Syncnado 2: The Second One

or: The Jungian Thing 

The night was humid.

There I was, standing before my mostly movie themed tee-shirt collection, straining to choose three shirts to wear during the upcoming sync summit in Olympia, Washington. I could have ventured down multiple paths here with the themes my clothing collection covers: music, Japanese, movies, ironic-Japanese, television, etc; you get the picture.

This was actually taking place a few hours before I had to wake up to catch my plane, because I’m a lazy bastard who waits until the last minute. But you know that.

I settled on two shirts from my “silver-age Jeremy” collection and one from the “modern Jeremy” collection. I didn’t know it at the time, but my decision would trigger a Syncnado which would change them all forever.

Fade to black.

Day 1: Charlie Don’t Surf

Friday morning I arrive in Sea-Tac and make my way to the rental car hub to meet David and Amy. This was my second sync summit (explaining the title of this article) and the second time meeting David, who at some point I admitted I had a sync-crush on; but then everyone loves to hear him wax esoteric, so I don't think I'm alone in saying that. Also meeting us was JJ, or: “the French Jeremy.” Almost immediately David and I reveal that we are both currently reading books by Carl Jung. Mine is Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. David had also stepped on a spider before coming to the summit, and had a bruise on his foot which bothered him the whole time. I think his better half confirmed the dual puncture wounds of a spider bite on his foot, but this is information you don't need until later (and that's how I'm going to get you to read this whole thing!).

At some point David mentions, and this will become a running sync for the weekend, that the Olympia Sync Summit is Friday and Saturday August 8th-9th, the anniversary of the Manson Family murders and the death of Sharon Tate whose body was found on a zebra skin rug.

From Patrick Svec's blog: The Blog of Caverns:

On August 8th, 1969, The Beatles took the photographs for their Abbey Road album cover, a white VW Beetle sits on the roadside. That same day, Manson declares, "Now is the time for Helter Skelter." Later that night, after midnight, therefore attributed to August 9th, is when Tate and her house guests were murdered.

The itinerary for the weekend consisted of a few interesting and repeating numbers: meet at Last Word Books (111 Cherry St), check in at Fertile Ground (311 9th Ave), Happy Hour at Dillingers (404 S. Washington), Radio8Ball at Rhythm & Rye (311 Capitol Way), and then back to Fertile Ground (311, 3x11=33) for Saturday’s events. Repeating digits were a big theme of Scott Onstott’s presentation on Saturday.

The main event Friday was Andras Jones’ Radio8Ball Show, hosted by Andy Shmushkin. You can tell Andras and Andy apart because Andy has a mustache and likes to “bring the dick out,” whatever that means. The musical guest whose songs would answer our questions was Peter David Connelly.

The last time I went to a Sync Summit the sync heads in attendance were part of the Radio8Ball Show and helped interpret the musical answers. That was scary enough. This time there was no direct participation by us, unless picked at random to be a contestant. And, of course, the most socially anxious stage-frightened person there (me) gets picked to be on stage; and this time it was on camera. Unfortunately for Smushkin, I get total brain-lock when put on the spot, whether it be in person or on camera. I’m more of a thinker than a talker, so like last time, I was thinking a lot of big thoughts but saying very little. Lucky for you, if you like tragic comedies, you should be able to see the video evidence for yourself soon enough.

The question I put to the Pop Oracle was this: What should I accomplish before I die?

The answer was: She’s not going home with you.

Typical.

This song was penned by Peter David Connelly (do I have to say all three names like he’s an assassin?) when he was with the otherwise all girl band The Bangs and is on this album from his group The Mona Reels. Peter explains that the song was about all the rude drunken requests by audience members for the females to stay at their house for the night in the hopes that something would happen. Although I’ve never rudely or drunkenly propositioned anyone to spend the night with me, the result is still the same.

It’s an interesting continuation of the previous sync summit Radio8Ball question. In my blog about it I mentioned that I regretted not bringing up Truman’s favorite show within The Truman Show: “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” That of course is related to my question of what I need to accomplish before I die, as death is ‘like going home.’

After getting over the initial shock of “of-fucking-course it was a song that perfectly describes my life” I started pondering the idea that “She” is the lost or hidden feminine, the Shekinah, the the veiled goddess, Isis as the Mysteries, and the virgin-whore dichotomy. I still don’t know what to make of it, but I had initially wondered if it spoke to a duality, and if I was both the annoying guy in the crowd and also the guy on stage or across the veil. When I “go home” the whore will be revealed as virgin, or vice-versa, so technically the “she” I see doesn’t go home with me, because she’s already there in her true form. In fact I had spun the Radio8Ball wheel of fate to number 4 whose song had already been played, so I re-picked from the Radio8Ball cards and got 7, which I took to be a dichotomy as well with the character for 4 meaning “death” in Japanese (“Shi”) and 7 being a fortuitous number. Then I was reminded that Japanese for 7 also contains the same character as 4 (“Shi-chi”), which I guess means that the number and resulting song I received was already hinting at a sort of merging of opposites (death and luck). Aaanyways, I said something about how maybe I need to reconcile the opposites internally, and Andy seconded the idea adding that that’s something we all need to do. And then I kinda stopped talking because I was still trying to figure out if it’s not simply saying that I ain’t getting laid anytime soon.

The real fun was the sync discussion surrounding the event. I was wearing a black and white shirt with the face of Charlie Manson on it. Ezra Sandzer-Bell gave a presentation about Philip K. Dick and his ZEBRA phenomenon, which included an image of the Abby Road album cover complete with black and white crosswalk; themes that would continue to influence/highlight the syncs of the weekend. (Recall that this day was the Abby Road picture and Manson’s Helter Skelter anniversary) I was also seated in front of the giant black and white yin-yang looking Radio8Ball wheel of fate.

careful walking barefoot, you might step on a spider!

