The Stygian Port

The Sync Book - Colorado Conference

2012-01-14T00:49:00.000-08:00

Will Morgan (A few Shots to Shaman) and I have been discussing putting together a "sync conference" here in Colorado for The Sync Book. Watch this space, because I'll keep y'all updated on the development. There is going to be a Sync Gathering in New York at the end of January, and we thought we might as well do one here where we live.

I live in Colorado Springs, but Will is up in Denver and that being a college town and all, Denver will probably be where it will happen. But it's all up in the air right now, as we're just starting to plan things out.

Anyone reading this who is willing to drive/fly out is more than welcome to attend! I'm not sure how many actual Sync Heads we can get together out here to do some talking and playing of videos, but so far it looks like at least 3 of us will be hosting this. At least I'll be there to sign your copy of The Sync Book, or preferably, your boobies. ;)

Keep in touch on Facebook (I'm "Violator Hellspawn") where we'll likely be getting most of the people together.

The Man Who Wasn't There

2011-11-29T23:44:00.000-08:00

Last night upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd go away.

One day, many moons ago, I woke up in the guest bedroom of my friends house to a fairly quiet morning. I had probably been drinking the previous night, but that's what teenagers in small towns do. Well, that and one other thing, but my girlfriend had a curfew. After a time I heard my friend enter the bathroom at the end of the hall just to the right of his bedroom door, which was just to the right of the guest bedroom. I stepped out into the hallway while my eyes glanced curiously to my left where the stairs began and descended to the right. At my immidiate left, against the wall, was a bookcase at about mid-torso height. Past that was an empty hallway corner at the top of the stair.

Running, definitely running up the stairs was a very small man. I knew right away that he wasn't "really" there because his footfalls made no noise. He was, perhaps, three and a half feet tall and wearing a cowboy hat. He was also completely monochrome, as if he had been dipped in bronze. When he made it to the top of the stair, he brought both feet together and hopped into the empty corner of that end of the hallway, ducking down as if he were trying to hide behind the short bookcase against the wall.

Pausing for an appropriate "what the fuck," I then arched my neck and peered around the bookcase to see if the mysterious homunculus was indeed playing an impromptu game of hide-and-seek. He was not. About this time my friend exited the bathroom where I proceeded to make myself sound like a crazy person, haranguing him with tales of a bronzed midget cowboy.

(Sent from my iPad, while I am in bed.)

I was on Will Morgan's (A Few Shots to Shaman) podcast 42 minutes recently (EPISODE7), so.. umm.. here it is: Download (click to play, or right click save-as to download).
BONUS! Extra audio, Skype session: Link (click to hear, right click save as to download) Fast forward past to the 5 minute mark when you hear music, because the beginning is part of a Jake Kotze interview.. and you're here to hear me, right?! RIGHT?!...

Aaanyways, this blog post begins with a poem I first heard in The Sixth Sense and appears later in The Haunting in Connecticut. Both of these movies feature the dead existing along side the living, which is a theme discussed in my Land of the Dead article, which was the basis of this recent podcast.

The story which follows the poem is a true account of something that happened to me oh, about 11 years ago. It's one of several "hallucinations" I've had, most of which probably happened when I had been drinking or sometime shortly after. Alcohol is known to make people hallucinate, so I'm not going to say that these occurrences are proof of anything like faeries or what-have-you. Perhaps the altered state of consciousness created by alcohol lowers certain filters and allows a little more reality to enter the field of view. To borrow a term from LUMINOSITY, these experiences may represent a bleed-through from one "world" to another. For example, one day, perhaps 6 or 7 years ago, I was waking up from a dream and was in a partial wake-sleep state. With my eyes still closed, and on the edge of wakefulness, I saw a very large red balloon in front of me; slightly up and to the left. As I opened my eyes the red balloon continued to be visible, even though I was now fully awake and outside of the dream realm. I blinked and rubbed my eyes but it stayed consistent for maybe 5 seconds before dissolving away.

Two of my most recent "hallucinations" gave me the sense that what I was seeing was not imaginary or caused by mis-fired neurons in my brain, but were actual glimpses of a closely parallel world to ours. These happened between 5 or 6 years ago, and are the last ones I can clearly remember having.

Before moving to Texas for a for years, I was staying with my cousin in Southern California and admittedly was drinking a lot those days. This article is making me sound like a lush, by trust me, these were rare occasions. My yearly drinking usually consists of buying a sixer of Guinness on St. Paddy's Day and not even finishing that. My cousin was big time pot-head those days, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't smoking because I thought I would be having job interviews right after I moved and I didn't want to worry about passing the drug tests. Oh, wait a minute, that was true at the start, and then I decided "fuck it" and smoked anyways.. Hmm, not sure when the "hallucination" happened - before or after my "fuck it" moment? Well, that incriminating evidence aside, we were sitting on some bleachers between a school and a baseball diamond waiting for someone to meet up. We weren't actually that close to the baseball diamond, it was to our right up a sidewalk about 30 feet away. It was at night and a little league game was just finishing up. All the kids, still in their cleats and holding their bat-bags, were walking with their parents along the sidewalk which would bring them past us. My cousin was playing his guitar and I was watching the group walk towards us. Weaving through the crowd was a kid, dressed like the rest in a blue and white uniform, running soundlessly along the sidewalk. I knew, as usual, that he wasn't actually there because of the lack of noise that should have been produced from his cleats against the cement, and that his footsteps would have been at a different cadence than the rest of the kids. He seemed to cut through the crowd seamlessly, without bumping into, or "phasing" through anyone, and then he cut a sharp 90-degree angle to his right and ran off into the grass and the more shadowed side of the backstop; continuing to not produce any sound. After about 10 feet he dissolved away. This was the most realistic figure I've seen that, again, "wasn't there."

The last of my "hallucinations" which I will leave you with happened perhaps a year or two after the above story. I was laying on my futon at one end of the room watching a movie on my TV in the dark. The only light was coming from the TV and it came up at an angle where it hit the ceiling and spread over my side of the room, opposite the TV. I'm not sure if I had been drinking anytime around this event, so I don't think that can be explained as the cause. As I was lying there watching my movie, I happened to look up at the ceiling to see a very large, perhaps volleyball sized spider (the kind with a huge ass and not much else) which was a translucent yellowish skin color, covered in purple polka-dots. Hopefully not representative of any actual spider, because thinking this thing was real would have made me wet my bed. It walked in a very hobbling way, almost bouncing along the ceiling going from the light of the TV into the quickly darkening shadow of the opposite wall. I knew my air-conditioning vent was in it's path, and I have to admit I half expected to see the vent wide open to allow such a creature into my room. During it's walk I was rubbing my eyes, blinking and so on, but it continued to be visible until it had gone entirely into shadow. I slid along my wall to the light switch, just to make sure, and thankfully it was not there anymore when I flipped the lights on. I have read about spider creatures being used by evil government-employed shaman to create "webs" which prevent remote viewers and astral projectors from visiting certain locations. But I don't that explains what I was seeing. I really hope to never journey into a world with freaky giant bugs, but I do think this could have been a bleed-through from somewhere else. To be fair, he was walking on my ceiling, not in mid-air on an invisible surface, so where ever this thing is from, my ceiling is there too. Maybe it's like in Constantine where once you cross-over the whole world is the same, just in hell. Or that there's an archetypal world under this one.. that has giant arachnids.

Last night, before I walked up my stair, I think I met a man, or woman, who really wasn't there. This is a new house, and though it does have its creeks and cracks, it doesn't seem like a "haunted house." The women in my family tend be the ones more likely to see ghosts, but again, no such sighting has occurred here. Nor do I personally think there's a non-corporeal presence here. Disclaimers aside, I either have to admit that I'm more absent minded than I thought, or something made contact last night. Now, I am extremely absent minded. For instance I'll sometimes forget if I've already shampooed my hair in the shower. I do a lot of thinking in there though, so it's easy to lose track of what has been soaped up already and what has not. Well to make a short story longer, I had just watched Frailty as well, which is about demons. So, I'm getting ready to go upstairs to my bathroom and I'm getting a glass of water in the kitchen. At about that time I either scratched my own neck and didn't realize it, or someone (or some-thing) scratched it for me. I wasn't itching, so I'm not sure why I would have done it. By the time I got to the bathroom and had a look in the mirror, the scratch was feeling very much like a rug-burn on my neck. There were, and still are, two raised reddish lines running from basically the back-left of my neck up at an angle towards my left ear. At first I thought it was obviously self-inflicted, but the angle is perpendicular to the direction I would normally scratch my neck with my left hand. Even my right hand wouldn't scratch at that angle. Also my fingernails, which I do keep rather long, didn't have skin under them. I don't know what to make of this one except that I either scratch myself at odd angles without consciously knowing about it, or something else scratched me. Meh, they know where to find me, and maybe next time I can get them to scratch my back instead.

The Sync Book - Out Now

2011-09-14T14:46:00.000-07:00

I wrote Chapter 3 in this one. So.. yeah, check it out!

Order The Sync Book List Price: $14.99

(I couldn't get it to work in Opera, but it worked in Firefox, in case someone else gets an error on the order form.)

P.S. Got a few movie projects lined up, but yeah, I'm lazy and all. I was on a horror movie bender which had nothing to do with the projects, and then my "secure movie-downloading internet" was down for a while. Anyhoo, back at it soon enough! :D

Here Is Wisdom - Them or Us

2011-06-17T23:01:00.000-07:00

This is 30-minutes of bonus footage that didn't fit into the main movie.

Here Is Wisdom - Feature Length Video

2011-06-05T22:15:00.000-07:00

Liquor Up Front, Poker In The Rear

2011-05-29T18:19:00.000-07:00

"The divine secret is not hidden, it is right in front of us. Whether we see it or not depends upon the level of attention we give to observing the details and establishing ties between them." - Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of Tarot

I was sitting around thinking, "I'd rather be playing poker," and while cutting the deck one-handed, I decided to lay the cards out and see what was what in a deck of standard playing cards. I happen to be using a generic no-name Made in China deck which companies use as promotional items, though I do have a Gemaco and Bicycle deck for comparison.

First, a rundown of what you'll find, in case you've lived in a cave all your life. A deck of playing cards has 52 cards and 2 jokers. It's split into four suits, which in America, France, and just about any place that isn't Germany, are: Diamonds, Clubs, Hearts and Spades. The Diamonds and Hearts are red and the Clubs and Spades are black. Each suit has 13 cards, an Ace with a value of 1, numbered cards from 2 through 10, and 3 face cards (royal, or court cards), also called "paint" in poker: the the Jack, Queen and King.

It has been suggested that some meaning might lie behind these cards. For instance in a lunar calendar there would be 13 months of exactly 4 weeks (28 days) which equals 52 weeks, for the 13 cards per 4 suits totaling 52 cards. Of course, with 28 days per month and 13 months, that comes out to only 364 days leaving us with the extra "day out of time" whose place might be filled by the Joker. Chances are that this is all incidental, but it is a nice mnemonic device as there are still 52 weeks in our solar calendar with the 13th month broken up among the rest. And the 4 suits could instead be seen as the 4 seasons, with Spring and Summer as the red/sunny months, and fall and winter as the black suits.

The Aces can be played as a low or high card, Alpha or Omega, for example: as a straight from A-2-3-4-5 with the Ace as the lowest card, or 10-J-Q-K-A with the Ace as the highest card. Playing them high came about during the Revolution in France where it was a symbol that the lowest can reach the highest. Seeing the 4 Aces as high, we might separate the deck into 16 High cards (J-Q-K-A x 4), and 36 Low cards (2 thru 10 x 4). I'm using the terms "High" and "Low" to separate numbered cards from the court cards (and sometimes Ace). The number 36 can symbolize 666 (1+2...+35+36=666), the Magic Square of the Sun numbers from 1 to 36 with 6 rows and columns adding to 111 (6x111=666), and 36 is the number of degrees of each internal angle of a pentagram. So, as you can see, there's some baggage there! However, when grouping Aces with the Low cards we end up with 12 High cards, and 40 Low cards. The number 40 can represent a period of trial, purification or preparation before the "birth" of something new, as in: the 40-weeks of pregnancy, the 40 days of the flood (birth waters), 40 years of wandering the desert (tribulation, purification), and so on. A rainbow is seen at about 40-42 degrees of light refraction, with 42-degrees being the spectrum of red light (the 40 Low cards plus the 2 Jokers, perhaps). "The number 40, by the way, is employed interchangeably with 42 in ancient numerical systems, thereby making an even multiple of weeks." - Symbols, Sex, and the Stars by Ernest Busenbark

The Tarot, still used as a card game in it's own right, has 4 suits of 78 cards split into 22 Major Arcana (the picture cards) and 56 Minor Arcana (the numbered cards and court cards). The reason for the 4 extra Minor cards of the Tarot is the addition of one more court card per suit, giving us: the Page, the Knight, the Queen, and the King (or in the Thoth deck: the Knight, the Queen, the Princess, and the Prince).

The Tarot has been connected to the Torah due to the similar spelling, and symbols such as the Tree of Life with it's 22 paths being connected both to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and the 22 Major Arcana of the Tarot. The difference between the Tarot's 78 cards and modern 52-card decks is 26. The numeric value for YHWH/Yahweh/God in Hebrew is 26. One could say that "god was taken out of the cards" to make playing cards for gambling. Note that 52 is 26+26, two more "gods." So, the whole set of cards could be seen as a trinity of gods, or a single triune god: 26+26+26, which reduces to single digit 8+8+8 which totals 24 hours of a full day (12 day/red, and 12 night/black), and is symbolically the number of Jesus Christ: 888.

Speaking of letter-number values, if we assign a number for each face card and Ace based on that letters position withing the English Alphabet, we get: A=1, J=10, K=11, Q= 17, for a total of 39. Taking the total 39 multiplied by each of the 4 suits gives us 156, which is 2x78/Tarot cards, or 2(26+26+26).

Alchemy traditionally has 3 main stages: the Black, White and Red (sometimes with an intermediary Yellow or Rainbow stage before Red). In taking out one "26/God" from the Tarot, the Major Arcana and the 4 extra court cards, perhaps the White phase was also taken out of playing cards, leaving only Black and Red. You can separate the 52 cards into 26 Black and 26 Red. Seeing as how 26 can symbolize a god, we can see this as two gods on opposite ends of the spectrum, or two stages of God: beginning (Black) and end (Red).

