of "living information" that bonds with people. The plasmate was eliminated by the unhealthy-twin causing time to stop at the year 70 AD/CE. (Interesting how in TV show Life On Mars, a detective from 2008 goes back to 1973 and dreams that time is frozen. And in LOST, the Oceanic survivors jump in time to the 70's version of the island.) Time started again when the information-plasmate was released during the uncovering of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Library in 1945. That would put us, in 2009, as really being in the year 134 AD. He also believes that we are "memory coils" (DNA) which store information of all our lifetimes, but because of an error in memory retrieval we cannot recall previous lives. Salvation through gnosis lies in the loss of amnesia, which would lead to a massive leap in perception as well as immortality. (For more along these and other themes from the last couple of posts, check out Death Wears a Rug at the Wrong Way Wizard.) This idea of immortality and "mastery of our destiny" is common to all "Grail-type" myths. Boris Balkan claimed that he alone has deciphered the riddle and the he alone has absolute power to shape his destiny - he didn't of course, but now we know that when Corso does solve the riddle he will have absolute power to shape his destiny.
The castle where the ninth gate opens at the end of the movie, Chateau Puivert, is called The Devil's Tower. (Reminds me of Devil's Tower, Wyoming from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or possibly the Tower card from the Tarot - seeing as how the turret of the castle burns up when Balkan attempts to open the nine gates.) The castle once hosted a large gathering of troubadors (mentioned previously for their courtly love and inspiration in the Grail and Dante's Inferno stories with focus on Sophia/Wisdom). The castle was also home to the Congost family who practiced the gnostic-dualism of Catharism: "[Chateau Puivert] was used by the Cathars to defend themselves during the Albigensian crusades in the 13th century. The Cathars were gnostic Christians but Pope Innocent III considered them to be devil worshippers." (- imdb.com)
The Lust Card in Crowley's Thoth deck is number 11, and associated with Leo and the Hebrew letter Teth (Serpent) which is equivalent to the letter T with a numeric value of 9. Crowley says in his Book of Thoth that the new Aeon of Horus is linked with Aquarius and Leo. The Hebrew letter Teth shows up in engraving number two in The Ninth Gate, it's the only engraving with a Hebrew letter symbol in the picture. Engraving two depitcs a man with two keys in his hand (and a black dog with him), and the caption: "Open that which is closed." The letter Teth means "Serpent" and it looks like a U-shape with a head and tail like a snake. Interestingly, in Hebew the letter nun is associated with the fish, like Jesus, and Teth is associated with the serpent, or Lucifer. Using the at-bash cipher where the letters are swapped with their opposites, the letters nun and teth are opposites. So, the mirroring of the first 11 letters with the last 11 letters of the 22 letter Hebrew alphabet results in "fish" being opposite and interchangable with "serpent," or Jesus with Lucifer. The sign for Leo also looks like a serpent, having it's U-shape inverted.
cobra with leo/serpent/omega symbol
The serpent on Crowley's TOWER card (Devil's Tower?) is a Lion-Serpent ("Xnoubis or Abraxas" (Gnostic)) which represents the two forms of desire. That same serpent is the tail of the 7-headed beast on the LUST card. The Whore of Babylon carries aloft the Grail, and The Girl on the ninth gate engraving carries the "Book of the Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows," which is open revealing it's wisdom, and if we compare the two cards, the book becomes the Grail. The man holds two keys, like Peter and Janus, symbolizing the sun and moon, silver and gold, and the two "twins" whose interaction produces our holographic universe. It takes both keys to open "the ninth gate" or "holy grail," and that path is depicted here on engraving number two, "Open that which is closed." This second gate drawing is associated with the letter Beth (door, or "to open"), which is at the top-left of the card but not seen in the picture below.
comparison of the 9th gate and 11th tarot card
the second gate engraving has the hebrew letter teth on it
The Leo or "Omega" symbol is quite similar to that of the serpent being struck down by the spear (of destiny?) which symbolizes a ray of the Light of truth. After God catches Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, he says to the serpent: "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Aleister Crowley uses a similar shape in his signature which looks quite phallic. I'm also reminded of the Masonic pun of a golf club and two balls which represent Tubal-Cain (2 balls & penis), known to Masons as Vulcan/Hephaistos, the metal-smith of the gods, and thus a "creation" deity.
Leo/Omega and Teth(Serpent) symbols
Leo is where the sun was during the Golden Age, a period of time which is common to many culture's myths. Interesting then that it rises with the Hydra, perennial decapitation victim. The Lions Gate is the eastern gate in the old city wall which surrounded Jerusalem, and is also the name for several other eastern oriented gates. The only other eastern oriented gate on that wall was the Golden Gate (as in the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco) which is the gate that the Messiah is supposed to enter through. You may find it interesting that the Golden Gate Bridge is called the Bridge of Death, as it is the most popular place in the United States to commit suicide. The bridge has also been featured prominently in a few movies, including X-Men 3, The Core, Herbie Rides Again, Star Trek IV & VI, and It Came From Beneath the Sea where a giant octopus destroys the bridge. The octopus has 8 arms, and has been described as a solar symbol from Atlantis.