Speaking of Philip K’s Dick: the libidinal symbolism of the horse (zebra) as being partly phallic in nature (per Carl Jung) was part of Will Morgan’s presentation on Saturday, but by then we had pretty much worked it all out anyways. By the way, it is currently the year of the horse in the Chinese calendar. In VALIS, Philip K. Dick writes himself in as another character named Horselover Fat which is derived from his name: Philip means 'horse lover' in Greek, and Dick is German for 'fat.'

Unfortunately for you I have a terrible memory and can only give a taste of the syncnado whirling through the weekend. Speaking of, Patrick just reminded me and everyone that the last question read in Radio8Ball, from the submitted but not chosen questions, was: "Why is zebra such a dick?" (ZEBRA & Philip K Dick once again.) Some themes seemed to come up again and again the whole time.

Day 2: Join The Army

I wore my Join The Army shirt on Saturday. Like the previous one it references a war movie, this time Full Metal Jacket, with a paraphrased quote from the above video. I thought it was synchronous that Will Morgan had a shirt with the words PE_CE and W_R and a dove holding a letter A, as if you could choose which one you want. The reason this stood out is that the same guy who gives the line on my shirt also has “Born to kill” written on his helmet and wears a peace button: another duality, which he refers to in the movie as “the Jungian thing.”

When my airplane landed on the day of the summit, the person in the seat next to me got up to grab his luggage and noticed my Charlie Don't Surf shirt, asking “The Clash, or Apocalypse Now?” I didn’t remember that The Clash actually had a song inspired by the line in the movie, so I pointed out that Charles Manson is on my shirt, which he didn’t even notice. I think David said something like the face on my shirt could be mistaken for a random yogi at first glance. Anyways I looked up The Clash’s song and found a video with the movie scene preceding the song and to my surprise Kilgore mentions another synchronicity: the number 86 (or 68).

In the scene from Apocalypse Now, the discussion about whether to surf Charlie's point includes the information that the break is "six to eight feet" high, and Kilgore sends some guys back to grab boards adding, "bring me my Yater Spoon -- the eight six." 6-8 are my favorite hole cards in Texas Hold’em, and one of the numbers I keep an eye out for.

“It looks like 86 is your lucky number.” – The X-Files (movie)
“86% Accurate (Only God is Perfect)” – Pi

The second day was really great because everyone was there and we got to walk the Olympia Tree of Life which is outlined in Andras’ book Accidental Initiations. (Books by Sync Book Press are available here.) Ezra brought out his pet Zebra and placed it at each sphere on the tree and played the appropriate notes per his Tone Color Alchemy. There was a funny synchronicity when Andras mentioned losing balance and the zebra toy fell over at that exact moment. There were a lot of great moments lost to my bad memory, but the one I want to talk about was the 6th sphere on the tree, Tiphareth.

in hades, 8's shade is a 6

Marty Leeds volunteered to explain the mathemagical symbolism of this sphere, but afterward I got to throw some of my own observations at him. Tiphareth, the 6th sphere, is equated with the sun. The object at this location on the tree was a hexagonal gazebo. The heart chakra, associated with the sun, is also a hexagon, a green hexagon, and the gazebo had a green wooden rail going around it and a green roof I believe. (On my now defunct tumblr account, I had a picture from a comic where a green six-sided sun is mentioned, and the Egyptian Ra is also associated with a green sun.) There was a phone number over the gazebo for reserving it for parties and part of the phone number was an 888, and all the digits of the phone number add to 36 (a veiled 666 for the magic square of the sun). The 6th sphere on the tree of life happens to have 8 paths connecting to it. I also mentioned that turtle shells have 13 sections on them which are six-sided, but have lines running through them which form 8-spoked stars, a combination of 6 and 8.

I also recently brought up somewhere on Facebook that the Tree of Life can be found on a turtle shell:

Speaking of the turtle shells, Joe Alexander has a tattoo with a basketball skull which looks quite a lot like the underside of a turtle shell. At the end of an old post of mine I write about turtles being connected to Babylon aka: The Gate of God, and compared that with the cross of the fontanelle where the human skull merges as it grows. This spot is known as the Gate of Brahma where the soul escapes from to join Paramatma, the Universal Soul.

The rest of the day included some great presentations that I wouldn't do justice to if I tried to explain them here. There was Scott Onstott discussing the geo-metry in his new book Quantification, Swami Anantananda Giri introducing us to some ideas from his Yogic Gospel of Thomas, James Evan Pilato (another guy with the 3 name thing going on) from Media Monarchy who gave an entertaining talk on The Simpsons, Marty Leeds and the mathematical structure of the human hand, a spoken word presentation (the audio wasn't working) by Will Morgan, a skype-in by Rodney Ascher, and videos by Joe Alexander and David Plate to round off the looong day.

Day 3: I Want To Believe

The final day was basically spent sitting around having discussions with people who actually nodded their heads as they followed along, rather than stare blankly with their eyes glazed over like we're used to seeing in our day-to-day lives. We're all weird people, and it's really great to be able to be weird together.

At the end of the first day and on until the end of the third, I had kept bringing up spiders and spider webs, mostly when I was talking to Misty Greer. I think she came up to me because her dualistic shirt, Marilyn Manson, was syncing with my shirt, Charlie Manson. And speaking of shirts, I swear I was being followed by men in Captain America shirts all weekend, including Michael Schacht who changed into his on the first day. Anyhoo, it's probably more that I pay attention to these things, but I have always felt that I have some strange attraction to spider webs and flying insects. And I really don't like bugs in general, especially ones which can jump or fly at my face! (Eeek!) For one, I feel like I attract flying bugs, and I have accidentally scooped up one or two flies or bees in-between my fingers on more than one occasion, just by swinging my arms normally by my side as I walk. Imagine the surprise felt when looking down at the vibrating feeling in your fingers to see two bees trapped there! The first thing I caught accidentally was a fly, then some bees, but there have also been a couple of very humorous moments involving birds in the garage while I'm working on my car. At some point, someone told me that the reason zebra's have those black and white stripes is that it serves as a natural fly repellent, negating the need for a long tail like other horses.