The 52 cards can be split up in a number of ways. For instance, you might break up the deck using the line of horizontal symmetry to separate the cards out. Some cards are mirrored top to bottom, like the 2-Hearts which has one heart at the top of the card, and an inverted heart at the bottom. Some cards aren't mirrored, such as the 3-Clubs which has 2 upright clubs in the top and middle, and one inverted club at the bottom. The symbol of the Club is not horizontally symmetrical, but the Diamond is, making the 3-Diamonds a symmetrical card.

Going along like this, and counting Aces among the Low cards, we end up with 18 symmetrical to 22 non-symmetrical Low Cards and 12 face cards which are technically not mirrored across the center line, but do display the same image if inverted. That is, the Suicide King would still be stabbing himself with his left hand and looking to his right, even if the card were spun 180-degrees. The symmetrical 18 cards can be seen as 6+6+6, and the non-symmetrical 22 cards number the same as: the Major Arcana of the Tarot, letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and paths on the Tree of Life. It is also the highest double-digit in numerology that is not reduced to a single digit.

Jodorowsky on symmetry, from The Way of Tarot:

"I remembered that during my first trip to Japan, the guide leading me around the ancient imperial palace pointed out that no windows or doors were ever constructed in a straight line and that no windows or doors were divided into symmetrical squares. In Japanese culture, the straight line and symmetry are considered to be demonic. Actually, the study of sacred art shows that it is never symmetrical. The door of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris that is located to our left is wider than the door situated to our right. All symmetrical art is profane. Nor is the human body symmetrical: our right lung has three lobes, while our left one has two. The Tarot reveals that it is a sacred art because the upper portion of any card is never identical to the lower, nor the left side to the right. There is always a small detail, sometimes very difficult to make out, that breaks the resemblance."

The reason that the face cards appear the same when flipped around is that it would be quite telling if a poker player were to turn their cards around because he wanted all the face cards to be heads up and feet down. So, unlike the pictures in the Tarot, playing cards have only a torso and head and one or two hands, and the same image is repeated on the bottom half to keep people from being tempted into flipping them around. The Gemaco decks have the suit symbol in the center of the face cards, making the Hearts, Spades and Clubs into non-symmetrical face cards, as those symbols have a definite top and bottom.

Totaling the values of all the cards from A to 10 times the 4 suits equals 220. (There's the 22 again.) And adding up all the numbered cards, or rather adding all the individual pips on the cards (2 thru 10 x 4 suits), we get the sum of 216. 216 is a number which relates to a Hebrew concept of God, this time being the combination of 72 3-letter names, collectively called the "divided name" (72x3=216). And going back to the reckoning of time of our lunar calendar cards, 216 and 72 are numbers associated with the precession of the equinox: 72 years to move one degree in the precession with 12 Ages/Zodiac signs of 2,160 years each.

el demon

Alexander Jodorowsky uses the World card, Le Monde, as a template for the mandala of the Tarot. Below is how the symbols on this Tarot card are laid out, with the corresponding playing card suits listed next to each Tarot suit:

Cups/Hearts (top left) Receptive-Sky
Swords/Spades (top right) Active-Sky
Pentacles/Diamonds (bottom left) Receptive-Earth
Wands/Clubs (bottom right) Active-Earth

Jodorowsky explains that in Western religious art, we are meant to mirror the god or temple. A Cathedral would have the receptive elements on our lunar/left and active elements on our solar/right, because in the West, the best we can do is to emulate God. Alternatively, Eastern art and temples are oriented as if we are to change places with it: the solar side of a temple would be on our left, and lunar side on our right. This is because we are supposed to aspire to become the Buddha or the temple and switch places with it, where those elements would then be on the correct sides.

The World card of the Marseilles Tarot shows a woman with an active element, the baton, in her left hand (our right as we view her), and with the receptive retort in her right hand (our left). This shows that the Tarot, a Judeo-Christian creation, is oriented like a Western temple: a mirror. Looking at the suits, we find the receptive Cups/Hearts on the left, and the active Swords/Spades on the right. Again, a mirror. Also, we find that the red cards are to our left, and the black cards are to our right. This is interesting because I would think of red as an active color and black as being receptive, which would put the colors we see into an Eastern orientation. Tarot cards, however, don't have set colors for the specific suits because the colors add meaning to each card, and change accordingly. For playing cards at least, we might see a coincidental merging of Western and Eastern symbolism when the suits are laid out to match the World card.

Further investigation of the Tarot brings out an interesting symbolic formula:

"Out of four parts, three are almost identical, and one is different. And out of the three that are equal, two have more resemblance to each other. In other words: ([1+2] + 3) + 4." - Jodorowsky, The Way of Tarot

Some examples:

In the four elements, three are similar (air, water, fire) and one different (earth). Among the three that are similar, two are more so (air, fire), and one is different (water). In other words: ([Air+Fire]+Water)+Earth.
On the human face, the ears, eyes, and nostrils are double, whereas the mouth is single. The eyes and ears are separated, while the nostrils come together into one nose. In other words: ([Ears+Eyes]+Nostrils)+Mouth.

There are many more examples of this formula, especially in religious themes, but what of playing cards? In the standard suits, we have 3 symbols with a definite top-bottom orientation, and one (the Diamonds) which is horizontally symmetrical. Out of the 3 left, the Spades and Clubs both have a stand upon which they rest, so: ([Spades + Clubs] + Hearts) + Diamonds.

Another example of the-one-that-is-most-different theme is found in the Tarot of Marseilles among the Queens of the Minor Arcana. The Queens all hold the symbol of their suit, but the Queens of Cups, Pentacles, and Wands are all holding an additional object; the Queen of Swords is not. An interesting inversion occurs in playing cards where all the Queens are holding a flower, yet this time it is the Queen of Spades(Swords) who is holding the additional object: a scepter. The same card is singled out, but for the opposite reason this time. The Queens of Spades is also the only Queen looking to our right. All the Queens have a crown with a red bottom-edge, except for the Q-Diamonds who has a black base on her crown. All the Queens have uncolored lines across their necks, except for the Q-Clubs whose neck is partially colored in. (This is not the case in the Bicycle deck where 2 have necks lines and 2 have white necks.)

Among the Jacks, they all have blue on red in their crowns except for the J-Hearts. (Again, among the Bicycle face cards, there seems to be more of a pairing of cards. In this case the J-D and J-H both have white space in their crowns, though the J-Hearts sticks out among the 4 with a black crown base, and as the only one with yellow hair covering his whole neck.) The J-Spades is the only one with a leaf coming out from behind his crown, and is also the only one without a mustache. The J-Diamonds' hand is mostly hidden, with only his fingers showing, unlike the rest. The J-Hearts holds a leaf/feather while the rest hold a staff or scepter. He is also not seen holding the axe which is behind his head. It might be interpreted that he is about to be decapitated by someone else, not seen in the picture. They all have lines across their necks except for the J-Clubs whose neck is colored in with solid red. The next oddball is the J-Hearts whose neck has the lines but is colored yellow, leaving the J-Spades and J-Diamonds as having the most similar necks. Two are in profile and two are partially turned:

"In these early cards, the Jack of Spades, Jack of Hearts, and King of Diamonds are shown from the rear, with their heads turned back over the shoulder so that they are seen in profile; however, the Rouen cards were so badly copied in England that the current designs are gross distortions of the originals." - Wikipedia, Playing Cards

Among the Kings, the "Suicide King," K-Hearts, stands out as being the only one with his weapon interacting with him, as the only one with both hands visible, and also, as the only one without a mustache (and in the Bicycle deck, as the only one lacking the color red in his crown). The K-Diamonds, the only King in profile, is also the only one with a curved crown base. And the K-Clubs is the only one with blue in his crown rather than green (the green is black in Bicycle cards and 2 have blue along the base of their crown). The K-Diamonds, like the J-Hearts, has a axe coming from behind his head, though instead of holding another object, his hand is up as if in prayer.

Perhaps other symbols have significance. Such as, that the Jacks have 6 eyes total among them, the Kings have 7, and the Queens have 8 eyes showing (for a total of 21, 7+7+7). However, I think I've taken up enough of your time, and given you something to ponder the next time you shuffle up and deal, so I'll color up and call it quits here. (Did I use enough poker slang for ya?!)

Atrophying Test - Video Preview

2011-03-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

Alrighty, the current video project is looking like it's going to be about an hour long, not including the credits. It will be too big to upload to Vimeo as one full-length video, so it will probably be cut into 3 or more pieces. Anyone who donates any amount from now until I let you know it's ready will get producer credits, with the highest amount as executive producer, and all $10+ donations will get a DVD with extra footage if it all fits (sent the your address listed on paypal, unless you specify that you don't want the 'free gift'). I've already spent $100 on a new harddrive (the free one turned out to be worth every penny), and I will probably buy a quality microphone for narration and podcasting. Just looking for help in making this and more videos if anyone has disposable income in a paypal account they're looking to spend. ;) If not, I understand (I can't even afford to pay attention!), but you'll be missing out on those lovely producer credits!!

I've cut a 1:42 minute clip out of the first ~5 minutes of the video as a teaser trailer for you guys. The rest of the video's sections will have at least some narration by myself. Oh! Right now it's still being called "Here Is Wisdom," but if anyone has any ideas for a title, let me know! Maybe watch the original video for inspiration. Make it something catchy and original. All my ideas were already movie titles. D:< If I use your idea, I'll add your name to the opening producer credits even if you don't donate!

Here Is Wisdom - Teaser Trailer from ViolatoR on Vimeo.

Atrophying Test

2011-02-25T23:24:00.000-08:00

Heeeerreeeee's Johnny! Err... Jeremy!

Work has begun on the new video despite the handicap that all my DVD's are boxed up somewhere and still haven't arrived at my new location! D:< I had probably over 150 different movies and TV shows lined up but I'm cutting down the material considerably for the sake of clarity and my sanity. Right now it looks like it will be ~45 minutes long with probably another 10-15 minutes of "bonus footage" not included in the final draft, but maybe on my Vimeo account and a DVD.

Sooooo, the plan is to put together some of the ideas I've presented here before, but easier to understand with more source material, and now with a voice-over in some parts to help explain things. (Yes, my voice will be in this video - you may scream in terror now.) I'd like to make something I can show to the average movie watcher without boring them or confusing them to death.

The video is being broken up in sections which will each explain a piece of a whole mythological theme derived from too much movie watching. I like movies, I watch a lot of them, and I'm using quite a few different movies to make this video. Some people who think there's a single "true" interpretation of a film, or a theme in the film, will be better off not watching this video. It'd be like saying that the color red is evil and that I shouldn't use it in painting this picture! “Because sometimes, words have two meanings.” - Stairway to Heaven

Other videos are planned as well: Tarot in Film 2, as well as another one on theological themes derived from too much movie watching, and probably a few more videos down the line. Kinda seeing where the wind takes me these days; everything is pretty much up in the air.

If you missed it, I was on The Rebel Path recently (link to The Rebel's blog post with show link), so check that out! I don't really remember what we talked about.. 'eh, I'm sure it was mildly entertaining and/or informative. :p

Pithy Tetragons

2010-11-22T02:27:00.000-08:00

Begin Scene

ViolatoR sits in Mobil Station waiting for the Train Man to take him from The Desert Of The Real and back into the Matrix. He is the sixth systemic anomaly in the Matrix programming, and possibly the last. Time will tell. Also, Morpheus might have a thing for him, but that's The Celtic Rebel's arena.

End Scene

Update: Got the new hard-drive, only it's giving a message that it's about to die and I should back up all my info and prepare to replace it. So.. not gonna be starting a video project on it!

Moving to Colorado still, but can't afford to take anything but the car I'm going to drive there in. D:<

So, like I said in the intro, I'm just sitting in limbo, looking for a way out (or through).

Spatting Theory

2010-09-15T00:07:00.000-07:00

Do you hear what I hear? It's the sound of my comical voice on Star Theory again! Kyle invited me back to talk about Gremlins, in movies and elsewhere. Here is the Star Theory article for the show. And here is the podcast link. And here is the download link. (It's 13.7MB You might have to right-click and choose "save link as...")

I just got back from my hiatus so I didn't have time to write anything to accompany this podcast, but I think between Kyle's post, and my previous article on the subject, we've got it pretty well covered.

The idea that gremlins are both bad and good came up during the discussion, as well as the idea of gremlins being externalized inner demons. Coupled with this, scarredsoul called in to the show and poked fun at my slothy nature by questioning my opinion of the seven deadly sins. Just after the show I read something in The Song Of The Bird which I think goes well with my attitude on the subject:

A preacher put this question to a class of children: "If all the good people were white and all the bad people were black, what color would you be?"
Little Mary replied, "Reverend, I'd be streaky!"

And today I read something in Alan Watts' (not Alan Watt's) book The Book On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are which goes well with the above sentiment:

Thus for thousands of years human history has been a magnificently futile conflict, a wonderfully staged panorama of triumphs and tragedies based on the resolute taboo against admitting that black goes with white. As when Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle, the essential trick of the Game of Black-and-White is a most tacit conspiracy for the partners to conceal their unity, and to look as different as possible. It is like a stage fight so well acted that the audience is ready to believe it a real fight. Hidden behind their explicit differences is the implicit unity of what Vedanta calls the Self, the One-without-a-second, the what there is and the all there is which conceals itself in the form of you.

Well, that's all I have to say about that. Per tradition, the title of this blog post is an anagram of the name of the blog :) And the opening line of this post is my favorite part of Gremlins part 1; when the mom finds the cocoons and starts walking down stairs and the gremlins put on the Christmas record with the song lyrics, "do you hear what I hear?"

Coming Eventually & Styx-Theory Podcast

2010-06-17T00:35:00.000-07:00

Update, as of July 18 - I found internet at the library! So in case you haven't heard it yet, here is the most recent interview I did on Kyle's Star Theory show! Hopefully I can find time on my return to civilization to do another... ;)

That's right, at some point in the near to not-so-near future I will get off my lazy ass, then sit back down on my lazy ass in front of the computer, and work on my upcoming video project which is in essence a longer version of my first video, Here Is Wisdom, along with some other topics discussed here at The Port. Until that time, here is a trailer for it I whipped up out of boredom which hints at some of the content of the video.

The Stygian Port - Preview from ViolatoR on Vimeo.

I'm going to be away from my computer and inactive here for probably a couple of months, though I might work behind the scenes on collaborations and drop into The Rebel Path, and chat room, from time to time (Sunday's at 10pm Central). I recommend following this blog (scroll down) so you know when I'm back.