Getting back to the gate, the sound of a roaring lion was equated with the sound of the giant wooden doors on the Ishtar Gate which opened to the city of Babylon. The serpent as the constellation Scorpio guards the center of the Milky Way, gateway to the underworld, and the creative "Black-Hole Sun" at it's center. Saggitarius is the constellation on the other side of this "stygian port." It is also the name of the real galaxy our planet belongs to. "What?!" Well, some believe that our solar system is actually part of the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy which has merged with the Milky Way (these are strange days indeed).
a dying dwarf galaxy merges with the milky way
Anyways, the only two houses of the zodiac with arrows in their symbols are Saggitarius (the archer) and Scorpio (scorpion, serpent and eagle). Their stars form arrows which point towards the heart of the Milky Way (not as perfect anymore, but still pretty close). The name "Archer" is used in a few movies such as Face Off where the two stars of the movie 'face-off' on either side of a mirror in a very symbolic scene. The Archer was the family crest of Christina Ricci's character in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow which also stars Johnny Depp. Coming off the Jim Carrey synchs of last post, I find it quite insteresting that Jim Carrey plays Fletcher Reede in Liar Liar, a name which combines "maker of arrows" (Fletcher) with a type of arrow (reed/Reede). Note that "Reede" is "red" with a couple extra E's, and red is the complimentary color to green (Carrey's "Green Man" resonance), and the color red surrounds Carrey in The Number 23. Philip K. Dick's third VALIS book is subtitled: "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer." The arrow is a phallic symbol, which I covered in Heart Shaped Coffin, but I've found a goddess associated with it as well: Neith of Egypt. Neith (Net, Nit, Neit) was an androgynous creation deity connected to the primeval waters and symbolized by an ejaculating penis. She is also called the "Mistress of the Bow, Ruler of Arrows." She was originally the wife of Set, then Sobek, and eventually Khnum. Her connection to both arrows and the waters of chaos seem quite fitting for the arrow (penis) pointed at the creative "heart" of the Milky Way. In addition, her name "Net" links her to the sexual symbolism of sports, especially ball games using nets. One such ball game is the Mayan ball game where, lacking a woven net but still maintaining the hoop, a ball was bounced through in a microcosmic reenactment of the sun passing into the dark center of the Milky Way which is flanked by arrow symbol constellations and covered in dawning of a new age creative themes.
As I mentioned above, the Egyptians had 2 earths and 7 heavens. The two earths/lands are called in the BHAGAVATA PURANA the subterranean gates. It would seem that we are really on the second earth, with the other one "below" us, and 7 heavens "above." Most cultures have some type of underworld, they vary from places like limbo, like hell, or just another earth where people live in the after-life. Egyptian deity Khnum creates each person as a pair of identical twins, one of which is the asteral or spirit twin and resides in the other land/earth, and experiences everything the physical twin experiences (which is probably why suicide is reguarded as such a heinous crime in so many religions and esoteric belief systems). The lowest of the Nine Gates to the human body would be the anus. Keeping with the Egyptian belief system, the human body was seen as a microcosm of the universe, each part being related to a god. I think it's up to the individual to pick out his body parts, so it's probably different for other people but in one example (Utterance 215, 148-149) it says: "Thy head is that of Heru (Horus)," yet in another (Papyrus of Ani (pl.32, item 42)) it says: "my buttocks are the Eye of Heru (Horus)." I'm pretty sure I've heard someone else connect the Eye of Horus to the anus. Ah, here it is, I can't believe I found it: "The all seeing eye also represents the anus and sodomy which empowers the attacker, especially if the attack happens within a circle." Once, I was flipping through a book on magick in the bookstore and happened upon a page which claimed that anal sex would facillitate the possesion of a body by a demon (not sure if it's the giver or taker who get's possessed). And popular belief has it that some sort of essence or life force can be stolen via this method of sex, possibly slowing the aging process for the giver.
zeus rapes male youth ganymede/aquarius
It is interesting then how prevalent homosexual love is among world leaders. There are endless accounts of male escorts touring the Whitehouse, being bussed in to the Bohemian Grove, and the whole Boy's Town sex ring for politicians (the "Franklin Coverup"). The information would require it's own blog, but I'm sure a good google search will get you started. To clarify, I don't see this as evil or wrong, only symbolic of the lowest gateway, though I really wonder why people in a position of power are apparently far more likely to engage in homosexual sex? Well, Dubya is probably a "Log Cabin Republican," butt, err... but, it would seem that normally heterosexual males are joining in too. I can only infer that "They" believe that to engage in this type of sex grants them some type of power, life extension, or demon possesion which helps them gain and maintain power. It was Set who poked out the "Eye of Horus" afterall, and this figure is the prototype for all maleficent usurpers of benevolent rule. Of course Osiris had to die, it is the natural end to all life, but these Setian elites choose Chaos to maintain their Order. A funny quote from my Egypt book explains animal symbolism, though in this context we might see it under a new light: "The ego is symbolized by the ass. One must know how to control it, by riding the ass - the ego.