The other phenomenon is the constant feeling of "walking through spider webs" (so leave a message and I'll call you back). I seem to always get covered in those thin webs baby spiders use to fly around, or webbing strung up in my pathway overnight. Every morning on the way to get my bike from around the side of the house I put my backpack over my head to block any webs I might encounter. In fact, recently on my facebook page I shared an image of baby spiders streaming down a silky strand that had become attached to my bike handle which I had unknowingly parked next to Charlotte's Web.

I think this line of conversing started when I mentioned seeing 'visions' sometimes (Jung's word to replace 'hallucinations' which have a negative connotation), including one of a giant spider hobbling across my ceiling (which I detail here). While doing some research for my last collaborative book project, CONTACT: Them or Us, I came across some of Whitley Strieber's visions of giant spiders, the size of VW bugs, scrambling up the walls of his bedroom just over his sleeping wife. (Let's not forget the VW Beetle in the Abby Road cover which is part of the "Paul is dead" theory.) There is also the idea of "astral spiders" who spin webs around our world intended to keep us contained here, even containing us from astral projection or remote viewing too far from home.

Eating as a group at the end of the first day, there was a discussion of Ariadne's thread which she gave to Theseus to help him find his way out of the labyrinth. It was called a "clue" which brings to mind the dark half of the creator of the world of Tron, called CLU (LUCifer), who merges with his other half and brings an end to their fictional world, in much the same way Neo merges with Smith at the end of The Matrix trilogy. That brings things nicely back to my question and possible answer during Radio8Ball with what I/everyone needs to accomplish before they die: the alchemical union of opposites.

"If I wake from a dream, do the others within my dream wake as well?"

On the plane ride home I open Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky and continue reading. The first dream description I read involved a giant metallic spider UFO gliding over the city and giving a statement via telepathy (the most common of all Alien communications, since talking to what is essentially yourself (like a dream character) doesn’t require ‘small mouth noises’).

[...] From the body of the spider there issued a solemn voice, loud and distinct; it uttered a prayer that was intended as an admonition and a warning to everybody, for those on earth as well as for the occupants of the spider. The gist of the prayer was: "Lead us downwards and keep us (safe) below ... Carry us up to the height!"

Adjoining the garden was a large administrative building where international decisions were being taken. Flying incredibly low, the spider passed along the windows of the building, for the obvious purpose of letting the voice influence the people inside and point out the way to peace, which was the way to the inner secret world. 

In regards to the insect UFO dream, Jung brings up the theory that aliens are insects from another planet, and their exoskeleton happens to look metallic, like the chitinous shell of a beetle. There's an anaology in the way UFOs behave, speeding around and then pausing to hover over an area, and then zooming off again, like a flying insect looking for food. We have the firefly or lightning bug which produces its own luminescence like a UFO. Also brought up in the footnotes is the book Flying Saucers on the Attack which mentions a report of a "rain of threads" which come from unknown spiders.

At the beginning of my summit wrap up here I mention that David had a spider bite on his foot. The double-puncture marks are similar to the double-sting of a scorpion. The constellation Scorpio is right next to Ophiuchus, the serpent bearer, whose foot dangles above the galactic central point where Scorpio's stinger is pointing. Scorpio is more of a amalgam of a serpent, the older image of the constellation, and an eagle, the enemy of the serpent or what the serpent transforms into when shot in the heart with the arrow of Sagittarius, the other constellation aiming at galactic center. By the way, at some point in the week probably after the summit, I ended up with two small scabs on my arm as if I suffered a giant double bite or sting.

Perhaps the spider-UFO in the dream is echoing the alchemical maxim which I'm sure I'm paraphrasing poorly: Visit the center of the earth, and by rectifying what is there through repeated distillations, you will find the stone. The center of "earth"/your torso is your heart, where the stone-seed grows upwards like a tree which the serpent energy climbs until it transforms like Scorpio/Serpent into Aquilla the eagle. At one point while pondering the spider theme, I felt like there was a evolution from the flying bugs I catch on accident to the spiders and webs I attract, to the birds I attract...

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.

I dunno why she swallowed that fly,

Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,

That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.

She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

But I dunno why she swallowed that fly -

Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a bird;

How absurd, to swallow a bird!

She swallowed the bird to catch the spider

That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.

She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

But I dunno why she swallowed that fly -

Perhaps she'll die

If you want to learn more about upcoming sync summits, podcasts and publications, check out thesyncbook.com!

There Is A Storm Coming

I once had a dream where I was in an empty room, sitting on the hard wooden floor with a girl in my arms and it was raining outside. Everything was tinted blue as if the scene were filmed in the daylight and then had the red filtered out to make it look more like nighttime. Outside a procession of evacuees were making their way slowly past the house. Leaning into the only window, which was open, one of them said "There's a storm coming." That was all that was spoken in the dream. I looked down at the girl in my arms and she lunged, teeth bared, towards my neck. I'm not sure what that was about, but that's about as sexy as my dreams get. It always stuck with me though because the only words spoken were my favorite movie quote, which I just put together in a video for everyone to enjoy! This has been on the back-burner for a while, and I could have dropped in another 10-15 scenes, but I really didn't want to spend any more time finding quality clips and fiddling with the video editor. After spending all day to get all the kinks out of it, I went to export the video and the power went out. Here's a tip, when mercury is in retrograde, read a book. And now, put your feet up and prepare yourself for about 12 minutes of movie bliss, brought to you by the demonic host with the most,

There Is A Storm Coming from ViolatoR on Vimeo.