Sex & Death

2010-05-22T00:10:00.002-07:00

"Sex sells," and as the newspapers say, "if it bleeds, it leads." If "sex sells," then what exactly is it selling? Long ago in some distant foggy memory I had read or heard about the idea of anchoring ideas to specific emotional states, and how movies create and release tension through pictures and music/sound effects. So, I decided that sex was a pretty strong emotion, and payed attention to what it was being anchored to. Turns out the answer, more times than not, is death. Many, many times, a scene of death precedes, follows, or runs parallel to a scene of sex, flashing back and forth between the two scenes. Sex is selling us death. But is it a mythological subconscious archetype linking death to regeneration like winter leads into spring, or would that be too optimistic an appraisal of the magick being worked in the Holy Woods of Los Angeles?

Sex & Death from ViolatoR on Vimeo.

Most sex and death scenes happen in "cop drama" type shows or bad movies, neither of which I own, so I made due with what I had which should be sufficient to support that I'm on to something here! I left out of this video a scene from 1996's Crash because it didn't fit so well. However, this film depicts characters who have linked sexual pleasure to the excitement and fear of car crashes, and to the mutilation of the human body, as well as the mechanization of a repaired body, held together by pins, stitches, and other medical apparatus. Is there an intended or unintended side-effect of this movie trope which, over time through repetition, causes people to feel violent when thinking of sex and feel turned on when thinking of violence? Something to keep our base instincts overstimulated and to leave little room for higher instincts to come into play. I was flipping through my dad's old copy of the Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange and on the inside of the cover he wrote: "Deprived by science of the capacity to make moral choices, Alex becomes a “clockwork orange,” something mechanical that appears organic."

Despite the possible programming usage of Sex & Death, it does represent a duality of types, since all things that are created through sexual or creative energy will dissolve away in a type of death at some point or another, as Osho and Joseph Campbell pointed out.

For the French, an orgasm is la petite mort, the little death. Wikipedia calls it a "spiritual release that comes with orgasm," presumably as a metaphor for the release of the spirit at death.

While traditionally left unnamed, the 13th tarot card of the Major Arcana featuring a Grim Reaper, or similar character, is named "La Mort," (Death) as seen in the popular Rider-Waite-Smith tarot. La Mort is an easy anagram of Mortal, which would indicate life, and thus a duality of life(sex/generation) and death hidden in the card. Also, L-a-M-o-r-t contains L-AMOR-t, and amor means love, as seen in the phrase Amor vincit omnia, "love conquers all" (even death?).

Here's some stuff I forgot to add when I published this post, just more random Sex & Death stuff:

"Ultimately, I have to come to terms with the fact that all my songs are either about sex or death. I'm increasingly distrustful of any songs that are not about one of those two subjects." - “JT” of JT & The Clouds

11 craziest sex related deaths in history.

Zardoz

2010-05-16T23:52:00.000-07:00

Here's a video by Paulo Samoes using clips from My Dinner With The Celtic Rebel - Part 4. It's just the parts of the podcast where we talked about Zardoz. My voice actually sounds better in this video I think... :D I'm actually fighting my lazy urges and working diligently on my next video - Sex & Death. So, look forward to that! Woooo! Meanwhile, enjoy this video from a fellow soul traveler!

ZARDOZ final version from paulo samoes on Vimeo.

Zardoz analogy by Celtic Rebel and Stygian Port.

Total Recall vs The Sixth Day

2010-05-13T20:23:00.000-07:00

Here's an old video I made just for my own amusement. I was going to include it in a collaborative project but the other blogger and I decided to do something else. I've been gone for two weeks then have been busy since I've been back, so while I'm waiting for a few collaborations to pan out, I've decided to start working on two videos, one short one and one long one that may never get completed knowing me. :D PS: I made it for jewtube originally so it's a bit condensed and doesn't cover all the similarities, but they wouldn't allow embedding on it so I had to transfer it to Vimeo.

Total Recall vs The 6th Day from ViolatoR on Vimeo.

I could have gone into an old school synchromystic mode and pointed out how Adam's mirror has 9 and 11 on it, and that he makes thermite which may have been used in the towers on 9/11. He makes it at his snow/ski vacation store which is next to a pyramid shaped building ("pillarmid") surrounded by K2 ski/snowboard brand logos. But 'eh, that's so boring.

Tarot in Film

2010-04-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

Here's a little video on tarot card symbolism in movies. Some movies directly reference Tarot cards and sometimes there's a scene which appears to be inspired by them. It's just one of those things I would have liked to see, but since no one else made a video like this I had to get off my lazy ass and do it. There's plenty of scenes I didn't get around to using or couldn't put in since many of my movies are in VHS format still.

Some scenes are a bit more subjective than others, but I think they fit well enough. ;) Even though I wasn't going for a synchromystic video this time, there's still a couple of synchronicities among these movies. Johnny Depp walks in on a "Hanged Man" in The Ninth Gate, only to be the "Hanged Man" in Pirates of the Caribbean. And Heath Ledger is hung by one leg in The Dark Knight and is the "Hanged Man" in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

Tarot in Film - Part 1 from ViolatoR on Vimeo.

There are some other interesting connections to be made. In the original black and white Metropolis, the female robot takes on the form of a resistance leader in order to subvert her influence. She then becomes a sex object for the ruling elite. And in the scene where she is performing for them, she rides atop a beast with many heads like in Revelations, but also like in the final engraving from The Ninth Gate or Crowley's Thoth deck where Strength was turned into Lust and depicts a similar scene.

The mad scientist who makes the robot stands in front of her with the leader of the city in a mirror the The Devil card which has a figure surmounted with a pentagram with two other figures standing below and on either side. He also has a single gloved hand which is how some people interpret the colored hand of The Hermit tarot card from the Marseille's deck:

The Stygian Port on Star Theory - Video

2010-04-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

If you missed my two hour podcast with Kyle Hunt of Star Theory, well, you're in luck! Or not, depending...
I whittled it down to just under 45 minutes among 4 videos and spliced in some movie scenes we discuss as well as adding many pretty pictures. Kyle's audio gets garbled at times and I'm a low talker.. you've been warned!

The Stygian Port on Star Theory 1 of 4 from ViolatoR on Vimeo.

The Stygian Port on Star Theory 2 of 4 from ViolatoR on Vimeo.

The Stygian Port on Star Theory 3 of 4 from ViolatoR on Vimeo.

The Stygian Port on Star Theory 4 of 4 from ViolatoR on Vimeo.

Got a couple of podcasts lined up for a possible future, one already recorded with Alex which is often alluded to but never seen/heard, and maybe some videos coming up if my computer can hang with my plans!

Death & Dairy

2010-03-23T18:20:00.000-07:00

While grabbing scenes for another video I plan to make, I noticed there was an interesting synchronicity between the last three or so movies I had recently watched. There seemed to be a possibly intentional correlation being made between milk/dairy products and death. Sounds weird, I know. Well, I remembered/found a few more movies which seemed to back this up, so I put them together inter-spliced with some television interviews and commercials about milk/dairy in general. So check it out and then read my theories on it below:

Death & Dairy from ViolatoR on Vimeo.

I was too lazy to add music to the video, but if I had, it would have been by these guys:

Damn, most of this post got deleted when blogger failed to save it and I tried to post it. :/ Oh well. So, if you want to know more about why drinking dairy isn't a good tradition to mindlessly follow, see: notmilk.com

My thoughts are that milk is being connected to death in a sort of symbolic "land of milk and honey" type theme. Milk relates to babies/birth/rebirth in the afterlife, and honey was used in mummification in some places, as well as being used to preserve food. So milk and honey is birth and death, only here in these movies, death is carried out by mafia hit-men most of the time. Anyways I'm too hungry to keep typing, so enjoy this small post and video. ;)

The Holy Mountain - Rubedo

2010-03-01T03:31:00.001-08:00

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." - Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas

This is the last post in this series after, Nigredo, Albedo, and Cauda Pavonis. The name "Rubedo" refers to the last phase of the alchemical process when the Stone is finally achieved. You do not have to read the first three parts to enjoy this (well, I hope you enjoy it!), but you might want to go back and check them out if you haven't already, just to get a better picture of the whole movie. At the closing of the last scene, where the effigies are burned, Jodorowsky also burns his style of filming and returns to a simpler style he refers to as more real, and as reality. Though he's concentrating more on the style of the film, it also serves as foreshadowing of a return to reality for the characters who are leaving the illusionary world of money and power behind. The next scene has the group walking through beautiful green mountains, far removed from the factories we have seen these characters inhabit previously. The Prostitute and chimp are still following The Thief. There's some interesting tidbits in the commentary, so I'll be throwing a lot of that in this final part of this series of articles.

The first stop for the group of characters, who I have explained previously are each represented by the actor who closely resembles his or her character in real life, is a dwelling of an actual shaman playing himself on screen just as the actors. The location it's filmed in is the Tepoztlan area which is said to have been the Mexican Eden, where the gods lived; an analogue to The Holy Mountain they are journeying towards perhaps. Jodorowsky didn't direct the shamans, they just did as they pleased and he filmed it. This shaman does actual techniques he would do in real life such as "cupping" which I know is also used in acupuncture.

One of the group members is sickened by the smell of the old man, so The Alchemist breaks all his bones and says he'll like the shaman's smell when he gets done fixing him! "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us." - Hermann Hesse. The guy who hates the Indian shaman really hates the knowledge that he is the same aging flesh-bag as the shaman and everyone else, and he hasn't yet come to terms with that. I hate stupid people because I know I was one of them and still am in other ways, I'm sure. So, I really hate that capacity in myself which could turn me into a zombie at any moment. Other people are mirrors for our selves. we gauge our appearance by the looks in their faces. Even animals can serve this purpose which I see everyday because my sister hates her dog which is exactly like her in every way; a doggie-mirror of all her anxieties. It's funny, but also sad that we can dispense so much negative emotion on others because we hate parts of ourselves. Of course, what you do to others, you do to yourself; thoughts have forms, emotions and words affect the world around us. The time in my life when I really, really, hated other people coincided with the time when I really hated myself.

Jodorowsky has been unusually lucky to come in contact with many Masters in his life, mostly female, and during the filming on the mountains, he just decided to go up and film at the top of a mountain saying "We'll find a master there," and he was right. He found female shaman waiting who said "I've come to help you." It would seem that some intelligence conspired to give authenticity to this movie, and it's too bad it was kept underground for so long, but now it's finally out there affecting the global consciousness.

Another shaman greets the group in real life on another mountain. "The flower knows. You don't need to ask it." (The flow-er knows) Here the group runs through a field of flowers to gather pollen on their bodies. They are getting close physical contact with nature, here, and at the last shaman who gave them a soup made of some plants. The pollen represents the hallucinogenic plant world, and it is gathered from the bodies, rolled into a ball, and placed into a cut on their bellies. Jodorowsky goes on the explain that the actors themselves stayed locked up in a house for two months with only 4 hours of sleep doing all kinds of exercises as well as hallucinogenic mushrooms. Needless to say, there must have been some profound psychological change in these actors at the time. I have heard of other cases of monks being locked in the dark until they can produce their own light, or sitting in the snow until they can produce their own heat, or spending weeks in the dark on special diets while their pineal gland is being stimulated to open their third eyes. A severe retreat from the world is sometimes necessary to erase the ingrained programming of the illusionary world. I recommend people do some traveling to other parts of the world, not because you're going to find something there you couldn't have at home (like going to India to find enlightenment which never works), but that by doing so you gain some perspective and can see that there's more to the world, more ways of thinking, living, and so on.

Anyways, the pollen causes them to "shapeshift" or transfer their consciousness into the surrounding animals, and to see the world through their senses. A dog(/god) walks by and they smell the flowers through it's nose. Then, they get up and walked in a chain holding hands and say "Together we form a dog in search of a sacred flower." Then they are laying down with their legs up, first together then spreading apart, and say: "Together we form a flower in search of a sacred water." Voice over: "This is the moment when the Word is made flesh." This scene is a synchromystic's dream these days, but I'll just say that together they do form a god/dog in search of a sacred flower. The on-line etymology dictionary says "sacred" may connect to words which mean to "bind, restrict, enclose, protect," which seems to fit. The sacred flower is the hidden flow-er, off limits to Man, that is The Godhead. The fountain-head of consciousness, or simply The Fountain.

They are a "god"(dog), I say, because that's all it takes to create one – a large enough group of believers. I think it takes at least 10 people to be recognized as an official religion. There was a experiment in contacting a soul through a séance which was successfully carried out and information was obtained which matched perfectly the history of this particular soul. The cosmic rub is that the soul was a fictional creation by the original team, given a name and back-story, and then contacted through the séance. Over time they removed the original group members who knew the truth and replaced them with people who didn't until they had mostly or all new members of the group channeling a non-existent soul! I don't remember the details, except that it made me feel that this is the basis for religion and miracles. A group such as the 10 characters in The Holy Mountain, or the 10 people starting a religion, are collectively their own God, "This is the moment when the Word is made flesh." Yet, like all religions, they search for the sacred flower, or rather the hidden original Flow-er (to beat a synchromystic horse to death).

The group then sits with the shaman and he asks how many are in their group. A couple of them count the group of ten, but only come up with nine each time. The shaman directs them to look into a reflective bowl of water. Each looks and and says "Here's the missing one, they drowned!" They are now at a stage in their evolution where they have forgotten their self, and are open to find the true Self. This reminds me of the movie Bulletproof Monk, where the monk has to forget his own name. They go on a funeral march and bury the "missing person" (the self) in a hole and cover it with dirt.

This is continued at a Mayan pyramid where they have a death ceremony where they cover each other in dirt as if they were being buried. The Alchemist: "The grave receives you with love. Surrender yourself to the earth. Return what was loaned to you." He continues on giving up their past, including friends, lovers, family, desires, hates, etc. The actors are actually crying about their death at this point, Jodorowsky makes the point that they're not acting in this scene, but are really sad. He filmed the movie chronologically so that the actors would change along with the characters they play.

The Alchemist: "You have a grave, it is your first mother. The grave is the door to your rebirth. Now you will surrender the fateful animal you once called your body. Don't try to keep it. Remember, it was a loan."