If you spend enough time online, especially playing video game, you happen across websites that people try to trick others into viewing. One such website was www.Goatse.cx (thats a wikipedia link, don't worry!) "Its front page featured a picture, hello.jpg, showing a naked man stretching his anus to a large size with both hands, with the inside of his rectum clearly visible." Below is a version of that picture with the Eye of Sauron standing in for the stretched anus.
And next, the London Olypmic Stargate opening on 2012 was symbolized the very same way in one of the many submissions for possible Olympic logos:
olympic assgate
Because dogs/wolves have been popular on the sych web, I thought I'd throw this in: I was skimming through Allegro's Sacred Mushroom, when I happened across this (p.59):
The Old Testament speaks also of male cult prostitutes, called otherwise "dogs". It is more likely that these persons were sodomites than that they served the female worshippers as counterparts to the feminine cult prostitutes. In which case the epithet "dog" is not necessarily a term of abuse, but merely descriptive of their manner of copulation. It is perhaps significant that one of the Sumerian terms for "chanter- priest" is GALA, elsewhere meaning "womb", with a semantic equivalent, USh-KU, literally, "penis-anus". Their prime purpose may then have been as a means of providing or extracting semen for cultic purposes, particularly for the priest's anointing as a symbolic "phallus" before the god, a "christ."Would that make the werewolf a more sense-based creature? It certainly seems very symbolic of the lower animal nature of Man - Doggy style sex. For heterosexual couples, there is really no reason to have anal sex. It cannot result in the production of a child, unless the female partner has some serious plumbing issues... It's for pelasure only, and is being pushed as a method of safe sex for men and women, and just men. Anyways, the point is that I see this "gateway" as (a representation of) the most base and pleasure-focused (and power-focused) state of being, similar to that of earth-bound souls who refuse to give up their material existance and are trapped on the lower plane/land/earth below us. These souls can potentially explain some ghost stories or haunted house scenarios, though I prefer to imagine it as an 'echo' in the holographic universe.
ankh of eternal life in two "ghost" logos
The Ghost Busters logo appears to show a ghost being stopped by the red line - stuck behind the lowest gate? The Blob happened to post about this as I'm typing this up, and explains that the "N" in "NO" can be rotated to give us ZO/OZ. The Gate out of the Land of Oz is closed. In Tropic Thunder, Robert Downey Jr. and Toby Maguire play gay monks in fictional movie Satan's Alley. I'll leave it to your imagination what Satan's "alley" is, but Downey's character in Tropic Thunder is named Kirk Lazarus. In the last post I brought up Lazarus (Egyptian Azar who Horus raised (Ausar/Osiris)), the man Jesus raised from the dead as a symbol of spiritual enlightenment. (And Downey also plays black soldier Sgt. Lincoln Osiris - thanks to Terry for the synch.) This last gateway coincides with the first chakra which is at the bottom point between the anus and genitals. It is from here that the "Kundalini" begins it's journey upward/is raised. When dealing with rising through the chakras, one must "clean out" each chackra before moving on - you can't progress if you're stuck on a lower level of consciousness. Jesus descends into this lower plane upon his death, and for three days does some ghost busting of his own.
Advancing by one "Gate" of the "Kingdom of the Nine Gates" or "Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows" we come to the reproductive organs. This is the level we exist at right now. My Egyptian Cosmology book has us at "Realm 8" (first earth), and our asteral twins at "Realm 9" or the lower earth; an idea which fits the Greek model of shadow twins existing in the Underworld. Level eight rhymes with stargate, and the fitting symbol of this level is the reproductive organs seen below in the Sheela-na-gig carvings:
The first one holds in her left hand what at first appears to be a ring, a symbol of divinity (like the cartouche), but upon closer inspection looks more like a horseshoe (indicating travel by checkered chariots of the gods?). The horseshoe is seen in places such as Mithraic symbolism with the constellations of the zodiac around it's edge. They are also often colored gold and may represent the arch of the sun across the sky (McDonalds golden arch). The horseshoe is one of several yonic shapes which all represent the female opening, discussed previously as the portal/womb of creation.