CONTACT: Them or Us [UPDATED: May The Fourth Be With You]

A new collaborative book project just hit the virtual bookshelves. Frank Zero and I (Project Psycube and now ZEROKNIGHT publishing) gathered submissions for a book about alien contact, abductions and all the stuff that goes with these themes: personal stories, synchronicity, conspiracy, and altered states. Only $10 and available at this link here and at Amazon.com for a discounted price (though we get $2 less in royalties, so, there's that..) The Kindle version is also available at Amazon.com here.

CONTACT: Them or Us is a collaboration between experiencers and researchers who desire to add to and expand on theories concerning alien abduction and UFO contact. From nuts and bolts ET contact to government conspiracies to theories concerning expanded consciousness, and complete with interviews with some of the top personalities in the field, this volume is sure to contain something for every level of interest.

And check out the beautiful artwork by Kyle Nugent and Ashley Holtrey:

 click for larger

The House of God

"In old traditions they speak of holy mountains. The Meru mountain in India, Mount Kualua of the taoists, Himalaya, Mountain of The Philosophers, the Rosicrucian mountain, the Kabbalistic mountain. There are many holy mountains. The legend is always the same. Nine immortal men live on top of the mountain. From the highest peak they direct our world. They hold the secret to the conquest of death. They are more than forty-thousand years old. [...] But they were once like ourselves. If others have succeeded in conquering death, why must we accept it? I know where the immortals live and how to obtain their secret.” — The Alchemist, The Holy Mountain

Mount Meru

"Mount Meru, [...] is a mountain often mentioned in the Tipiṭaka and now identified with the 6638 meters high Mt. Kailash in the western Himalayas. The Tibetans call it Khang Rinpoche. The commentary says the mountain is bent inwards ‘like a crow’s beak’ which is a clear reference to its unusual bent pyramid-shaped summit. In ancient Indian geography, Mt. Meru was believed to be the point at which the four continents met, the highest mountain on earth and, according to later cosmology, the place where the gods dwelt." — buddhisma2z.com

"Its summit must be inaccessible, but its base accessible to human beings as nature made them. It must be unique and it must exist geographically. The door to the invisible must be visible." — Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing

Three styles of pyramid found in Egypt

"Jacob left Beersheba, and went toward Haran. He came to the place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it [or 'beside him'] and said, "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you." Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, 'Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.' And he was afraid, and said, 'This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.'" — wikipedia

"He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first." (Genesis 28:19)

LUZ - The Hebrew word means "almond tree" or "almond wood". It may also mean "bone," particularly a bone of the spine, and might be applied to a rocky height supposed to resemble a backbone. — classic.net.bible.org

"According to Wallis Budge, the Djed is the oldest symbol of Osiris, and symbolizes his backbone and his body in general. He states that originally Osiris was probably represented by the Djed alone, and that he had no other form. He regards the Djed hieroglyph as a conventional representation of a part of his spinal column and gives its meaning as 'to be stable, to be permanent, abiding, established firmly, enduring.'

"The reconstruction of the body of Osiris occurred at a place called Djedu, in the Delta region of Lower Egypt and it was here that the yearly ceremony of 'Raising the Djed Pillar' took place on the last day of the month of Khoiak, the eve of the agricultural New Year. The next day marked the beginning of the four month long season of Pert, or 'Going Forth' during which the lands rose out of the flood waters allowing the fields to be sown. Djedu was also referred to as Per-Asar-Neb-Djedu, meaning 'The House of Osiris - the Lord of Djedu'. The Greeks called it Busiris, after the shortened title Per-Asar - 'The House of Osiris'" — pyramidofman.com

The angle of the dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of the meat, provided that the maxis of the axis, and the gravity of the cavity, remain constant.

The Great A'Tuin carrying Discworld

"Hindu mythology also contains a story about the churning of the Cosmic Ocean in order to obtain Amrita - the nectar of immortal life. At the suggestion of Vishnu the gods, (devas) and demons (asuras) churn the primeval ocean in order to obtain Amrita which will guarantee them immortality. To churn the ocean they used the Serpent King, Vasuki, for their churning-string. For a churning pole they use Mount Mandara placed on the back of a Great Tortoise - the Kurma Avatar of Vishnu." — wikipedia

"According to Angkorologist Eleanor Mannikka, [...] the 91 asuras mark the 91 days between the winter solstice and spring equinox in March, while the 88 devas represent the 88 days to the summer solstice after the equinox period. Mannikka says this is just one of the hidden cosmological meanings coded at Angkor Wat, and that the temple is remarkably attuned to the movement of the sun and moon." — veloasia.com

"Thus the orb of heaven turns around like a millstone, and ever does something bad." — Trimalchio in Petronius

"Now it is time to locate the origin of the image of the Mill, and further, what its alleged breakup and the coming into being of the Whirlpool can possibly mean.

"The starting place is Greece. Cleomedes (c. A.D. 150), speaking of the northern latitudes, states: 'The heavens there turn around in the way a millstone does.'" — Hamlet's Mill

"Al-Farghani in the East takes up the same idea, and his colleagues will supply the details. They call the star Kochab, beta Ursae Minoris, 'mill peg,' and the stars of the Little Bear, surrounding the North Pole, and Fas al-rahha (the hole of the mill peg) 'because they represent, as it were, a hole (the axle ring) in which the mill axle turns, since the axle of the equator (the polar axis) is to be found in this region, fairly close to the star Al-jadi (he-goat, Polaris: alpha Ursae Minoris).' — Hamlet's Mill

"The word swastika is Sanskrit: swa means “higher self,” asti means “being,” and ka is a suffix. The word may be understood as “being with higher self.” It is also known as srivatsa." — theepochtimes

"Koth, the common name of the Pole, means really the axle of the movable upper millstone which goes through the lower fixed one, what is called the "mill-iron." The sphere of heaven was imagined as a turning millstone, and the North Pole as the axle bearing in which the mill-iron turns... Farther to the east, in India, the Bhagavata Purana tells us how the virtuous prince Dhruva was appointed as Pole star. See now The Srimad-Bhaga­vatam of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa: 'Just as oxen, fastened to a post fixed in the center of a threshing floor, leaving their own station, go round at shorter, middle or longer distances, similarly fixed on the inside and outside of the circle of time, stars and planets exist, supporting themselves on Dhruva; and propelled by the wind, they range in every direction till the end of a kalpa.'" — Hamlet's Mill