When the goddess enters the Underworld, she has to give up an article of clothing, a possession, at each of the nine gates until she is naked. When we enter this world through the spectrum of colors, chakras, planets, etc, we get a piece of each, and this can be seen in your zodiac natal chart which shows where the planets were when you were born. People born under certain signs are statistically more likely to get certain diseases, disorders, or have certain health issues according to their sign. In Alchemy circles, it is believed that you receive certain cell salts for each sign/month of gestation, and everyone is lacking 2 or 3 salts when they are born because they obviously didn't gestate for an entire year. And by taking these salts you can fix certain health problems which a person born under your sign is more likely to have. (See this PDF file for more. Mine says, "light sensitivity," which is funny because I put on sunglasses colored over with black marker when I wake up because I hate the brightness!) So, there do seem to be certain qualities we each have from birth, and these are given back to the planets as we strip away our earthly identity on our way back to the source.

The Alchemist and The Planets and The Thief are all about to board a boat when The Thief is mobbed by a group of kids and attempts to feed them all with his bread (staying true to his earlier Jesus persona). The Alchemist laughs and shows The Thief a vision of what would happen if he performed this miracle. He sees the kids attack each other as they each try to hoard as many bread loaves for themselves.

"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women." - Homer Simpson.

In the movie The Invention of Lying, nobody in the world can tell a lie, except one man. He uses his gift in an attempt to help people (after using it for gain for himself), and he only makes things worse in the long run. If not worse, then at least not an improvement. A better example might be Bruce Almighty. The point is that a imperfect person, still acting from the self and not the Self, will only produce imperfect things or effects in the world. It reminds me of the Lancet-Percey stock-picking company advertisement in Pi which says "86% Accurate, only god is perfect." I feel the same way about the current trend towards a revolution against the current state of the world. The only true "Revolution" will be R/Our-evolution. If you can't fix things in your own life, how can you do it on a much larger scale?

On the boat, The Alchemist pulls geometric shapes away from his head and says, "Our thoughts have forms." And he points to The Thief and says, "You have a monster in your mind." The group pulls him in and out pops The Dwarf. But since he is the licentious devil on The Thief's shoulder, so to speak, only The Thief can see The Dwarf. He must toss him overboard and remove this tumor from his soul. The Alchemist: "Free yourself from the past." The chimp with The Prostitute is like the dwarf and The Thief, it's her own companion which she must someday get rid of. On the subject of thoughts having forms, some of you may have seen the movie What The Bleep Do We Know? or otherwise have heard of perfectly named Dr. Emoto and his "Messages From Water" research and book. Basically, our thoughts have an affect on water, and this is important when considering how much water is in each of us, and the world around us. See this article at Red Ice for more.

Prayer and the co-creation of reality, at The Dawn of Aquarius blog: (Thought + Emotion) + Action = Result
"Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. " - Mark 11:24

The group has finally made it to Lotus Island. Upon arrival they all cut their hair; perhaps because it represents all the days of their past, but also its a traditional form of cleansing. The are greeted by a jolly fellow drinking a massive glass of wine or champagne who welcomes them to Lotus Island with a basket of food. The basket actually reminds me of the scene in A Clockwork Orange where Alex de Large is in the hospital and he is given a basket of fruit with something inside which appears to say "EAT ME" like the food in Wonderland which Alice comes upon. There's the babe in the basket myths, but I'm thinking about Jesus and his "EAT ME, DRINK ME" advice to his disciples. Doing so grants eternal life, but as I've pointed out, it does the same thing for vampires and zombies. These are beings who want a material immortality because they don't want to leave something behind (like shopping malls for instance, which is seen in Dawn of the Dead).

We learn that he runs a bar on the island where everyone goes when they first get there which is called the Pantheon Bar. Next to the bar is a sculpture meant to represent "The Thinker" by Rodin. Jodorowsky says it represents the flaws of intellectualism.

"Your knowledge of many things does not grant you wisdom." - Heraclitus (ca. 540 - ca. 480 BC)

"On the path to discovery, the intellect has little to do. There is a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or whatever you like, and the solution comes to you, and you do not know how and why." - Albert Einstein

In I, Robot, Sonny the robot draws his dream of a large group of robots who he says are "slaves to logic." The logical must be mediated by the emotional, the two halves of a complete person. It's your internal Mr. Spock to your internal Captain Kirk. Or more pointedly, your internal antagonist versus your internal protagonist, which is what is being played out in most movies which follow this basic structure. This can be seen in Star Wars where your light and dark sides fight each-other, and in Austin Powers (part 3), Dr. Evil tells Austin Powers, "We're not so different, you and I." (Both characters being played by the same actor – *hint hint*) He joins with Austin Powers at the end. It's like Darth Vader with Luke. When Luke kills his internal Darth Vader in the cave on Degobah while training with Yoda, Yoda calls it a failure. Later, Luke stops short of killing Vader and by doing so causes Vader to join Luke. This is the victory, not just killing the dragon, but drinking it's blood, or transforming the poisonous "waters of life" in Dune into drinking water. Similarly, in the movie Daybreakers vampire blood is poisonous to vampires, but once it has been transformed by the sun it becomes a cure. You don't get rid of your internal Lead, you keep it and that is what you turn into Gold.

"Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you." - Frederich Nietzsche.

The Ego will violently oppose this however: "The attainment of enlightenment from ego’s point of view is extreme death." - Chogyam Trungpa

The Pantheon Bar gets it's name from the Pantheon temple which was a house for all the gods of ancient Rome. The source of knowledge of many things, "the Wikipedia," states that "the generic term pantheon may be applied to any building in which illustrious dead are honored or buried." The Pantheon Bar is a cemetery where a continuous celebration is always going on. The people at this party are all the previous people to journey to Lotus Island in search of The Holy Mountain. They all got this far, this close to their goal, but stopped at the level of material and temporal success. Maybe that's why it's the Pantheon Bar, as a "bar" blocks the path; it bars the passage. "Hitherto shall thou come, but no further." - Job 38:11

The second wonder to be noted in the Bodhisattva myth is its annihilation of the distinction between life and release-from-life – which is symbolized in the Bodhisattva's renunciation of Nirvana. Briefly, Nirvana means "the Extinguishing of the Threefold fire of Desire, Hostility, and Delusion." [In the] legend of the Temptation under the Bo Tree the antagonist of the Future Buddha was Kama-Mara, literally "Desire-Hostility," or "Love and Death," the magician of Delusion. He was a personification of the Threefold Fire and of the difficulties of the last test, a final threshold guardian to be passed by the universal hero on his supreme adventure to Nirvana. Having subdued within himself to the critical point of the ultimate ember the Threefold Fire, which is the moving power of the universe, the Saviour beheld reflected, as in a mirror all around him, the last projected fantasies of his primitive physical will to live like other human beings – the will to live according to the normal motives of desire and hostility, in a illusory ambient of phenomenal causes, ends, and means. He was assailed by the last fury of the disregarded flesh. And this was the moment on which all depended; for from one coal could arise again the whole conflagration. (The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell)

In The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, the first person through the "looking glass" mirror into the Doc's head eventually makes it to the base of a large mountain of giant steps and a voice from above beckons him to continue upwards to salvation. But, he is distracted by Mr. Nick's Lounge Bar, like the Pantheon Bar, which is where those not destined to summit the Holy Mountain will go to take it easy for a while and just enjoy the material world a bit more (at least one more spin on the wheel of birth-death-rebirth).

The group is led through some mausoleums by the owner of the Pantheon Bar who is hoping to convince them to stay and learn from some of the people there. They are street-corner preacher types who dish out their half-baked knowledge, which is lacking in wisdom. The first is a man in a star-spangled top-hat, inspired by Allen Ginsberg, who says the real Holy Mountain is in his words and poems, but the group sees his words to be shit and not honey like he claims. Jodorosky says that poetry like his can't preach enlightenment, though it could be a step on that path. And this is like the other people they meet here, each one representing a step many have us have probably reached on our personal journey.

Next, they move on to my favorite of these Pantheon Bar attendees, the Drug Master, or Drug Guru as I like to call him. Jodorowsky is poking fun at Tim Leary and that era's enlightenment through LSD ideas. He explains that the Artists journey is very long, and heavy drug use can shorten the time you have to learn. By "Artist" he means Alchemist, as it is the Royal Art, and alchemists are known for not only gold making, but life extension. At some point in the commentary, Jodorowsky tells of an Alchemical legend that there are alchemists walking the earth who are 30,000 years old.

The Drug Guru explains that "The cross was a mushroom, and the mushroom was also the Tree of Good and Evil. The Stone of the Alchemists was LSD. (He pops some pills at this point.) The Book of the Dead was a trip. And the Apocalypse describes a mescaline experience. In these flasks are all the Holy Mountains. And in this beautiful young man... is eternity."

What a great scene. Jodorowsky no doubt came upon the mushroom-as-source-of-biblical-symbolism theories during his obviously extensive research. I will admit there are some elegant alternatives to many origins of symbols, but that's all they are is symbols. The mushroom is like the Tree of Life symbol in the Kabbalah, it's a framework, a mnemonic device which was clothed in other symbols. The problem is getting stuck worshiping the finger and not what it points towards. I just asked for and received the 40th anniversary edition of The Sacred Mushroom and The Cross actually (thank you Satan/Santa). However, I'm only ready to read it because I'm past the stage where "all religions come from drugs" so I'm not going to be preaching like the Drug Guru (Anymore – I did spend some time explaining the religious sources of entheogens and astrotheology to my cousins a while back...). This is just one more stop on the way to true Gnosis, and it can be very tempting to stay at a level like this, which is exactly what is being represented by having the Drug Guru in the Pantheon Bar and not on his way to the Holy Mountain anymore.

The last person they talk to is actually a mountaineer, only he has mastered the ability to travel horizontally through the mountain rather than up it. He represents people who make great efforts, Jodorowsky says, but still fail to "climb the Holy Mountain." He's a burly guy who clearly possesses some rare talent, but that's obviously not getting him any closer to the summit of the mountain. The group leaves the Pantheon Bar after this with their host running after them explaining that he can give them trophies and awards and that by leaving they are throwing that all away. He says they "could have made history," but that's not what they want, to go down in some book as famous wise-guys; instead they continue on to anonymous enlightenment.

The group now continues towards The Holy Mountain and actually does some mountain climbing. The group continues through the snow and the hand of one of them becomes frozen because "he was never able to forget his body." He must sacrifice his fingers to go on.

They have mastered the difficult part of the mountain. Now their minds will decompose and suffer the vision of death. (I'm not sure if I wrote that or if I was quoting Jodorowsky, but whatever, it sounds cool.) I think at this point I'd have to warn against watching this movie while stoned... The Alchemist covers his face with a black veil and walks a tiger. The rest follow holding a chain and have visions of their worst nightmares, some of which are their greatest desires turned against them. One woman gets drowned in sperm from a giant "penis" which is depicted as cows having sex and a fist going into her mouth. One man sees a tree covered in dead roosters/cocks and a scary lady with a sword in the tree who cuts off his "Johnson" and hangs him there on the tree. One guy is covered in tarantulas (this would freak me out!). One is pummeled by gold coins. One guy faces a hermaphroditic old man and drinks from his "moobs" (man boobs) which have become cheetah heads spraying milk.

Angels and Demons can't cross over onto our plane. So, instead we get what I call half-breeds. The influence peddlers. They can only whisper in our ears. But a single word can give you courage, or turn your favorite pleasure into your worst nightmare. (Keanu Reeves in Constantine)

The Alchemist, The Planets and The Thief have finally reached the abode of The Immortals. They meditate for three hours before moving up. The Alchemist leaves and tells one of the group that he doesn't need a master anymore, and to decapitate him (The Alchemist). He does so, but The Alchemist tricks him and a lamb is decapitated instead, like in the story of Abraham and Issac.

Before moving on to the Immortals, The Alchemist tells The Thief to leave with The Prostitute who has gone through the same journey while trailing them up the mountain. "Unite yourself with this good woman who came here only because she loves you." The Alchemist gives The Thief his alchemical rooms and charges him with changing the world.

The return of The Thief is similar to many ancient myths decoded by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With A Thousand Faces. The hero may choose to return to his world with the "boon" (the grail, elixir or power he has gained through his journey) and apply it to his world. The Thief is now shown to be like Prometheus, who stole the fire of the gods and brought it down for all Men. The Thief made it to Lotus Island and scaled The Holy Mountain only to come back down and live among people again like The Buddha. Like the changed "waters of life" and the cure for vampirism mentioned earlier in this article, the transformed Thief can serve as a pointer to enlightenment for others.

from The CruX of The Matter

Jodorowsky says, "There is a part of us that will never reach the Holy Mountain. We seek perfection but even the Buddha has a body. And Christ, despite being God, has a human body. The human body is mortal. We must accept that part of ourselves and set it free in the world. That part must go back to the world. The spiritual, enlightened being, must succeed in the world. He is not a victim and must learn to succeed in the world." He brings up an interesting point, that perfection is not possible in this physical reality, nor is it very desirable. When CD's came out, people hated them because records had that 'warmer sound' to them. When MP3's started getting better, they found that people preferred lower quality MP3's over the higher quality ones, because they sounded more natural. People can't stand pure white light of LED's so they have to add a little bit of red in them. My cousin told me that some movies on BlueRay high-definition DVD's are ruined by the crystal clearness because the makeup and costumes look obviously fake. Supposedly, a more symmetrical face is more attractive, but have you ever seen a fake face on one of those Japanese sex robots, or anywhere else? They look obviously fake and unnatural. Speaking of the Japanese, they pride themselves on their different features because traditionally they all pretty much look the same. Frighteningly crooked teeth and hairy moles are marks of beauty there; and clearly are not representative of perfection. So, I don't believe that anyone can be 100% perfect and immortal here in the physical universe. While alive, we will always have one foot in the material realm, like The Star tarot card which depicts a woman with one foot on land and one in water.

The Holy Mountain, as all holy mountains, is the place where the Heaven and Earth meet. It is the uniting of the two halves of the original creation.

According to another Aztec myth, before the creation of the world, there was only the sea and the Earth Monster, Cipactli, who took the form of a crocodile. Tezcatlipoca tempted Cipactli to the surface of the ocean using his foot as bait. The Earth Monster rose to the surface and devoured Tezcatlipoca's foot but during the struggle she lost her lower jaw and was left too weak to return underwater. Tezcatlipoca and the god Quetzalcoatl joined forces to capture her and created the earth from her carcass and formed the tribes of men from her back.