Solomon's Temple "was designed with a large measure of uniformity over the whole of the Near East now recognizable as a microcosm of the womb. It was divided into three parts; the Porch, representing the lower end of the vagina up to the hymen, or Veil ; the Hall, or vagina itself; and the inner sanctum, or Holy of Holies, the uterus. The priest, dressed as a penis, anointed with various saps and resins as representing the divine semen, enters through the doors of the Porch, the "labia" of the womb, past the Veil or "hymen" and so into the Hall." - John Allegro
worm goes into apple, basic sex 101 here
During an orgasm a man's mind becomes mostly clear, though some awareness remains because in the olden days our naked wandering ancestors had to be careful that a sabertooth tiger wasn't about to spoil the mood. Brain scans of people having orgasms show that women's minds become completely clear - they don't have to protect the tribe and therefore can lose total control of their conscious self. Some women call great sex a "religious experience," and during it have been known to scream out "Oh god, oh god!" Sigil magick, popular in Chaos Magic, harnesses this clarity to charge sigils with power. Hmm, I just remembered that in Minority Report Tom Cruise's character is out to score some drugs and tells the dealer that he is looking for "a little clarity." It is this state of No-Mind which is harnessed and used for creative means, the "seething energies of Lucifer" which Boris Balkan attempts to control in The Ninth Gate (the goal of the orgiastic secret society in the movie). This is called the Gnostic State in Chaos Magic, or Samadhi in Buddhism, the 8th step on the 8-fold path (the 8-fold path is symbolized by the 8-spoke wheel). Wiki explains achievement of Samadhi as: "one's mind becomes purified of defilements, calm, tranquil, and luminous." One can get totally out of their mind with meditation or entheogens, extreme sports, or anything else which produces a clear or "altered state," but c'mon - what would you rather do? (Have sex, right? Unless you're one of those people who does some extreme sport and describes the feeling as "better than sex," meaning it clears your head better.) The Jewish "Paraside Experience," or mystical state of consciousness, is represented by the 4 letters of the word paradise, PRDS, each hebrew letter representing a word or idea. P=mouth, R=head, D=door/open, S=penis/prop = "The mouth opens for the penis and the guy is in paradise!" It seems like it would be more powerful for women, and it may be no coincidence that the goddess was so popular in orgiastic entheogen-taking religions.
needs no further explanation
The floor of the Hall on the inside of Solomon's Temple (at least according to Masonic sources) had a checker/chess-board pattern. It may represent a "perfect" or "ordered" version of the sky, where all stars are equally spaced in the night sky. The floor was probably used to track the movement of the sun during the year, and the length of the day, but mostly for the special occasions - those represented by the two pillars - the winter and summer solstice. During the spring and autumn equniox the sun came straight into the east-oriented doorway.
step only on the white squares
the black squares are lava
I've previously covered the theme of sexual initiation, and Manly P. Hall informs us that all ritual initiations represent internal transformations which the neophyte is expected to have undergone or will undergo eventually. Joseph Campbell, in his Power of the Myth interview, states quite emphatically that "the god of sex is also the god of death." Osiris/Dionysus/Bacchus type gods represent growth, death, and rebirth. Sex represents the ultimate power of creation, and all created things cease to exist at some point; the matter & energy is recycled into new creations.
The checkered floor in the Hall/Vagina of the almost certainly purely symbolic "Solomon's Temple" is a sign of advancement towards the goal of initiation, and that is to recombine the dual nature (black & white) into a single body symbolized by: the androgyne, the rebis, the single eye, the Freedom Tower, the obelisk in a circle, and so on, and so forth.
vatican square, looking, not-so square like
perhaps it's better described as a double-square/octagon
Jake Kotze noticed that there was a couple similar elements in Lolita-themed films, a lust for sugar and the checkered floor (of sexual initiation?). The soda pop bottle is seen as representing the pillars/penises of the temple (such as in the Egyptian image earlier with 2 Penis Pillars (PP/77/Pan)). The shape of the bottle also combines the male & female shapes, the phallic shape with the feminine "curves" or "hourglass-figure."
feel the curves of a penis shaped like a woman
boozin' and drinkin'
In the above picture we can see pomegranates decorating the veil of the Holy of Holies. The pillars and temple are often described as being decorated in pomegranates: " And four hundred pomegranates on two wreaths; two rows of pomegranates on each wreath, to cover the two pommels of the chapiter's which were upon the pillars." And, "And he made chains, as in the oracle, and put them on the heads of the pillars, and made an hundred pomegranates, and put them on the chains." - II Chronicles.