"Thus the image travels far and wide by many channels, reaches the North by way of Celtic-Scandinavian transmission and appears in Snaebjorn's account of his voyage of discovery in the Arctic. The nine grim goddesses who 'once ground Amlodhi's meal,' working now that 'host-cruel skerry quern' beyond the edge of the world, are in their turn only the agents of a shadowy controlling power called Mundilfoeri, literally 'the mover of the handle.' The word mundil, says Rydberg, 'is never used in the old Norse literature about any other object than the sweep or handle with which the movable millstone is turned'. Webster's New International Dictionary lists 'mundle': A stick for stirring. Obsolete except for dialectical use. And he is backed by Vigfusson's dictionary which says that "mundil" in "Mundilfoeri" clearly refers to 'the veering round or revolution of the heavens.'" — Hamlet's Mill

"The case is then established. But there is an ambiguity here which discloses further depths in the idea. "'Moendull' comes from Sanskrit 'Manthati,'" says Rydberg, "it means to swing, twist, bore, which occurs in several passages in the Rigveda. Its direct application always refers to the production of fire by friction." [To term it "friction" is a nice way to shut out dangerous terms: actually, the Sanskrit radical math, manth means drilling in the strict sense, i.e., it involves alternate motion as we have it in the famous Amritamanthana, the Churning of the Milky Ocean, and this very quality of India's churn and fire drill has had far-reaching influence on cosmological conceptions.]." — Hamlet's Mill

Fire making

"So it is, indeed. But Rydberg, after establishing the etymology, has not followed up the meaning. The locomotive engineers and airplane pilots of today who coined the term "joy stick" might have guessed. For the Sanskrit Pramantha is the male fire stick, or churn stick, which serves to make fire. And Pramantha has turned into the Greeks' Prometheus, a personage to whom it will be necessary to come back frequently." — Hamlet's Mill

"The identity of the Mill, in its many versions, with heaven is thus universally understood and accepted. But hitherto nobody seems to have wondered about the second part of the story, which also occurs in the many versions. How and why does it always happen that this Mill, the peg of which is Polaris, had to be wrecked or unhinged? Once the archaic mind had grasped the forever-enduring rotation, what caused it to think that the axle jumps out of the hole? What memory of catastrophic events has created this story of destruction? Why should Vainamoinen (and he is not the only one) state explicitly that another Mill has to be constructed? Why had Dhruva to be appointed to play Pole star--and for a given cycle? For the story refers in no way to the creation of the world. The simple answer lies in the facts of the case. The Pole star does get out of place, and every few thousand years another star has to be chosen which best approximates that position." — Hamlet's Mill

"It is well known that the Great Pyramid, so carefully sighted, is not oriented at our Pole Star but at alpha Draconis, which occupied the position at the pole 5,000 years ago. [There] is quite a collection of myths to show that once upon a time it was realized that the sphere of fixed stars is not meant to circle around the same peg forever and ever. Several myths tell how Polaris is shot down, or removed in some other way." — Hamlet's Mill

"This phenomenon is called the Precession of the Equinoxes, and it was conceived as causing the rise and the cataclysmic fall of ages of the world. Its cause is a bad habit of the axis of our globe, which turns around in the manner of a spinning top, its tip being in the center of our small earth-ball, whence our earth axis, prolonged to the celestial North Pole, describes a circle around the North Pole of the ecliptic, the true "center" of the planetary system, the radius of this circle being of the same magnitude as the obliquity of the ecliptic with respect to the equator: 23 ½ o." — Hamlet's Mill

"The Cube of Space is formed by the three Dragon Axes of the Celestial Sphere , the Ecliptic pole and the Galactic Center-Galactic Anticentre meridian. Equating any pole or axis to the Dragon or Cosmic Serpent makes profound intuitive sense, yet this is further justified when we learn the unmoving Ecliptic Axis points directly at the constellation Draco."  — rundonotwalk.blogspot.com

"The time which this prolonged axis needs to circumscribe the ecliptical North Pole is roughly 26,000 years, during which period it points to one star after another: around 3000 B.C. the Pole star was alpha Draconis; at the time of the Greeks it was beta Ursae Minoris; for the time being it is alpha Ursae Minoris; in A.D. 14,000 it will be Vega. The equinoxes, the points of intersection of ecliptic and equator, swinging from the spinning axis of the earth, move with the same speed of 26,000 years along the ecliptic. The constellation that rose in the east just before the sun (that is, rose heliacally) marked the "place" where the sun rested. At this time it was known as the sun's "carrier," and as the main "pillar" of the sky, the vernal equinox being recognized as the fiducial point of the "system," determining the first degree of the sun's yearly circle, and the first day of the year.