The (usually) male Sky God and the female Earth Matrix which were pushed apart by their children during the creation of the world meet at the Axis Munde, the World Pillar, World Tree, or The Holy Mountain. The earth's axis is where the point on the surface on top points to the North Star, and this is sometimes symbolized by a pillar. I've heard of people being able to peer through the veil by meditating and focusing on this spot in the heavens. The spin of the earth around this point may have caused the creation of the swastika shape (a symbol of luck, as well as creation/destruction depending on the spin) via the Little and Big Bear constellations which can be combined in their spinning to form the familiar shape. The serpent constellation Draco wraps around the pole star. The word cyclone from the Greek word kyklon refers to moving in a circular pattern, and is connected to the idea of the coil of a snake. The cyclone to Oz, the spiral STAiRcase to "where the rainbow ends" in Eyes Wide Shut, the spiral horn which opens the rainbow bridge in Erik The Viking, the game of "Twister" played by Bill & Ted against Death allowing passage back through the veil, and the spiraling computer display as Neo is being un-plugged from The Matrix; these and other examples may refer to the coil of the serpent constellation around the pole.

In Black Elk Speaks, the American Indian shaman Black Elk describes his vision of the Central Mountain of the world as being the local holy mountain. He of course explains that the real Central/Holy Mountain can be found everywhere and is not specific to any one land. It is the mountain that Noah's Ark came to rest on as well as the mountain where Moses received the commandments which were placed in the Ark of the Covenant. "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)

In my high school geology class, my teacher demonstrated the reason why we feel that here on earth we are at the center of the universe. He took an overhead projector and laid a clear plastic sheet on it with a bunch of dots representing galaxies in the universe, with one dot representing our Milky Way galaxy. He then overlaid another clear sheet with the same dots except that this sheet had been scaled up, expanded in all directions (like the universe), so that all the dots were a bit further from each other than before. Lining up the two "Milky Way" dots, we could see that all the other galaxies appeared to be moving away from our galaxy, which would put us at the center of the universe. He then lined up another set of dots representing another galaxy, and now from that perspective the universe also seemed to be expanding equally in all directions placing that galaxy at the center. So, from every perspective, you are at the center. You are always at the center.

"God is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere."

So what is the true Holy Mountain? It is Where Earth & Sky Meet. It is you.

"As above, so below. As within, so without." - Hermes

"When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below ... then shall you enter the Kingdom ... I am the Light that is above them all, I am the All, the All came forth from Me and the All attained to Me. Cleave a piece of wood, I am there; lift up the stone and you will find Me there." - Jesus

The stellar serpent resonates in the microcosm as the kundalini, said to be coiled in 3.5 turns, at the base of the human spinal column. The 33 vertebrae represent the 33-degrees of initiation, the 33 years of the Solar Hero Myth, the Perfect Third, the One Third of the Angels who rebelled, the One Third of the Trinity: the Divine Child who walks the Middle Path.

Moving up the spine are the 7 chakras; the rainbow bridge. They are traditionally 7 in number for the 7 colors of the rainbow, the 7 notes/tones, the 7 heavens and 7 "gates" on the head, the 7 bands of color on the ancient Great Pyramid, the 7 levels of the Etemenaki ziggurat which were colored for the 7 planets, and so on.

In 570s BC, Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, seeking to restore the ziggurat, wrote of its ruinous state, "A former king built the Temple of the Seven Lights of the Earth, but he did not complete its head. Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without order expressing their words. Since that time earthquakes and lightning had dispersed its sun-dried clay; the bricks of the casing had split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps."

At the top is the grey matter of the brain (matching the grey temple to the moon god which was to be on the top of the Etemenaki pyramid), split into 3 sections for the 3 Sephira on the top of the Tree of Life, the 3 veils of reality, the trident and pitchfork, the heavenly Trinity, and so on. The brain is a mirror of reality; as this world is a mirror of the Otherworld, where left is right and up is down. Vision is flipped upside-down by the brain after coming in through the lens. The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body, and right hemisphere controls the left side of the body. The duality meets in the center as the "phallic" pineal gland, for the pine-cone-topped staff of Osiris, which unites with the bi-lobed "vaginal" pituitary gland giving rise to an internal cosmic sex act.

Gematria

A scene from Ghostbusters: The Ghostbusters are on the top of a building built like a stepped pyramid with a temple on the top. A crystal pyramid has appeared and an ancient demigod Gozar is there.
Gozar: "Are you a god?"
Ray: "...No."
(Gozar hits them all with lightning from her finger tips like the Sith Lord Palpatine from Star Wars.)
Winston: "Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say 'yes'!"

So basically what I'm saying here is that the kernel of all religions is completely internal. Heaven and God are the imaginative power of the brain, the creative spark, the link to the subtle unknown, and the part of you that knows there's something more than this reality. The Ego has become manifest as the devil. He is the dragon in the cave at the base of the mountain, hoarding wealth, power, and virgins, yet lacking the ability to correctly utilize these things.

"The greatest enemy will hide in the last place you would ever look." - Julius Caesar

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled, was convincing the world that he didn't exist." - Usual Suspects

"Your friends are close, but your enemy is closer." - The Road to Suicide

As I stated in a recent interview on Star Theory, I see the devil as being the negative aspect of the internal "lead" of the alchemists. Aferrismoon pointed out in a previous article of mine where I was musing on the meaning of "dale" as not just a valley, but meaning a veil in fact, as it is in the case of "Sunnydale" which is the name of the town at the brink of hell in the "Buffy" mythos. He pointed out that "dale" is an anagram of "lead." The lead, or Ego, is Da Evil One, D-Evil, D-Veil, the Devil. The DEVIL LIVED VEIL'D. Your (S)inner (S)elf which becomes "Lucifer" the light bearer who snakes his way back up the Tree/Tower/Mountain/Spine to claim the Crown (chakra) of God. (Light Bear-er = Ursa Major/Minor?)

from The CruX of The Matter

The alchemists say that "it takes a seed of gold to make gold." They believed that everything down to grains of sand had this potential within. "If you can't see God in everything, you can't see God in anything." I say it takes a seed of God to make God. Same thing really, but I hate how veiled everything is, though I guess it's necessary to force us to seek our own truth. In Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall ("manly phallus" as Aferrismoon once said), gives us these quotes: "A soul cannot develop and progress without an appropriate body, because it is the physical body that furnishes the material for its development." And, "A seed is useless and impotent unless it is put in its appropriate matrix." Well, there you have it folks! The matrix is the female womb, the soil of the earth, the cold darkness which causes morning dew to form, and the watery chaos from which the material was created, becoming the material matrix itself – and we are the seedling God.

I love hearing about the explanations for reality which the "machine elves" or non-physical entities encountered in the altered states of consciousness tell to the psychonauts who travel to their strange worlds. They are all so different yet somehow all true at the same time. One such story is that the human species (perhaps all life on earth?) is a massive organism placed here from higher dimensional reality for the purpose of evolution. The reason we're here is that only in the 3D matrix of linear time can something grow. Whatever the case may be, the microcosm is your own body which the seed of Go(l)d needs to grow within.

be your own anti-christ

If The Devil/Ego is still running the show when you reach the top of the mountain, or crown the tower, then it will become a negative force and become a tyrant. The goal of those who summit The Holy Mountain is to transform the Ego from Satan into Lucifer so that he can bring the flame of wisdom to light the top of the lighthouse.

In the anime Metropolis 2002, a human-like robot version of a man's daughter is created for the purpose of sitting in a throne at the top of The Ziggurat/Tower of Babel which is actually a secret military weapon. The robot-person represents the Ego, the Darth Vader, all intellect and no heart, etc. She is named Tima, a diminutive form of Tiamat of Sumerian mythology who was a sea serpent/dragon which represented the primordial sea/chaos. When she is integrated into the Throne and takes control of the Tower she is all robotic(Egoic) which of course leads to the towers destruction. She is redeemed however when for a brief moment she is reminded of her humanity which in this case represents divinity. (The created is found to contain a seed of the creator, the Tinman is found to have had a heart the whole time – typical in movies featuring robots such as A.I., I, Robot, Terminator Salvation, etc.)

All looked upon the throne, and heard and saw
Nothing but Jemshid, he alone was King,
Absorbing every thought; and in their praise
And adoration of that mortal man,
forgot the worship of the great Creator.
Then proudly he to his nobles spoke,
Intoxicated with their loud applause,
"I am unequaled, for to me the earth
Owes all its science, never did exist
A sovereignty like mine, beneficent
And glorious, driving from the populous land
Disease and want. Domestic joy and rest
Proceed from me, all that is good and great
Waits my behest; the universal voice
Declares the splendor of my government,
Beyond whatever human heart conceived,
And me the only monarch of the world."
-- Soon as these words had parted from his lips
Words impious, and insulting to high heaven,
His earthly grandeur faded – then all tongues
Grew clamorous and bold. The day of Jemshid
Passed into gloom, his brightness all obscured.
What said the Moralist? "When thou wert a king
Thy subjects were obedient, but whoever
Proudly neglects the worship of his God
Brings desolation on his house and home."
-- And when he marked the insolence of his people,
He knew the wrath of heaven had been provoked,
And terror overcame him.
(The Zoroastrian Persian legend of the Emperor of the Golden Age, Jemshid)

The above is from Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces. He indicates in his book that the son replaces the father/king who has become a tyrant, but that the son may one day also become a tyrant and he must know when to relinquish his throne to the next king. Like I've said previously, I don't feel that absolute perfection can exist in this material universe, so there will always be room for the pendulum to swing back to the dark side.

"Pattern: temple creation - desecration - destruction - new temple. It happens over and over again - we're always working on our next temple." Rhapsody In Two, Gosporn.

In Tony Bushby's The Secret In the Bible is a picture of a pre-1851 engraving of a pyramid, seated in Lake Moeris, having a flat peak with a large statue seated at the apex. He recounts a history that claims that the Benben stone (the original capstone to the Great Pyramid) was stolen and brought to Babylon in Mesopotamia, the second Babylon as Giza was originally called Babylon (hence the Pyramid may be the original Tower of Babel). After it was brought back to Egypt it was housed in a temple. The apex of the pyramid was then fitted with a large statue: historian F. Vansler (1673), "On top of the greatest pyramid there was anciently a statue or colosse. This appears because it is not sharp as the others, but plain; and there are yet to be seen great pits, which were to keep fast the colosse from falling." He then claims that the statue was of a Serpent god, based on this inscription: "a reptile had been fashioned in that place," who was associated with these dire words:

If you do not tell me what I have not heard and what I do not know, I will cause you to pass out of existence like a flame which has been extinguished.

These are good words to have at the back of your mind. Like Terence McKenna said, the Timewave Zero program was his only original idea, the rest was regurgitation of books he's read and the beliefs of others, which he may have put together in novel ways, but which were still available to everyone and not unique to him. What's your one original idea? It seems, and many have commented on such, that once a great idea springs into the collective consciousness, it then becomes available to everyone. Alphabetic languages sprung up in three separate locations in three separate styles at around the same time. And there's plenty of examples of inventions and discoveries which were independently pulled out of the void at around the same time by people who had no idea of each others research. As has been pointed out at this blog, often (more often than not, it seems) two or more synchromystic bloggers begin discussing very similar themes at similar times with no prior knowledge of each others work. Some have pondered if it's because we build upon each others ideas, reaching similar conclusions at around the same times. However, when all of a sudden a television show seems to be using information from our blogs, or other incidents occur where communication seems very unlikely, it seems to me that creative persons who tap into the same great storehouse of universal knowledge will often borrow the same muse and form similar ideas.

Per Michael Talbot's Holographic Universe, People who can see auras and chakras sometimes see Sanskrit letters inside the chakras, letters which historically have been associated with those chakras. Does this mean that those letters are part of some divine language? No, it does not. It means that those letters were arbitrarily (from our perspecitve) connected to those chakras, colors and sacred tones, and that the aeons of belief and devotion to those ideas has imprinted those letters on the very fabric of our holographic Matrixesque reality. Did our ancient ancestors realize (in a time of far less mind control, and electronically induced numbness) that the universe is truly malleable, that they can make the myths for others to follow? Are we simply living out the intelligently created hologram of our forefathers? Or did they not realize this, and believe that they were discovering truth while at the same time unknowingly crafting that very truth through their subconscious?

I was raised Catholic, and am a confirmed Catholic which means I've gone through my three day retreat (spent in a monastery living in a bare room like a monk), praying the rosary and whatever else I've repressed. Three days of death and resurrecting as a full fledged Catholic, and soon after, completely dropping the church because of a perceived lack of Mystery (a necessary step to where I am now, able to see the beauty and mystery in the Bible and other religions as well. Oh, the things they don't teach in Sunday school!). When I lived with my parents, I would attend mass less and less until I simply stopped going, but one of the last priests whose sermons I listened to was actually quite "hip" and "with it." He would sometimes mention discoveries in quantum mechanics and integrate them into his sermons (compare that with those Revivalist super-literal bible thumpers!). Probably the only sermon I remember from years of Catholic mass, and I think from one of the last times I went to church (not counting weddings, funerals, Easter and Christmas) was about Jesus and the effects of belief. He spoke of a passage in the Bible where Jesus refused to work miracles in a certain town. When pressed by his disciples at his lack of willingness to heal the people in that town, he explained that he could not heal them if he wanted, because of the lack of faith in his abilities as a prophet and healer, he could no work miracles there. At the time I took this to mean that Jesus' miracles were the effects of psychosomatic or placebo effects, but now I think that it points to the flexibility of reality. This is one reason I don't like "mainstream religions," they indicate that only special individuals such as saints and prophets can work miracles (though one must wonder at how they only become saints years after they die...), and we are left at their mercy for a miracle healing. But a Mystery-interpretation says that you are the Hero in the Myth (in this case Jesus) and you can work "miracles" as well.

"Verily, verily , I say unto you, He that believeth in me, the miracles that I do shall he do also; and greater miracles than these shall he do." - John, 14:12

We know now, through repeatable scientifically designed experiments (hypothesis, testing, recording, & repeating), that the observer, our consciousness, can affect the fabric of the universe in very real and tangible ways. We are the myth makers, the shaman, the high priests of our own religion. Those who practice ceremonial Magick use specific symbols, colors, and words according to what result it is that they are trying produce. But they will also admit that there is no power in a black candle, or a planetary sigil, or any such symbolism; it only serves to occupy the consciousness and activate the subconscious, playing on built-in associations and expectations. We can use these tried and true devices to our own ends, or for the more bold among us, we can develop completely new symbols and change the universe to one more suited to our liking.