pomegranate opened like a star
I have stained glass pictures on my computer from a Lutheran church, and on one panel is Christ ascending to heaven, and above this picture is a peacock, and below it a pomegranate. More pomegranate info:
Knowing that even in modern French, the word pomme has a general ‘fruit’ meaning, it occurred to me that, rather than an apple, the parchment may have been referring to another red fruit: this being a pomegranate. Traditionally, pomegranates (from the Latin pomum granatum “apple of many seeds”) have been associated with sexuality, with fertility (due to the number of seeds the fruit contains), with death and rebirth, and was a Christian symbol of the Resurrection. To some, the pomegranate symbolizes one creative source becoming many [...] It was the only fruit allowed to be brought inside the Holy of Holies, and miniature pomegranates were sewn on the high priest’s robe when he made his yearly entry.Persephone (originally the maiden Core, daughter of Demeter) was taken into hell by Hades while she was picking red poppies. Demeter was pissed, and forced the world to become unproductive so that humans were on the brink of starvation, forcing the Olympians to tell Hades to return Core to Demeter. However, it was found that Core/Persephone ate 7 seeds of a pomegranate while in Eleusis. (The pomegranate tree represents Tammuz/Adonis. Likewise a pomegranate tree sprouts from the spilled blood of Dionysus (Jesus archetypes)) Apparently, no one who eats the food of the dead can return to the world of the living. This is like in The Matrix where Cipher wants to return to the Matrix and Trinity tells him something like: "But you're out Cipher, you can't go back." He's eaten the red pill (pomegranate seed) and can't return to the land he came from. Core/Persephone is allowed to leave for a portion of the year, but must return for the rest of the year. This is when Demeter institutes the Eleusian Mysteries. Persephone in The Matrix spends part 2 above ground and part 3 below ground (1/3 of the "year") in Club Hell with the Merovingian.
yin & yang
The next "planes of existance," or "asteral realms," or "heavens" or whatever are symbolized by the orifices of the face. The seven holes are the next seven gates/7 heavens. I don't know of any specific relationship between each gate and the organ it may represent, though the eyes are related to the sun (right in men) and moon (left in men), so the other 5 lumenaries/wandering stars may be connected to the other "gates" of the head. The "Above" is always considered somehow better than the "Below." This is because the intellect/consciousness is up top and the base human functions are below. Anyways, whatever that relationship might be, the whole head it's self is separated from the lower gates by the entire torso. The body is cut in half with the heavens above and earths below.
laocoon and sons killed by serpents
The serpent is separated into two, the head and tail, by it's long body, but in the symbol of the ouroborus the two opposite ends are brought together (opposites attract!). This is the same symbol as combining of male and female, light and dark, alpha and omega (phallic point and yoni), and so on. So the ouroboros, a symbol of eternity, regeneration, resurrection, and eternal life, represents the same idea as other important esoteric symbols related to initiation, the Mysteries, and immortality. Wikipedia, on the Elusian Mysteries, states that the "Mysteries were intended 'to elevate man above the human sphere into the divine and to assure his redemption by making him a god and so conferring immortality upon him.'"
The heart chakra, or Anahata chakra, is the "point of balance between the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, the point of fusion between man and God." The heart is thought by many to be where consciousness rests in the human body. Recent demonstrations in virtual reality have shown that when a person looks out of VR-goggles from the point of view of another body, they feel as if they are in that body, even feeling pressure when a stimulus is applied to the substitute body. So just because you see the world from your eyes/head, it doesn't mean that your consciousness is in the head as well.
division of up & down, left & right
There is a hidden constellation of the zodiac known as Ophiuchus/Serpentarius, and it is located between Saggitarius and Scorpio, and directly opposite of Orion (It is sometimes called the "13th constellation" though not strictly #13 in the correct order.). Both names refer to the man as a serpent-bearer; he holds onto the constellation Serpens. His body cuts the serpent into two parts: Serpens Caput and Serpens Cauda. The body of the serpent also divides the man's extremeties into two. Ophiuchus has one foot on the back of Scorpio (which is also a serpent), and one foot in the river of the Milky Way, just above the galactic central point. I think this resembles Tarot card #17, The Star, where a woman has one foot on land and one in the water. These two "paths" represent the two paths to the Philosopher's Stone/Holy Grail, the wet way and the dry way. The Path of the Alchemist makes the association in the card of The Lovers, #6, as representing the two paths of alchemy. And of course the marriage is between the Moon, #18, the White Stone and Wet Way, and the Sun, #19, the Red Stone and Dry Way. The Dry Way is usually described as being the much faster path to the Stone. The feet of Ophiuchus also resemble the images where a victorious figure has one or both feet on a serpent or dragon representing his lower nature which has been conquored. Ophiuchus' right foot rests on the center of the galaxy, a region of birth/creation and death/destruction, and as symbolized by the serpent ouroboros, resurrection/immortality. The constellation of Ophiuchus was once called The Coffin. The caduceus of Hermes/Mercury is the zodiac sign for this constellation.