"At Time Zero, the two equinoctial "hinges" of the world had been Gemini and Sagittarius, spanning between them the arch of the Milky Way: both bicorporeal signs--and so were Pisces, and Virgo with her ear of wheat, at the two other corners--to mark the idea that the way (the Milky Way itself) was open between earth and heaven, the way up and the way down, here men and gods could meet in that Golden Age. As will be shown later, the exceptional virtue of the Golden Age was precisely that the crossroads of ecliptic and equator coincided with the crossroads of ecliptic and Galaxy, namely in Gemini and Sagittarius, both constellations "standing" firmly at two of the four corners of the quadrangular earth." — Hamlet's Mill

"It is revealing to look at the figure drawn by a West Sudanese Dogon at the request of Professor Zahan, showing the world egg, with the "inhabited world" between the tropics, "le cylindre ou rectangle du monde." The Dogon are fully aware of the fact that the region between the terrestrial tropics is not the best of inhabitable quarters, and so were their teachers of far-off times, the archaic scientists who coined the terminology of myth. What counted was the zodiacal band between the celestial tropics, delivering the houses, and the inns, the "masks" (prosopa), and the disguises to the much traveling and "shape-shifting" planets." — Hamlet's Mill

Saint John the Evangelist & Saint John the Baptist

"Gemini, as the third sign of the zodiac, these heavenly twins take on the general significance of all symbolic twins (in that they are both divine and mortal, black and white), but Gemini acquire the additional significance of a characteristic phase of the cosmic process as symbolized in the wheel of transformations: the moment in which pure creative forces (Aries and Taurus) is served in two parts, in such a way that one side of dualism is elevated but the other descends into the multiplicity characteristic of phenomena. Marius Shneider has made a profound study of the Gemini-myth in megalithic culture, showing that it has two tendencies, one white; the other black; one creates the other destroys; both these characteristics are indicated by the arms of each of the wins, which in landscape symbolism, are identical to the river of youth and the river of death." — nowhappened.blogspot.com

"According to the megalithic conception the mountain of Mars (or Janus) which rises up as a mandorla of the Gemini is the locale of the inversion--the mountain of death and resurrection; the mandorla is another sign of inversion and of interlinking, for it is formed by the intersection of the circle of earth, with the circle of heaven. This mountain has two peaks, and every symbol or sign alludes to this "situation of inversion" is marked by duality or by twin heads." — nowhappened.blogspot.com

Mandorla or vesica piscis

"Janus, a god particular to the Italians, with no corresponding divinities among the Greeks, even the ancients were by no means clear as to his special significance; he was however, regarded as one of the oldest and holiest, and most exalted of the gods. In Rome the king and in in later times the rex sacorum sacrificed to him, at every sacrifice he was the remembered first, at every prayer he was first invoked, being mentioned even before Jupiter. In the songs of Salii, he was called the creator god, and the god of gods, he is elsewhere named the oldest of the gods and the beginning of all things."

"In Zohar; the 'magic head', stands for astral light; in Medieval art it is a symbol of the mind and the spiritual life which explains the frequency in decorative art. Plato asserted in 'Timaeus' that "the human head is the image of the world." In corroboration of this LeBlant points out that the skull, the semi-spherical crown of the human body, signifies the heavens. Clearly the head-symbol here coalesces with that of the sphere as the symbol of oneness.

"Two, three, or four heads are shown in juxtaposition symbolize a corresponding intensification of a given aspect of head symbolism, thus the Gemini, a symbol of the duality of nature, or of the integrating (but not unifying) link between two principles of creation, are represented by beings with two heads or two faces." — nowhappened.blogspot.com

"It would appear that Janus was first a god of the light and of the sun, who opened the gates of heaven on going forth in the the morning and closed them on returning at evening. In course of time he became the god of all GOING OUT and COMING IN, to whom all places of entrance and passage, all doors and gates were holy. In Rome all doors and covered passages were suggestive of his name. The former were called 'ianuoe', over the latter, the arches which spanned the streets were called 'iani', a term perhaps symbolic of the vault of heaven. Many of these were expressly dedicated to him, especially those that were situated in markets and frequented streets, or at crossroads. He was generally represented as a porter with a staff and key in his hands and with two bearded faces placed back-to-back and looking in opposite directions. He is also the god of entrance (en-TRANCE) into a new division of time, and was therefore saluted every morning as the god of the breaking day, Janus Pater Matutinus or Janus, "the father/mother protector". Under this name, Janus Pater was also the god of creation." — nowhappened.blogspot.com

"This surname JANUS was originally derived from the Hebrew given name YOCJANAN (Jehovah has favoured me with a son), and the name was adopted into the Latin (via Greek) as JOHANNES. This name has enjoyed enormous popularity in Europe, being given in honor of St. John the Baptist, precursor of Christ and of St. John the Evangelist, author of the fourth gospel, as well as others of the nearly one thousand saints of the name." — nowhappened.blogspot.com

"The manned U.S. spacecraft named Jupiter in the film are clearly Gemini vessels, flown between 1965 and 1966 with two astronauts to test various systems and procedures vital to the successor manned space project, Apollo, that would land the first men on the Moon in 1969." — jamesbond.wikia.com, You Only Live Twice.

"In the Gospel of Mark, the "twins" James and John, the sons of Zebedee, are given by Jesus the name of Boanerges, which the Evangelist explains as meaning "Sons of Thunder." This was long overlooked but eventually became the title of a work by a distinguished scholar, too soon forgotten, Rendel Harris. Here the Thunder Twins were shown to exist in cultures as different as Greece, Scandinavia and Peru. They call to mind the roles of Magni and Modi, not actually called twins, but successors of Thor, in Ragnarok. But to quote from Harris:

"We have shown that it does not necessarily follow that when the parenthood of the Thunder is recognised, it necessarily extends to both of the twins. The Dioscuri may be called unitedly, Sons of Zeus; but a closer investigation shows conclusively that there was a tendency in the early Greek cults to regard one twin as of divine parentage, and the other of human. Thus Castor is credited to Tyndareus, Pollux to Zeus. . . The extra child made the trouble, and was credited to an outside source. Only later will the difficulty of discrimination lead to the recognition of both as Sky-boys or Thunder-boys. An instance from a remote civilization will show that this is the right view to take.

"For example, Arriaga, in his "Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru" tells us that "when two children are produced at one birth, which they call Chuchos or Curi, and in el Cuzco Taqui Hua-hua, they hold it for an impious and abominable occurrence, and they say, that one of them is the child of the Lightning, and require a severe penance, as if they had committed a great sin."