On the subject of claiming the Crown(chakra) of Heaven at the peak/capstone of the "Holy Mountain," I see the process as being recursive in pattern. It seems to me that the "fractal soul grid/cage" which traps us in the Matrix may indeed be infinite where we are always at the center; where Heaven and Earth meet. No matter if we expanded to the size of stars, solar systems or galaxies, or shrunk down to the level of the mind, the cells, or the atoms; we will always find ourselves at the center of the infinite recursion of the fractal universe.

your higher Self is the capstone/cornerstone of the holy mountain

Back in the movie, The Holy Mountain: after The Thief and The Prostitute leave back down the mountain, The Planets continue to storm the abode of the Nine Immortals (thinking The Alchemist has left them on their own at this point.) Getting back to something I said previously, mythology is filled with examples of Sons taking the place of their Fathers.

"Know ye not that ye are gods, and sons of the most high?" - Psalms, 82:6

Here it is the new Nine Immortals replacing the old Nine Immortals. However, when they get to the table the Immortals are seated at, they find that the Immortals are just fake, they are dummies in robes, and The Alchemist is waiting there for them.

He invites The Planets to join him at the table. They sit down at the table, and The Alchemist explains, "I promised you the great secret and I will not disappoint you. Is this the end of our adventure? Nothing has an end. We came in search of the secret of immortality, to be like gods, and here we are mortals - more human than ever. If we have not obtained immortality, at least we have obtained reality. We began in a fairy tale and we came to life. But is this life reality? No, it is a thing. Zoom back camera! (The camera zooms back to reveal that we are watching a movie) We are images, dreams, photographs, we must not stay here! We shall break the illusion. This is Maya. Good bye to the holy mountain, real life awaits us." The group flips over the table of the Immortals displaying the 9-pointed enneagram symbol, because they are doing away with symbols at this point, going further back to the source. They leave and continue their journey moving beyond the sphere of earthly immortality, beyond the realm of messiahs, demigods, demiurges and gods, beyond all illusion.

I was quite happy about the ending of the movie, but Jodorowsky said that even the actors refused to talk to him after learning about it. They all wanted to see these people become immortal. It's natural I guess, after associating yourself with the character as an actor, or as the viewer, that you would crave a simple, clear-cut happy ending.

Jodorowsky may leave us with a hint though. The act of self-awareness by the characters in a movie is known as "breaking the fourth wall" (the movie/television screen), and can be seen acting on more than one level in the movie The Neverending Story. In this movie the character Atreyu is informed that the child Bastian has been reading his adventure the whole time Atreyu was experiencing it. In fact, he is further informed that the child Bastian is yet another character in a movie being watched by kids in an even higher level of reality. Similar to the idea of the recursive fractal, or the nested matrix, we are left to reflect if we are the subject of amusement for yet another layer of reality above us.

Bastian is the "earthling child" that Atreyu had to find, he is "the One" ... "who can save us all." Actually, at the end of the movie, the entire universe of Fantasia is reduced to a single grain of sand, then created out of that grain again by the creative power inherent in Bastian, he being a product and microcosm of his creator. The grain of sand is something which the alchemists would have considered to contain that seed of Gold/God/Universe. "To see the universe in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower."

The Celtic Rebel blog has quoted a Mystery drama in a recent post which comes from Manly P. Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages. It is about Adam/Humanity learning the truth about the Serpent. You can read The Celtic Rebel's concise quote of it in this post, or read the whole thing here, starting halfway down P.128 at "In this ritualistic drama..." There is a very similar Hindu story from Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces which I'm including below.

A moving tale is told of an ancient Hindu warrior-king named Muchukunda. He was born from his father's left side, the father having swallowed by mistake a fertility potion that the Brahmin's had prepared for his wife; and in keeping with the promising symbolism of this miracle, the motherless marvel, fruit of the male womb, grew to be such a king among kings that when the gods, at one period, were suffering defeat in their perpetual contest with the demons, they called upon him for help. He assisted them to a mighty victory, and they, in their divine pleasure, granted him the realization of his highest wish. But what should such a king, himself almost omnipotent, desire? What greatest boon of boons could be conceived of by such a master among men? King Muchukunda, so runs the story, was very tired after his battle: all he asked was that he might be granted a sleep without end, and that any person chancing to arouse him should be burned to a crisp by the first glance of his eye.

The boon was bestowed. In a cavern chamber, deep within the womb of a mountain, King Muchukunda retired to sleep, and there slumbered through the revolving aeon. Individuals, peoples, civilizations, world ages, came into being out of the void and dropped back into it again, while the old king, in his state of subconscious bliss, endured. Timeless as the Freudian unconscious beneath the dramatic time world of our fluctuating ego-experience, that old mountain man, the drinker of deep sleep, lived on and on.

His awakening came – but with a surprising turn that throws into new perspective the whole problem of the hero-circuit, as well as the mystery of a mighty king's request for sleep as the highest conceivable boon.

Vishnu, the Lord of the World, had become incarnate in the person of a beautiful youth named Krishna, who, having saved the land of India from a tyrannical race of demons, had assumed the throne. And he had been ruling in Utopian peace, when a horde of barbarians suddenly invaded from the northwest. Krishna the king went against them, but in keeping with his divine nature, won the victory playfully, by a simple ruse. Unarmed and garlanded with lotuses, he came out of his stronghold and tempted the enemy king to pursue and catch him, then dodged into a cave, When the barbarian followed, he discovered someone lying there in the chamber, asleep.

"Oh!" thought he. "So he has lured me here and now feigns to be a harmless sleeper."

He kicked the figure lying on the ground before him, and it stirred. It was King Muchukunda. The figure rose, and the eyes that had been closed for unnumbered cycles of creation, world history, and dissolution, opened slowly to the light. The first glance that went forth struck the enemy king, who burst into a torch of flame and was reduced immediately to a smoking heap of ash. Muchunkunda turned, and the second glance struck the garlanded, beautiful youth, whom the awakened old king straightaway recognized by his radiance as an incarnation of God. And Muchunkunda bowed before his Saviour with the following prayer:

"My Lord God! When I lived and wrought as a man, I lived and wrought – straying restlessly through many lives, birth after birth, I sought and suffered, nowhere knowing cease or rest. Distress I mistook for joy. Mirages appearing over the desert I mistook for refreshing waters. Delights I grasped, and what I obtained was misery. Kingly power and earthly possession, riches and might, friends and sons, wife and followers, everything that lures the senses: I wanted them all, because I believed that these would bring me beatitude. But the moment anything was mine it changed its nature, and became as a burning fire.

"Then I found my way into the company of the gods, and they welcomed me as a companion. But where, still, surcease? Where rest? The creatures of this world, gods included, all are tricked, my Lord God, by your playful ruses; that is why they continue in their futile round of birth, life agony, old age, and death. Between lives, they confront the lord of the dead and are forced to endure hells of every degree of pitiless pain. And it all comes from you!

"My Lord God, deluded by your playful ruses, I too was a prey of the world, wandering in a labyrinth of error, netted in the meshes of ego-consciousness. Now, therefore, I take refuge in your Presence – the boundless, the adorable – desiring only freedom from it all."

When Muchunkunda stepped from his cave, he saw that men, since his departure, had become reduced in stature. He was as a giant among them. And so he departed from them again, retreated to the highest mountains, and there dedicated himself to the ascetic practices that should finally release him from his last attachment to the forms of being.

Muchukunda, in other words, instead of returning, decided to retreat one degree still further from the world. And who shall say that his decision was altogether without reason?

After breaking the fourth-wall, or what we, living one level higher, might call the 5th Dimension, The Alchemist (really, Jodorowsky as himself) explains that this is Maya, an illusion, and liberation into the truth of "IT (ALL)" must be found past the boundaries of the Holy Mountain.

"There goes neither the eye, nor speech, nor the mind; we know It not; nor can we see how to teach one about It. Different It is from all that are known, and It is beyond the unknown as well." - Kena Upanishad

It is her,
and It is him.
It is us,
And It is them.
It is me,
and It is we.
... It is It!
And that, as they say, is that.

fade to white

Star Theory Podcast

2010-02-22T23:04:00.000-08:00

I was on the Star Theory podcast Wednesday, click here to stream it, or click here to download it. It's 2 hours long.

If you haven't checked out my last Dinner With The Celtic Rebel podcast, I do recommend it. Alex thinks it's the best one yet! (If such a thing could be possible!? They're all so gooood.)

My Dinner With The Celtic Rebel - Part 4

2010-02-08T18:32:00.000-08:00

twisting the night away

Before getting into the podcast, I'm happy to announce that Alex has is own weekly show now on the Oracle Broadcasting Network. First show is on next Sunday, Feb 14th, Valentine's Day, at 10pm Central (Click to see what the local time will be for you.)

The rumors weren't true, there's not much to read here 'cept the 'cast. So enjoy that and these pics of Zardoz :D

download link (~163 minutes!)

Parallel post at The Celtic Rebel

not faye dunaway

Synchronicity - Thy Ironic Sync

2010-01-29T01:26:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick little video on synchronicities in movies:

One could argue that many of these are not accidental, but hey, they happened, the symbols are set into the universal web, and all things ultimately point to the same source. Chew over that for now while I work on my next posts/videos.

Blue Birds Fly

2010-01-15T09:07:00.000-08:00

Hi guys :D I got a new computer running Ubuntu Linux (Karmic Koala) which doesn't have super great video editing software, but it's pretty good considering it's free and open source. Anyhoo, I made a quick video to get some practice using it, and it seems to have come out ok, so look forward to more videos in the future. (Donations are still welcome so I can buy more RAM! See the button at the bottom of the blog.) So, without further ado, here it is:

Blue Birds Fly from ViolatoR on Vimeo.

If you've been absent from the warm glow of my awesomeness for a bit, please check out my recent series of articles based around the movie The Holy Mountain: Nigredo, Albedo, Cauda Pavonis, with one still to be written. (I swear I'm thinking real hard about starting on it soon... really!)

The Holy Mountain - Cauda Pavonis

2010-01-01T02:22:00.001-08:00

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates (470-399 BCE)

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought." - Buddha

"Know Thyself." - Oracle at Delphi

Continuing from the last post, Albedo (and Nigredo before that), we reach the intermediate stage of Xanthosis, or The Yellowing. Typically the stages are done in three's as there are three alchemical substances: salt, sulphur and mercury. However, I felt it necessary to break this down a bit more and introduce the hermetic allegory of the peacock's tail, otherwise known as Cauda Pavonis. This stage represents the quick color change which signals that the attainment of the Stone is near. A warning is given to alchemists not to believe their work is complete at this stage, however, and not to get too excited or distracted as that may disrupt the process and endanger the completion of the Stone.

Mercurius:
The remaining darkness unfolds like the multi-coloured petals of a metallic flower. Each jewel-like petal scintillates in a constellation of sapphires, opals, emeralds, amethysts, rubies, chalcedon, and onyx. The colors shift and merge, wink and dissipate, like an incarnation of Iris.

The colors irradiate form the centre like the rays of Sol contained within the circle of Luna. There are many eyes which yet form the iris of the single astral Eye. This we call the Cauda Pavonis. It watches me as I sit in front of it, pausing between one word and another. I see my own face, thoughtful, slightly skewed, as in a mirror image. The Eye sees into my heart and my heart goes out to it. I am no longer myself.

The Alchemist and The Thief enter a room with the design of the third-eye chakra on the floor, complete with Om/Aum symbol in the center. Also, there is an albino peacock walking around the room, a symbol of enlightenment according to Jodorowsky, hence the fitting title for this part of the series, The Peacocks Tail or cauda pavonis.

The replicas represent seven planets, but not the traditional seven, as The Alchemist is already the sun, and The Thief is shown in a deleted scene with the symbol of the moon, and in that same scene The Written Woman is shown with the symbol for mercury. Together these three characters may constitute the Three Essentials of Alchemy. The (seven) Planets continue from Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. The Planets are shown be be perversions and inversions of their traditional symbolism. Even the planetary symbol is sometimes inverted to show that this is literally the case with these characters.

The Alchemist:
“The fish thinks about his hunger, not about the fisherman. It is the master who seeks the disciple. You want to know the secret, but man cannot see nothing but himself. To accomplish the alchemical work you will have these companions. They are thieves like you, but on another level. They are the most powerful people on the planet. Industrialists and politicians."

The first Planet we are introduced to is Fon of the planet Venus. He is a man, contrary to the idea of venus, and his symbol is also an inversion of the traditional logo, though the color is a greenish-blue and is typical for the planet. The employees at his factory are all women, and he sometimes picks from them one to be his wife, one of many wives that is. He also only makes love to them during working hours.

A few of his wives appear to be quite young, and I'm reminded that his name “Fon” is similar to “a fawn,” or a satyr - the wildly sexual forest gods such as Pan. The movie shows he and his new wife making love and she pulls a handful of white hearts and pours them in her mouth and on her face. It's one of many times that Jodorowsky uses analogous elements in his film rather than showing the actual object/thing, but it also reminds me of how rice is traditionally thrown over a newlywed couple to signify fertility: the new wife of Fon is shown pregnant immediately after he chooses her. Additionally, these white “pearls of jizdom” are the base form of “pearls of wisdom.” Often great mystical truths are symbolized by sexual ideas, though they aren't meant to be taken literally: sex for pleasure is a distraction. A very fun distraction, I might add, but not the type of eternal bliss one on a journey to enlightenment is seeking. Buddha and others have been tempted with pleasures of the flesh. Speaking of analogies, I just learned via the commentary which I was finally able to get the subtitles working on, that Fon's new wife here is actually a transvestite, a man who became a woman, and thus combines the two halves in an alchemical rebis/hermaphrodite of sorts.

The difference between being immortal and immoral is the cross, or the letter t/T. Odin hung on the World Tree and received Wisdom, Jesus was crucified and went to the Otherworld and came back. Without the death to the physical, one is stuck in the pleasure focused state and doesn't find true bliss.

His father is the boss of the company but he is deaf, dumb and blind. When he makes a decision, he puts his hand between the legs of the mummy of his wife, and if she is dry the answer is “no.” Their business is beauty, but as this is an inversion of traditional venus, the beauty is only an illusion. They make a line of masks which are permanent beautiful faces. They even beautify dead bodies and animate them for lively funerals. They also make fake muscles for men to put on their bodies, as well as cod-pieces to increase the size of their bulge. As you can see, it's all egoic beauty, and does not change the person internally, where external beauty begins. It is said that people who are fairly enlightened tend to have magnetic attractiveness, not really how they look, but something which people pick up on and want to be around. So working on internal beauty will have an effect on the external, but working solely on the external only masks the internal ugliness. The rest of The Planets are also inversions of what they would typically stand for.