Crucifixion of Jesus
That hoofed man with the bow and arrow is known as Sagittarius the archer. Sagittarius is the time of the year when the sun allegorically dies at the winter solstice, the darkest days of winter. This is the place of the Skull, where the archer's arrows nailed Jesus to the cross. (A nail went through his feet as well... - my note) And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. (Luke 23:33) Figuratively the cross is the imaginary lines of the equinoxes crossing the solstices. Thus allegorically, the sun is crucified on the cross at the time of the winter solstice.
achilles heel
I find it interesting that Ophiuchus' foot is dangerously close to the path of the arrow shot by Saggitarius through the heart of the Milky Way and into the heart of Scorpio. The correct position of Ophiuchus is facing us, though in some depictions he faces away. So, it should really be his right foot in the Milky Way and in the path of the arrow.
Revelation 10:Achilles, as a baby, was dipped into the River Stix which made him immortal, but he was held by his heel making it his only weak spot, and the only way to kill him. Like the spear striking the serpent on the head (the head of the ouroboros is at the galactic center where it bites it's tail), the arrow pierces Ophiuchus' heel like Achilles and signals the Omega point in the cycle, causing the next Alpha to begin - a New Age. Dr. Paul LaViolette has pointed out that all spiral galaxies all go through a Seyford phase where the center of the galaxy explodes violently and sends cosmic dust, gravity waves, and gamma radiation towards it's outer arms. This event may happen every 13,000 to 26,000 years as indicated by layers of Rhodium and Iridium in ice core samples. This destruction, which wipes out most of humanity, signals the end of one age and the start of the next.
Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring. When he called out, the seven thunders sounded. (see see the Accidental Alchemist for more)
The Cyclical Cross of Henday in the South West of France is mentioned at the end of the updated version of Fulcanelli's Mystery of The Cathedrals. While searching the cross on google, to find exactly where it was located, the second result was my own blog post on the Fifth Element where I mention the cross in relation to apocalyptic prophecies:
I read a post somewhere where a person said that the Inca of Peru in Maccu Pichu were intent on forestalling an event at the end of the age by focused magical practice. They were apparently afraid of whatever was going to happen. Whether or not this is really the case, it's interesting to note the similarity between a tetramorphic picture called the "secret of the Inca," and an almost identical enigmatic engraving on the Cyclical Cross at Henday. The Cross was deciphered to reveal a warning about the end of the age and an apocalyptic event, the Day of Judgement. As Fulcanelli states in his chapter on the Henday Cross, "The age of iron has no other seal than that of Death. Its hieroglyph is the skeleton, bearing the attributes of Saturn: the empty hourglass, symbol of time run out..."The theory that the Inca civilization was founded specifically to forestall a cataclysmic event at the end of the age was put forward in the book The Secret of the Incas. (There was also a movie of the same name starring Charlton Heston, narrator of Armageddon, he played Moses as well as the last man alive in Omega Man.)
The Secret of the Incas reminds me of Philip K. Dick's hypothesis. I'll quote Wrong Way Wizard:
Phil thought that the rightful Apocalypse had been/was being forstalled by the work of a secret sect of evil Mystics who possess a techninque to hold reality in a kind of amnesiac tape-loop. The first defeat of this sect, PKD reports, is heralded by the events of Watergate. (Tricky Dick's watergate scandal = water-door = stargate - my note)This should remind people of Aeon Flux, where people are cloned over and over again to keep humanity alive, while time is basically frozen. This is also similar to movies like Logan's Run and The Island. The Henday cross contains a well known phrase with a mispelling which challenges us to decipher it. The phrase is: "Hail o cross, the only hope." The "s" at the beginning of the Greek word for hope, spes, ends the first line of text while the rest of the word carries over into the next line of text turning it into pes, or foot. (The foot of Ophiuchus/Achilles?) Reading the words in the native French, and adjusting the vowels appropriately, it reads: "It is written that life takes refuge in a single space." Continued decipherment reveals this safe location as being in Peru, home of the Inca, and home to a mysterious Stargate. The whole cross with it's base seem to represent Tarot cards 17-Star, 18-Moon, 19-Sun, 20-Judgement, and 21-The World. I think that the cross on top better represents the card of Judgement which features a flag with a cross on it, as well as people rising from the grave, as explained in Revelations. And the 4 cards of the base are the Star, Moon, Sun, and The World, though other descriptions have Judgement in place of The World on the base. (It's kind of a combo of cards 20 & 21 I think, but no one else mentions it) Fulcanelli describes this panel as: "a complete hieroglyph of the universe, composed of the conventional signs for heaven and earth, the spiritual and the temporal, the macrocosm and the microcosm, in which major emblems of the redemption (cross) and the world (circle) are found in association." The four phases of the great cycle (world ages) is represented with 4 alphas, or usually the four evengelical beasts surrounding the viscica pisces with Christ emerging from the center (The World card, seen in my blog's banner). The base of the cross matches an Incan drawing copied down by the Spanish (black and white version of the picture below) and is described as the "Secret of the Inca." The circle and cross with 4-ages is replaced in this version with a image more like the Judgement card, showing a hill with a figure on top, and 3 caves (for the 3 coffins) showing where one would survive and re-emerge (resurrect) after the catacylsm believed by the Inca to come at the end of each age. The date was deciphered to be September 22, 2002, based on the autumn equinox. (Who else thinks the prophecy is about a year off? It's not the only prophecy to target this date range.) Take special notice of the Star on the cross base and on the tarot card being both octagonal.