"And it is interesting to note that when the Peruvians, of whom Arriaga speaks, became Christians, they replaced the name of Son of Thunder, given to one of the twins, by the name of Santiago, having learnt from their Spanish (missionary) teachers that St. James (Santiago) and St. John had been called Sons of Thunder by our Lord, a phrase which these Peruvian Indians seem to have understood, where the great commentators of the Christian Church had missed the meaning..." — Hamlets Mill

Zeus' thunderbolt

"In mythology Pollux is depicted as a “boxer, one good with his fists”, the picture thus presented being that of the forearm and clenched fist, with the same phallic allusions as were implied in the Services’ term for the penis, “short arm”. It is this same GEShPU, “strong man”, which forms the main part of the New Testament name for the brothers James and John, "Boanerges”. [...] the Greek nickname [...] meaning “mighty man (holding up) the arch of heaven”, a fanciful image of the stem supporting the canopy of the mushroom, seen in cosmographical terms." — John Allegro, Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

"The clue to its mushroom affinities has lain all along in the “translation” which, as such, is of course quite spurious. But “sons of thunder” is a well-known name for the fungus, found elsewhere in Semitic texts, and supported by the old Greek name keraunion, “thunder—fungus”, after keraunos, “thunder”. The reference is to the belief that mushrooms were born of thunder, the voice of the god in the storm, since it was noticed that they appeared in the ground after rainstorms." — John Allegro, Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

Mushroom & Vajra/Dorje:

"a symbolic ritual object that symbolizes both the properties of a diamond (indestructibility) and a thunderbolt (irresistible force)" — wikipedia

"The division of the mushroom volva into two halves gave rise to a “twin” mythology. Since the two constituents of the fungus were envisaged as male and female, it is sometimes personified as a hermaphrodite, and its names like Tubal-Cain, and the Greek Eryngion, contain both male and female elements. Alternatively, the mushroom story presents two figures, usually male, like Castor and Pollux, Cain and Abel, and so on." — John Allegro, Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

“In the Aztec world, the tau cross is the Tree of Life…”

― Gary Varner, Mysteries of Native American Myth and Religion

“…the cross…was a sacred symbol in practically every religion…Among the Aztecs of ancient Mexico…it was known as the Tree of Life.” ― Jean Delaire, Mystery Teaching in the West, 1935

"The most famous of all the mythological twins are Castor and Pollux, the “volva” and the “stem” of the fungus respectively. Their joint name, Dioscouroi, means “phallus of the storm”, and appears in the New Testament as the name of Jesus’ betrayer, Iscariot, and as the title of Jesus himself, 'son of God.'

"The risen mushroom, with canopy outstretched was seen by the ancients in the same sexual terms as the open groin of a woman penetrated by the male organ, or as an axe-head into which the shaft has been inserted. It was represented symbolically by the form of a cross, as a man or animal carrying a yoke, or as a criminal crucified. So the fungus was known as “the little cross” and its dismemberment as “crucifixion”, giving in part that theme of the Christian myth." — John Allegro, Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

Winged thunderbolt. — wildwinds.com

"In Islamic legend, Muhammad is reported to have gone on a mysterious night journey into heaven. Islamic sources state this happened "in the spirit," his body remaining behind. The legend also provides teachings on what to expect at the time of death. According to legend, Muhammad states that the ladder on which he ascended to heaven was "that to which the dying man looks when death approaches." — near-death.com

There's no "I" in heaven

"Al-Buraq (Arabic: "lightning") is a mythological steed, described as a creature from the heavens which transported the prophets. The most commonly told story is how in the 7th century, Al-Buraq carried the Islamic prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem and back during the Isra and Mi'raj or "Night Journey", which is the title of one of the chapters (sura), Al-Isra, of the Quran." — wikipedia

Muhammad rides the lightning

"ODIN is a god of the mysterious realms of wisdom, cunning, sorcery, and death. Subtle, aristocratic, and at times inexplicable, Odin is the literal father of important gods, such as Thor, and All-Father to the whole of creation, divine and human. Amongst his gifts to us, his children, was the greatest of all: the gift of writing. To accomplish this Odin hung himself upside down upon the World Tree, the gigantic ash Yggdrasil (a compound meaning "terrible horse"). After nine days of fasting and agony, in which "he made of himself a sacrifice to himself", he "fell screaming" from the tree, having had revealed to him in a flash of insight the secret of the runes." — octavia.net

"Then I was shown Sidrat al-Muntaha (i.e. a tree in the seventh heaven) [...] and four rivers originated at its root, two of them were apparent and two were hidden. I asked [Gabriel] about those rivers and he said, 'The two hidden rivers are in Paradise, and the apparent ones are the Nile and the Euphrates.'" — wikipedia

Four rivers

"'Long oak, broad oak. What is the wood of its root? Gold is the wood of its root. The sky is the wood of the oak's summit. An enclosure within the sky. A wether in the enclosure. A granary on the horn of the wether.' [...] 'the granary upon the top of the cross.'

"More stunning notions occur in a Russian Apocryph where Satanael planted the tree in the paradise intending to get out of it a weapon against Christ: "The branches of the tree spread over the whole paradise, and it also covered the Sun. Its summit touched the sky, and from its roots sprang fountains of milk and honey." — Hamlet's Mill

"The cosmology of Norse mythology has 'nine homeworlds', unified by the world tree Yggdrasill." — wikipedia

"The generally accepted meaning of Old Norse Yggdrasill is "Odin's horse", meaning "gallows". This interpretation comes about because drasill means "horse" and Ygg(r) is one of Odin's many names. The Poetic Edda poem Hávamál describes how Odin sacrificed himself by hanging from a tree, making this tree Odin's gallows. This tree may have been Yggdrasil. Gallows can be called "the horse of the hanged" and therefore Odin's gallows may have developed into the expression "Odin's horse", which then became the name of the tree." ― wikipedia

Dear god can you climb off that tree

Meat into the shape of a 'T'