Next we come to Isla of Mars. Here we have a woman symbolizing mars, again an inversion, and again the typical mars logo is inverted as well. She sleeps in a black triangular room inside a black shielded bed (like the Batmobile actually) with 3 dogs and 2 other lesbian women. The two women are the ones The Alchemist is cleaning up in the opening scenes of the movie, which I mention in the beginning of the previous post in this series. Isla dresses as a man as well. The theme song for this part of the movie is called Sapphic Sleep which represents female homosexuality.

Isla makes weapons with the help of her many male secretaries workforce who dress in drag. They make bombers, bombs, ray guns, deadly bacteria, antimatter waves, carcinogenic gases, etc.

She even makes weapons for the young generation and it's sit-ins and marches (referring to the late sixties peace movement). Instead of putting flowers into gun barrels, Isla provides peace protesters with grenade necklaces, psychedelic shotguns, rock-n-roll weapons, and even mystical weapons for religious people.

Klen of Jupiter lives in an opulant mansion with his wife who doesn't love him and a kid who is only interested in getting his allowance. His son is shown in a deleted scene with a naked girl laying in bed with him, like father like son, as the father, Klen, also has a mistress we'll see in a minute. This deleted scene is pretty interesting however, as it depicts a chapel room in the house with a cross made of televisions (used by Marilyn Manson in a concert) and a picture of The Flash where Jesus should be. The cross made of cubic boxes is so freaking awesome... As we all know a cube unfolded is a cross, and a tesseract unfolded is a cubic cross (with another box in front and behind the middle one). Plus not only is it boxes, it's television sets, microcosms of the fake world or matrix we inhabit. It also reminds me of the boxy amplifiers which replace the body of a dead man in Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box" video (see my: Heart Shaped Coffin post). I love this scene, too bad it was deleted because they were afraid the naked little girl would be off-putting to some. There are also more paintings by Jodorowsky (I'm guessing) in this room, all comic and sexual. And the image of The Flash is from a comic cover of a comic where Flash loses his memory and believes himself to be an 8-year old kid. The Flash: “They say I'm The Flash! If it only were true I could help them! Please make it come true God!” Rings of Pinocchio to me, but also something Jesus may have had to deal with being told he was the son of God as he was growing up. Not sure if it was planned this way, but Flash is related to Hermes/Thoth and therefore wisdom, so wisdom is being venerated, though here in an inverted world it is comic and fantasy.

Klen meets up with his young hippie mistress (who costs $1,000 a week) and they go to his factory where they make sexual art, most of which actually incorporates naked living people into the art. The best part of this guys factory is the giant robotic vagina 'love machine.' Yes, a giant mechanical vagina. The "seX-Box" needs to be stimulated with a large 'electronic wand' and brought to climax. The result of a successful attempt is a baby robot. Yup, that's life, going through the robotic motions which may result in procreation so that a new generation can again go through the motions, so on and so forth. Jodorowsky comments that this is a mixing of geometry and biology, machines with humans, and that the machine is becoming more human by giving birth. He muses that machines can help people evolve, and today that is happening with the use of binaural beats, bio-feedback and self-hypnosis technology which people can use to stimulate increased memory, better meditation, lucid dreaming, and out of body experiences.

Sel of Saturn caters to children. It's funny, because the god Saturn is known for eating his children! I didn't take too many pictures of her scenes, but Sel hangs out with dwarfs who dress as Santa. Although he doesn't mention it, Jodorowsky has connected Santa with Saturn/Satan. She dresses as a clown and plays with them, but once she gets to her factory it's all business. I think she switches places with the tall guy who follows her around, but it's hard to tell with all the makeup.

She runs a toy factory where she makes toy weapons to indoctrinate future generations into wanting to go to war against whoever the State wants to go to war with (in this case, it's Peru). They start them young by planning 15 years in advance and then making toys which subconsciously make the kids hate the future enemy. Her workforce, contrary to her target audience, is entirely made up of the elderly. Might as well use people close to death to promote death. Some of them even appear to be veterans of previous wars.

Berg of the aptly named Uranus is an effeminate mommas boy who lives with his frighteningly sexual mother
(warning: this scene of the movie may give you nightmares!). Jodorowsky explains that Uranus symbolized to him the dark and depraved side of humans. Jodorowsky wanted this movie to transform not only the audience but the people acting in it, so all the characters basically play themselves, and in this case the gay character Berg is actually a gay man; the same goes for the lesbian Isla of mars, and the millionaire Klen who was actually a millionaire, and so on.

The mother is played by a screwball who hung around the studios looking for work as an extra, but the most notable thing about her is that she has no belly button! Jodorowsky likens her to Eve, as Eve was born from Adam's rib and had no need for a belly button and umbilical cord. She doesn't like the only small window in their room and even says that it is too big and needs to be covered up; she wants to totally seal themselves off from the world (compare to the gay mamma's boy in Stephen Kings “It” is isn't allowed to go out in play very often). Anyways, he wears a lot of pentacles and has a shirt with a large “5” on it. I'm just letting you know the details in case someone else cares to interpret, some of these scenes are pretty damn bizarre! :)

These two work for the government as financial advisors. Their report to the government advises the killing of four million citizens in the next five years to boost the economy. The president then orders the opening of “gas-chambers, gas-schools, gas-universities, gas-libraries, gas-museums, gas-dance-halls, gas-whorehouses, etc.”

Axon of Neptune is a police chief. His symbol is inverted and can be seen during a large Naziesque ceremony. A new candidate who has apparently volunteered to work for Axon is splayed out on an altar with his genitals exposed. Axon rides up with a ridiculously giant machine gun and then gets out some scissors and cuts off the boys testicles (ouch!). Axon explains that 999 other “heroes” have made the same sacrifice to work for Axon, and this boys testicles complete Axon's sanctuary of 1,000 (pairs of) testicles.

I don't know about you, but the one thing my house is missing is a shrine room walled with castrated organs! The boy is given The Holy Book which is all about believing in Axon: “Axon is the truth, the power and the light.” His fascist programming guide, I guess.

Axon has a mohawk which is probably from the Roman/Fascist tradition and not the American Indian tradition (such as those worn by punks). Axon's troops clash with student protesters, but instead of of actually hurting each other, they splash paint on each other and mimic shooting, stabbing and decapitations. It's all external obvious special effects. It seems to be indicating a thin line between horror movies and real horror, or how war is televised and turned out as entertainment.

Finally we come to Lut of Pluto. And like Pluto to dog, he hangs out with Mickey Mouse, or rather a bunch of young boys dressed as Minnie Mouse. It's pretty clear he abuses children, and the Disney touch adds a bit of realism here. Lut is an architect, but his planet is named for the god of the Underworld, Pluto. (God of Underworld... The Architect...) Jodorosky says, "I think one of the greatest evils of contemporary society is architecture, because of its geometric, linear forms."

Lut built an apartment complex which was a total failure because he was building homes when all people need is shelter. All the tenants of this project are shown to be crippled, a comment on what living in a boxy environment does to living organisms which need natural surroundings. His next great idea is a community of suspended coffin shaped boxes for people to live in, because the tenant can eat at the factory and doesn't need a kitchen, and only needs a place to sleep in safety. Reminds me of the Japanese "sleeping tubes" people who work in the city use if they can't make it home that night. (They appear in the movie Fast And the Furious: Tokyo Drift, actually.)

Together these seven Planets with The Written Woman and The Alchemist represent the 9 symbols of the enneagram, though they are a perversion of what they are supposed to be. The Thief doesn't get counted because he is the person searching for enlightenment and the rest are anthropomorphic representations of his self. The Alchemist wears the enneagram (9-pointed star) and Alexander Jodorowsky mentions that each character represents a place on the enneagram in commentary for a deleted scene. I don't know much about this thingy, so here's the wiki quote you were waiting for:

The Enneagram of Personality is mostly taught and understood as a psychospiritual typology (a model of personality types) but is also presented in ways intended to discover and develop higher states of being, essence and enlightenment. Each Enneagram personality type expresses a distinctive and habitual pattern of thinking and emotions. The behavioral characteristics of the personality types are less distinctive. By recognizing their personality pattern a person may be able to use the Enneagram as an effective method for self-understanding and self-development.”

See wikipedia for the nine personality types. The symbol was used by spiritual teacher Gurdjieff who may have learned it from Sufis or Christian monks.

The octagon, highly prized in synchromystic circles for it's connections to star-gates and the center of the Milky Way, and to the Holy Grail, is sometimes referred to as an enneagram (meaning nine) and this is because often times the center of a symbol is a hidden extra point, so an octagon really has a ninth central point. As pointed out by me previously, the “stargate” from the movie Stargate has nine “chevrons,” though only seven are active, and there were nine trees planted around the edge of the fountain sculpture (water-door symbol) which used to sit at the center of the World Trade Center plaza (see this video by Labyrinth of the Psychonaut for more.)

Each Planet is connected to a point on the Enneagram symbol: 1 is Sel/Saturn, 2 is Axon/Neptune, 3 is The Written Woman/Mercury, 4 is Berg/Uranus, 5 is Lut/Pluto, 6 is Isla/Mars, 7 is Fon/Venus, 8 is Klen/Jupiter, and 9 is The Alchemist/Sun. Together they ultimately represent the parts of a person (The Thief), and a connection may be made to the City of the Nine Gates of Hindu mythology where the nine gates represent openings in the body, as well as the Nine Gates to the Kingdom of Shadows which is the fictional nine keys to open the Underworld/Otherworld from the movie The Ninth Gate, as well as the 9 days Odin hung on the world tree, the thrice-three (nine) gates of hell, and so on.

the nine levels of a 3D sri yantra

From Secrets Of The Ninja: "Between these [three centers of power] are nine "gates" up the spinal column that enable the Ninja to collect Qi in the Hara, cultivate it through the breathing techniques, and elevate it to the Mysterious Chamber of the Mind to achieve enlightenment."

In the other series of articles I started in January '09 with Heart Shaped Coffin I noted the interchangeability or rather connectivity of both seven and nine as being the number of layers, gates, domains, etc, and there are also systems which have nine major chakras as opposed to the more common seven. Really, there are thousands of chakras or plexuses that could potentially be mapped out, but seven or nine are the main ones running up the spinal column from the perineum to above the skull. If you're into mind-bending fractal based physics, check out Dan Winter's page on the number nine which resonates with this stuff.

The Great Work is done when the Seven again are One. That's my version of this quote: “It Is Finished When Seven Are One." It represents the idea of bringing the seven planets/metals/traits together into a perfect balance in a single vessel – you (the alchemist/fool/hero).

The group of seven Planets gets together at the Red Tower of The Alchemist. The Alchemist explains: "You have power and money, but you are mortal. You know you cannot escape death. but immortality can be obtained."

He continues speaking during a slide presentation of various holy mountains, "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.” He shows them ancient Rosicrucian manuscript which depicts the immortals and shows where they live: The Holy Mountain of Lotus Island.

The Alchemist continues, "We must unite our forces to assault The Holy Mountain and rob it's wise men of the secret of immortality. But to conquor the immortals, we too must become wise men. The elements of chemistry are many but finite. So too are the techniques of enlightenment. With the correct formula, any human being can become enlightened. The immmortals are a group. If we are to succeed, we must cease to be individuals and become a collective being."

The group now enters a yellow room shaped like an eye. The seven Planets and The Thief and The Written Woman and The Alchemist all take their seats around a circular table with a fire pit in the center. "Burn your money" says The Alchemist. They don't seem happy, but the promise of immortality out-weighs their attachment to money/material possessions/life. The Thief had earlier been indoctrinated to the world of money (being paid to take tourist pictures, and working on the animal circus), and now for him money is what makes the world go 'round, so he hides some money up his sleeves. The Alchemist notices: "Thief! If you don't want to die - kill your money!"

"There must be some kind of way out of here, said The Joker to The Theif"

Now the Alchemist says "We shall destroy the self image." Together they burn paper effigies of themselves. The Alchemist: "When the self concept thinks this is I and that is Mine he binds himself, and he forgets the Great Self." The Planets and the rest have become one unit now, but there is still some refining to take place as they journey to Lotus Island and up The Holy Mountain. The journey continues in the final post of this series later...

From The Belly Of The Whale: "As Marcus Aurelius writes, it is one of 'the noblest functions of reason to know whether it is time to walk out of the world or not.' Unknowing and uncertain, the philosopher walks."

Continue with the last post in this series here: The Holy Mountain - Rubedo.

My Dinner With The Celtic Rebel - Part 1

2009-12-17T19:44:00.000-08:00

"If you make yourselves into sheep, wolves will eat you." - Ben Franklin

"The end is not coming, the coming is the end."
- Sex and Death 101

It's time for yet another installment of My Dinner With The Celtic Rebel (click for his version of events), hurrah! This is the second to last of these podcasts, though it may be interrupted by an emergency session of holiday podcasting if we get around to it. Once again Alex out-did himself with excellent music, and even audio clips this time, so give it a listen:

download link (~105 minutes)

twinkie really looks like a penis!

Don't get confused, the stuff below is a picture:

this blog is down, but click here for the website

The Holy Mountain - Albedo

2009-12-10T23:02:00.000-08:00

"I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance." - Socrates

"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it." - Bertrand Russell

"In philosophy, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met along the way." - Havelock Ellis

The introductory scene for this movie features the director and writer, Alexander/Alejandro Jodorowsky playing the character of The Alchemist (which he will be called from now on). The Alchemist is in the process of ritualistically cleaning two women. The process involves makeup and hair removal which he does with very smooth and deliberate movements. He acts as the zen-influenced Japanese might, where one meditates in every action with no-mind, or total awareness on the subject at hand. The next time we see The Alchemist is when The Thief reaches his tower in the center of town, right where I left off at the end of the first part of this series: Nigredo. For this and the next post I'm going to refrain from too much speculation and let you, the viewers/readers, make up your own minds as to what this stuff means. The tarot cards seen further down are especially interesting. Then the last part of this series, "Rubedo," will be all ViolatoR, baby! (That's me, incase you didn't know.)