According to Phil, prior to Watergate, the Alchemists had total control. Through the practice of eldritch rituals not at all to the taste of Joe Six-Pack, these Mages forestall the second coming of Christ forever. The New Age never arrives. Instead, the old age is repackaged, renamed and vigorously remarketed and the Land of the Dead lives on. On Watergate, the levee sprung a leak. This fizzle in the dyke was the source of Phil's revelation of anamnesia, but not much else. PKD's vision didn't change anything. We hover in a bubble of time, just as always. A flashing swath of plasma in the arc of a diver. Going, going, gone. Christ will never come. We are truly lost.By holding back on the promise of life eternal in the bosom of a loving if somewhat self-satisfied messiah, the Secret Science has given us immortality of another, perhaps even better kind. The mad men of magick must revive us again and again in search of the solution to their sad little mystery. Either way we all win.
if it starts raining fire, get to peru fast!
Ok, well a long time ago I was talking about The Ninth Gate, so maybe we should get back to that! After Boris Balkan dies, The Girl appears again and she and Corso have sex (mimiking the last gate engraving where the woman "rides" the beast). After, she gives him a note which leads him back to the Ceniza brothers (in Venice, Italy: Venus/Lucifer) where Corso finds the true ninth engraving. Corso returns the the castle where, having all nine gates together, and having been the one to figure out that the nine engravings were split among three books, the doors open on their own and let out a brilliant white light - the Door of Light (Enlightenment/Illumination) is open to the worthy Dean Corso.
octagonal stargate of the true ninth gate
The most striking symbol for me in this movie is the almost incidental octagonal starburst. The 8-rayed star, or octagon, is one of the most prevalent synchromystic themes to date. The starburst happens at the end when the ninth gate is opened, possibly at sunset as the sun sets over the castle and the doors open up. It is also depicted on the first engraving in the book, the title page shows a serpent wound around a tree biting it's own tail as lightning strikes a branch from the tree; the lightning hits as a 8-rayed lightning burst. Above I indicated that I thought the King, Queen, and Body of the Kingdom of the Nine Gates in the Bhagavata Purana represent Sulfur, Mercury and Salt, respectively. These three items represent the three essentials of alchemy. The Path of Alchemy:
According to alchemical cosmology, all of creation arises from a fundamental source of energy and consciousness known as Chaos. This vast unmanifest, void of any form, gives rise to two primary forms of expression: one active, or energy, and the other passive, or matter. [...] These two forms of fundamental energy, active and passive, then give rise to subdivisions within themselves, forming the four elements as we know them. These elements recombine to form the three essentials of alchemy. (Sulfur, Mercury and Salt) [...] Finally, it is through the alchemist's manipulation of these three essentials, separating them back into their principal parts and reassembling them, that he or she may undertake the alchemical work and achieve the Philosopher's Stone.The Stone (or Elixer, or Quintessence) is the result of separation and recombination (Solve et Coagula) of the active and passive forms of the Spirit, the "primordial form of energy-consciousness that is utilized in magical rituals as well as in alchemy." It is symbolized by an eight-spoked wheel.
image in the bottom right shows a black stone shiva lingam
behind the man are octagonal stars with equal-armed solar crosses inside them
helping cement the connection between the cross & cube, and the octagon & pyramid.
The octagon is a nice symmetrical shape, quite "futuristic" like the hexagon (often times switching places with it: the haxagonal star, or asterisk, is above the 8 on my keyboard), and is found in many 'synchnificant' sources such as movies, especially those with heavy stargate themes. It is also the symbol of Chaos magic, which is appropriate condisering the above alchemical quote where the elements which form the Stone (octagon) came from Chaos (see Conspiracy Grimoire for a developing theory on the Chaos Star). Some people are of the opinion that it's just a pretty shape and has no meaning, but we know better than that. Even if we don't know why it was used, we know there was a reason for it. The universe has/is a language, and this is one of it's words.