― GodEatGod, Marilyn Manson

“The gallows from which he is suspended forms a Tau cross…There is a nimbus about the head of the seeming martyr. It should be noted that the tree of sacrifice is living wood, with leaves thereon; that the face expresses deep entrancement, not suffering; that the figure, as a whole, suggests life in suspension, but life and not death…He who can understand that the story of his higher nature is imbedded in this symbolism will receive intimations concerning a great awakening that is possible, and will know that after the sacred Mystery of Death there is a glorious Mystery of Resurrection.” ― A.E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot

Ignorance is bliss

"However, other characteristics of the mountain were considered less admirable. Legend said that it gave off a golden light which made all the animals that lived on it, noble and ignoble, appear to be the same. In other words, it lacked discrimination and the ability to distinguish between skilful and unskilful, good and bad, foolishness and wisdom." ― buddhisma2z.com

 

"In the context of Hindu mythology, stambha, also spelt as Skambha, is believed to be a cosmic column. It is believed that the stambha functions as a bond, which joins the heaven and the earth." ― wikipedia

"The sun and moon stood still in their habitation, At the light of thine arrows as they went, At the shining of thy glittering spear." (Habakkuk 3:11)

"Striker, we're going to the tower. Good luck."

"They're going to the tower."

"The tower! The tower! Rapunzel! Rapunzel!"

"Stewardess, how soon till we land?"

"It won't be long now. Try not to worry."— Airplane!

"Early printed decks that preserve all their cards do feature The Tower. In these decks the card bears a number of different names and designs. In some Belgian tarots and the 17th century tarot of Jacques Viéville, the card is called La Foudre or La Fouldre, ("The Lightning") and depicts a tree being struck by lightning." — wikipedia

 "And the LORD shall be seen over them, and his arrow will emerge as the lightning"
(Zechariah 9:14)

"Lightning plays a crucial role in tales dealing with the creation of the world and its preparation for the advent of mankind. In the cosmogony of the Popol Vuh, three Lightning deities identified with the 'Heart of the Sky' (among whom Huraqan 'One-Leg') create the earth out of the primordial sea, and people it with animals." ― wikipedia 

"In the Jewish religion, a blessing '...He who does acts of creation' is to be recited, upon sighting lightning. The Talmud refers to the Hebrew word for the sky, ("Shamaim") – as built from fire and water ("Esh Umaim"), since the sky is the source of the inexplicable mixture of "fire" and water that come together, during rainstorms. This is mentioned in various prayers and discussed in writings of Kabbalah." — wikipedia

"Lightning: Typically the symbol meanings of lightning deal with instant and divine intervention. Lightning is a major message from a higher source, a message for the observer to wake up and pay attention to his/her surroundings. Lightning was viewed as a creative spark to the Native Americans as it signified the winking Thunderbird. Linked with both fire and water, lightning is also viewed as both creator and destroyer in many cultures." ― groupspaces.com

 "May the LORD bless his land with the precious dew from Heaven above and with the deep waters that lie below. (Deuteronomy 33:13) 

"The Minchiate version of the deck may represent Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden." — wikipedia

"In the Tarot of Paris (17th century), the image shown is of the Devil beating his drums, before what appears to be the mouth of Hell; the card still is called La Fouldre." — wikipedia

"In Crowley's card, the tower, attacked by lightning from above, is also assaulted from below by what he calls the mouth of Dis - a god of chaos. The Hebrew letter PE has as its meaning, 'a mouth.'" — bibliotecapleyades

The House of the Devil

"The ritual that would re-animate the deceased was called The Opening of the Mouth ceremony. It was an important ritual in both funerary and in temple practice. The Opening of the Mouth originated as a ritual to endow statues with the capacity to support the living ka, and to receive offerings. It was performed on cult statues of gods, kings, and private individuals, as well as on the mummies of both humans and Apis bulls. It was even performed on the individual rooms of temples and on the entire temple structure. The effect of the ritual was to animate the recipient (or, in the case of a deceased individual, to re-animate it). The ritual allowed the mummy, statue, or temple, to eat, breathe, see, hear and enjoy the offerings and provisions performed by the priests and officiants, thus to sustain the ka." — touregypt.net

Open up and say AUM

"The card of the Tower in the Renaissance has been called by various names: In the Sermones de Ludo appears as "Sagitta" ("Ray"), other authors including Garzoni, the pool, the Pomeran and Theophilus Folengo call it "The Fire". But it was also called "The Devil's Rejects" in Ferrara and "The House of Pluto" or simply "The House" by Aretino. It was still called "The House of the damned", "Hell" and "Heaven." All of these terms are not mutually contradictory, but significant allegory represented, namely the destruction of a house by fire or lightning, according to the cosmological conception of time, were believed to be from the "Sphera Ignis", sphere or circle of fire that towered the earth. Below, going up to the higher heavens, we're placed on the rim of the Moon, the Stars and what followed that of the Sun, the celestial bodies that we find in the Tarot cards after the Tower." — letarot.it (translated)

"The idea that lightning may be of two types, one destructive, the other benefit, already in Pliinio, which divides the stones of lightning in black and red in his "Naturalis Historiae". The black, round, were sacred and were called Bethel, and could be used to conquer peoples and enemy fleets, while red simple stones were called Lightning. In folk tradition, any stone that came from the heavens is termed a Bethel-the term comes from the Hebrew Bethel = House of God." — letarot.it (translated)

 The House of God

"The mountain is a symbol for the athanor, since the perfection of the metals takes place under the guise of Nature within mountains." — Dennis William Hauck, Sorcerer's Stone 

 An Alchemist's Athanor

"The central mountain is everywhere, the hub of universe, the axis munde, where stillness (eternity) and movement (time) meet. The eternal aspect of temporal (temple) experience." — Joseph Campbell

"A soul cannot develop and progress without an appropriate body, because it is the physical body that furnishes the material for its development." — Franz Hartmann (as quoted in Secret Teachings of All Ages)