"coincidentally" this image size is 888kb on my computer,
though it comes up as 8.89kb here
In the above picture, the symbols are alchemical ciphers for sublimation (the first two) and sal-ammoniac which is created through sublimation. Sublimation is the first stage of Coagulation, the seventh and last phase of alchemy (remember Crowley's description of the Grail on the LUST card from part 1: "blood of everything that livith is gathered therein" = coagulation). The first symbol for it looks like the sun rising over the horizen, and is the symbol for Libra, the balance. The second for this phase looks like the symbol for Leo. The third symbol is for sal-ammoniac, the salt of Ammon, which is a mineral found in volcanic vents. Volcanos are often associated with creational deities, demiurges, because new earth spews out of them, and they are usually mountain shaped which is a representation of the axis munde, or world pillar (and related to previously mentioned Tubal-Cain/Vulcan, and Spock (a "Vulcan") for that matter). Sal-ammoniac was named for Egyptian creation deity Ammon (also Amum or Amen). He was given a female aspect in Amunet (the yin to his yang), and later became a solar deity as Amun-Re. The eight-pointed star or wheel is also associated with a popular fellow, my homeboy, Jesus Christ:
each letter of ICHTHYS can be found in the eight-spoke circle
Notice how most of the letters of ICHTHYS can mean "wisdom" or "secret knowledge." Keeping with the octagonal theme, Jesus is also equal to 888 using gematria (the "Dominical Number." Also, Jesus resurrected on the 8th day (on Sunday, first day of the new week), and 8 people were saved on the Ark).
Another interesting number associated with Jesus is the "measure of the fish," the mathmatical ratio of the Christian fish symbol (visica pisces, seen above), 153:265 or 265/153 = square root of 3 = 1.732 (which connects to the 23/17 enigma). In one Biblical account, Jesus caused 153 fish to be caught in Peter's net. The numbers 1 thru 17, when added together, equal 153 (Also, 9 is often found in "17" equations, such as in 9x17=153; remember that there are 9 Kingdoms, but 7 Heavens). (More 17 examples here, also you may want to search The Secret Sun blog which often highlights the 17 enigma.) 17 is the day of Osiris' death in the month of Athyr. (And 1+7 = 8) Osiris is the original Green Man, having green skin of decay and representing the death and re-birth of vegetation.
octagon resonating green man in rosslyn chapel
In this video Daniel Tatman discusses Masonic cornerstone markings, including an 8-point design which combines and upward and downward pointing arrow and symbolizes the Master Mason degree. The top right part of the below image is one part of the ceiling inside Notre Dame de Paris, and the bottom right is on the examples Tatman uses to show how easy it is to embed this symbol using other symbols (sword crossed with drumsticks, and a scepter (?) and ribbon (?) forming an octagon).
Again, it's a symbol for Christ: "The stone that the builder's rejected has become the cornerstone" (Matthew 21:42 and Psalms 118:22) The enigmatic Phaistos Disc contains a central image of an 8-petal flower which, because of it's similarity to other pictograms, has been deciphered to read as "God/Heaven." Below, you can see the Sumerian pictogram for God which is also 8 lines, and when the wedge shape is used, begins to form an octagon.
the original "dharma logo"
Above is a picture of the Tower of Babel in an octagonal frame from the video game Prince of Persia. Babylon, also Bab-Ilu, means "Gate of God." "Ilu" references the octagonal shapes found in the hexagonal patterns of turtle shells.
The turtles of East Africa are called Allu (like Allah?), and when the turtles migrate on the winter solstice the natives yell: "Ilu Ilu Ilu!" The markings on the turtle shell correspond to the various important lattitudes on the earth, and when boiled, a cross appears on the under-side of the shell with a glowing "sun" at the center of the line corresponding to the equator. For more of a description, see this picture.
babilu/babylon gate of god
closeup of turtle shell hexagon & 8-lines
See the synchro wiki for more turtle goodness. I noticed while typing this part that the turtle shell is quite similar to the top of the human skull, specifically the fontanell which also creates a cross in the middle when the various sections come together during development.
comparison of skull and under-side of turtle shell
This cross of connecting skull parts is known as the Brahma Rundra, or Gate of Brahma, and is just above the seventh chakra. (The lowest point on the spinal column is also a Gate of Brahma, called the Brahma Dwara.) This description really makes the Brahma Rundra sound like a Gate to God:
From Hridaya (the heart), the Soul ascends through the Sushumna Nadi up to Brahma Rundra, and at that point it will escape to the outside in order to be united with FARAMATMA (the Universal Soul, the Spirit of the Great All). Christian symbolism is very similar to this and many Catholics also regard the soul as residing in the heart and believe that for purity to be achieved this soul must ascend to an opening in the skull and then reunite with God.
cross of the fontanelle
This series continues with Purification, and then Bee Seeing You Through the Veil.