The Thief and The Prostitute with chimp/Pan have walked out of the desert into the town. Here they find the town's people gathered for a possibly Christian meal of fish. They are all at the base of a tall red tower, and at the moment, they are all staring upward as a large golden fish hook is lowered from the only opening in the tower. The hook carries a small bag with a solar symbol (circle-dot, also the symbol for gold) which is filled with small pieces of gold. Someone takes the gold and places fruit on the hook as thanksgiving for the gold. The Thief takes this oppertunity to ride the hook back up to the tower's port-hole to murder who ever is in the tower and take the rest of the gold.

Once he reaches the portal, The Thief steps inside the circular opening to find a thin paper veil between the window and whatever lies inside. He pierces the paper-hymen with his phallic-representing knife. Once he knows it's thin and easily broken, he steps back then lunges forward through the veil into the arched room of The Alchemist.

Readers might recognize this scene from various synchromystic videos. The room its self is painted with bands of the colors of the rainbow. The arched roof of the room might also indicate rainbow symbolism, and that The Thief has "gone over the rainbow" upon breaking through the veil. As a matter of fact, the soundtrack for this part of the movie has the song: "Rainbow Room." The Thief progresses from red to violet which represents a vertical movement of the kundalini through the chakras. He is following the rope which is attached at one end to the large golden hook, and at the other end, dissaperes under the trilithon-shaped (two stones topped with a lintel, like at Stonehenge), or maybe pi-suggestive chair which The Alchemist sits upon.

original aum/om symbol

The rope, to me, feels like a spiritual umbilical cord, similar to the hook and anchor which I discuss in Opening the Stargate.

The back wall of the arched room is a golden yellow color, possibly representative of a sunrise where the sun, half over the horizen, forms a golden arch/half circle. There is a raised platform of 3 steps upon which sits The Alchemist, between two goats and two pillars, one black and one white. To his left is a 2-humped camel making it a East-Asian camel as opposed to the Middle-Eastern variety. To The Alchemist's right is a naked black woman covered in esoteric tattoos and silver jewlery, who will be known as The Written Woman from here on out.

anyone care to translate?

The Thief makes it known he plans to attack The Alchemist, so The Alchemist movies, in his typical deliberate fashion, to face The Thief. The fight is decidedly one-sided as The Alchemist appears to be trained in Tai Chi. It's been said that it takes about two years to master any martial art's style, while it can take 20 years or more to master Tai Chi, but it is the ultimate fighting style once mastered. The Alchemist disables The Theif by touching certain chakra points in a specific order. Once paralyzed and unconscious, The Written Woman lifts The Thiefs hair from the back of his neck to find a large tumor there. She slices it open as blue liquid leaks out. The Written Woman pulls out a blue-goo covered squid (?) from the tumor in the back of The Thief's neck and seals the wound with a touch.

Whatever the thing she pulls out is, it reminds me of multiple "pod people" type movies where humans are infected by a parasite which controls their actions. Or, perhaps, even the millenial Y2K movie Strange Days, where a "squid" is a device which uses electrodes to record and play back memories, so that a person can take a "memory vacation" similar to Total Recall's memory vacation business "Recall." Speaking of which, Total Recall's Arnold Schwarzenegger plays character "Jericho Cane" in millenial End of Days (same name of the protagonist in Dwane Johnson's movie script, "The Power," which his character writes in end-of-world movie Southland Tales), which brings us back to where we started when the death of a "Jeriko One" is the spark which ignites the end-of-world(-as-we-know-it) movie Strange Days. The tentacled thing that was in The Theif's neck may represent the pre-programmed behaviours that society sticks in all of our heads. Over-indulgance (in alcohol in his case), devotion to political and religious institutions, and a lust for money. The Alchemist then awakens The Thief by activating his chakra points again, whereupon The Thief no longer feels like attacking The Alchemist.

The Alchemist then says to The Theif: "Do you want gold?" And The Theif replies: "Yes." Next, The Alchemist and The Written Woman take The Thief to an octagonal fountain with a baby hippopotamus in it and give The Thief an extremely thorough bath/baptism. Much attention is paid to the end of the "human stargte." The hippo may represent the Egyptian goddess of childbirth. Taweret/Taueret; so, this is The Theif's re-birth.

Next we enter the Alchemical Room, where more practical alchemy takes place. The room is shaped like a hexagram (heart chakra) with a circular area in the middle where the alchemical apperatus is located. There is a dual-flame athanor/oven/furnace which may be based on a "pelican" design, though usually more complicated designs are left for the flask or retort (usually made of glass, or sometimes clay). Pelican flasks have two "arms" which feed back into the body of the flask, and they represent the idea of a pelican feeding it's (dead) young with it's blood (to give them life). There is also a pelican walking around the room to let you know that there's some serious alchemy going on in here!

The pelican pecking at it's white breast (to get pieces of fish that fell in there), looks like it's biting it's self to get drops of blood with which to feed it's young, and this may represent the "reddening" stage in alchemy where the white material becomes red. The pelican also represents the stage of multiplication where the power of projection is multiplied (the ability of the Stone to turn base metals to gold). The glass retort is cleary shaped as an egg, and this is what it represents: a "hermetically sealed" vessel of creation. Even the athanor/furnace is called the "House of the Chick" indicating the egg symbolism is fitting.

Many of the deifinitions of alchemical symbolism which I used are paraphrased from Sorcerer's Stone by Dennis William Hauck, including this quote here: "The mountain is a symbol for the athanor, since the perfection of the metals takes place under the guise of Nature within mountains." The anathor(furnace) is the mountain, or rather, The Holy Mountain.

When The Thief enters the room, he is given a glass jar to "relieve" himself into. His excrement is collected in it and carried to the alchemical apperatus where it will under go the same change which The Thief will undergo. Traditionally, any external progress in the Great Work will mirror internal progress of the alchemist himself.

"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 (quoted from Secret Teachings of All Ages) When the AlchemyLab.com website first opened, one had to answer a riddle before gaining access to the site. The riddle was:

"The key to life and death is everywhere to be found, but if you do not find it in your own house, you will find it nowhere. Yet, it is before everyone's eyes; no one can live without it; everyone has used it. The poor usually possess more of it than the rich; children play with it in the streets. The meek and uneducated esteem it highly, but the privileged and learned often throw it away. When rejected, it lies dormant in the bowels of the earth. It is the only thing from which the Philosopher's Stone can be prepared, and without it, no noble metal can ever be created."

Here's a more concise version of the riddle:

In speaking of the Philosopher's Stone, recieve this stone which is not a stone, a precious thing that has no value, a thing of many shapes that has no shape, this unknown which is known by all.

Nobody was getting into the website though, but some answers were pretty close; things like: consciousness, light, love, god, aether, blood, quintessence, etc. Dennis Willian Hauck says in his book that "even such answers as urine, menses, manure, and dirt would be considered by alchemists to be fitting responses." The correct answer is, of course, the prima materia, or First Matter. He goes on, "even things such as urine and manure also have a ring of truth in talking about the First Matter, since they are things associated with the life force that humans tend to reject or not want to touch. Similarly, the whole concept of the First Matter has been rejected by modern civilization."

"It takes a seed of gold to make gold," and all things have that seed within, the prima materia.

The Thief is made to sweat out his "mercury" which is recycled in the flask until a pure bowl of mercury fills before him. I covered the idea of the extraction of the spirit and soul as steam in my post, Purification: "But the philosophers have described this 'spirit' and this 'soul' as 'steam' (...), and as there is moisture and dryness in man, our work is nothing but steam and water." (Turba philosophorum, Berlin, 1931) I connected it to the symbol of the dove which "signifies the change from the Black Phase to the White Phase," or Nigredo to Albedo. The excrement in the glass container has been on fire (like The Thief) and changing through various states. It sits over a bowl of red liquid, as opposed to the blue on the other side. This may represent the Red Stone and Dry Way/Path of the Great Work, which I believe is the quickest path to the Stone. Next, the liquid extracted from The Theif is collected in a heart-shaped container and added to the excrement which changes through several more phases of liquids and solids such as crystals until it becomes pure gold. The Alchemist: "You are excriment. You can change yourself into gold."

The Thief exits the egg of transofmation and is presented with a vesica pisces shaped mirror called a "looking glass." The Thief sees his reflection and immediately breaks the glass with the lump of gold that used to be his feces. He's exited the egg/ego and no longer is self-obsessed.

compare to "fool" tarot card later on

Next, The Thief and The Alchemist are in a room of mirrors with a small stone obalisk/pyramidion/capstone type object in the center of the room. The Alchemist says: "You broke the looking glass. Now break the stone," and hands The Thief a silver hatchet which The Theif uses to no avial to break the stone open. The Alchemist takes the hatchet and breaks the stone open in one light hit; revealing a hidden crystal sphere in the center of it. (See the image in lower-left of below picture.) He says of it: "This stone has a soul formed by the work of millions of years."

Recently, television station "SyFy" (Sci-Fi) released a two night miniseries, "Alice," which was a new interpretation of the "Alice in Wonderland" story. The world of Wonderland is run by the tyrranical Red Queen who desires only to feel the good all the time, and to accomplish her goal, she extracts positive emotions from enslaved humans from the "real world." These people are called "oysters" because of the "pearls" they carry inside them. The pearls are the emotions, but they are extracted through the soles/souls of the feet. At one point I believe a person who wakes up during the process says "my sole(soul) hurts." The vampiric theft of emotional energy spans several belief systems going from shamaic beliefs to even alien conspiracies. Some believe that our pain is felt as pleasure "through the looking glass" where everything is inverted. So, these entities attempt to cause suffering here so that they feel pleasure there. Fear mongering in our world may be feeding the chtchonic beings of the Otherworld. Careful with what you're sending out into the (Other)world!

The clear crystal "soul" of the stone may reference the book, Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing. A quote from the novel: "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." The novel also has a spherical crystal which is called a "peradam," an "object that is revealed only to those who seek it":

One finds here, very rarely in the low lying areas, more frequently as one goes farther up, a clear and extremely hard stone that is spherical and varies in size - a kind of crystal, but a curved crystal, something extraordinary and unknown on the rest of the planet. Among the French of Port-des-Singes, it is called peradam. Ivan Lapse remains puzzled by the formation and root meaning of this word. It may mean, according to him, “harder than diamond,” and it is; or “father of the diamond,” and they say that the diamond is in fact the product of the degeneration of the peradam by a sort of quartering of the circle or, more precisely, cubing of the sphere. Or again, the word may mean “Adam’s stone,” having some secret and profound connection to the original nature of man. The clarity of this stone is so great and its index of refraction so close to that of air that, despite the crystal’s great density, the unaccustomed eye hardly perceives it. But to anyone who seeks it with sincere desire and true need, it reveals itself by its sudden sparkle, like that of dewdrops. The peradam is the only substance, the only material object whose value is recognized by the guides of Mount Analogue. Therefore, it is the standard of all currency, as gold is for us.

So, this "Soul-Stone" is the equivalent to "Gold" which is the end-result of the alchemical work. Mount Analogue (and the peradam) "can only be viewed from a particular point when the sun's rays hit the earth at a certain angle." Kinda like a rainbow, huh? "Peradam" can be arranged into the anagrams: "A Red Map," or, "Read Map." Adam of the Bible means "red earth," so the red map of the red earth is Adam, the human microcosm, and we "Read (the) Map" to find the treasure, per Adam. Interestingly, the peradam has already been seen in the movie as it lies at the end of the necklace of The Prostitute (who walks around with an ape "ancestor" of Adam/Man: "This stone has a soul formed by the work of millions of years".

The Alchemist takes The Thief into the Tarot Room and tells him, "The Tarot will teach you how to make a soul." There appears to be 12 large Tarot card paintings on the 12 walls of the room. These are all original Alejandro Jodorowsky paintings, as are other works of art in the movie, and are presumably designed based on his intimiate understanding of the original Marseille's Tarot. Here again we can see his use of red and blue to indicate duality.

click for larger

I'll let you guys meditate on the paintings without my interference. The floor of the room has a lotus with a triangle with a circle in the center. The Theif lays on the floor while The Alchemist adorns him with 4 symbolic items representing the 4 suits of the Tarot. He lays a Wand/staff between The Thief's legs to represent a phallus, and says, "To know." Then a Sword along the spine (in front) with the words, "To dare." Then a Cup/chalice in front of his heart with the words, "To want." And then a Pentacle/disk upon The Thief's brow with the words, "To be silent."

Next they are in the same room which now has a vulture seated upon the back of an ox. The oxen has a symbol drawn upon it's side which seems to me to be a letter, such as the Hebrew letter Teth which means: serpent. (I mentioned this symbol in a previous post: The Journey Back Home.) The letter is also under the belly button of The Written Woman, perhaps as a hint of the kundalini. The idea that the ox represents a serpent might not be too far fetched as the symbol of an eagle, or any bird, with a serpent in it's talons is already an old one. The Alchemist explains to The Thief, "The same force the vulture uses to sieze the ox, is needed by the ox to receive the vulture." (At least that's what I heard through his thick accent!) Sort of an equal-but-opposite reaction there. The vulture has been shown by me in a previous post (Opening the Stargate) to represent "the power of reconcilliation (after the serpent who represents dissection). In Alchemy, the subject of the work is first broken down into its individual parts, purified, and then put back together in a more perfect, or more evolved state."

Continue this series with part 3 here: The Holy Mountain - Cauda Pavonis

My Dinner With The Celtic Rebel - Part 0

2009-12-02T01:34:00.000-08:00

This is the third release of mine and Alex's podcasting (see his post: here). Alex jumped ahead(back) to part zero, so there's still a part one coming. Be sure to listen to parts 3 and 2 first (they're counting down, well, at least until now).

"Once you label me, you negate me." - Kierkegaard

download link (63 minutes)

"Everything is bullshit." - ViølatoR, of The Stygian Port

My Dinner With The Celtic Rebel - Part 2

2009-11-20T21:34:00.000-08:00

Yes, there's more, and yes, it's just as strange. So sit back, kick your feet up, and enjoy our continued ranting. Oh, and do listen for the many voices of Alex. He's scary good at some of his voices... perhaps, a little too good? I'll be keeping this supporting post small, with just a few pictures mostly, though I think Alex wants to steal more of your life force by focussing your attention on his blog :D (Click for: The Celtic Rebel's parallel post)

download link (86 minutes long)

Synchronicity/Synchromysticism often highlights themes in movies which may or may not be deliberate. Many themes I've mentioned, such as "sex & death," the hero-villan dicotomy, and probably also X-Boxes, are all clearly put in there for specific reasons. However, there are some very clear connections between things which I have a hard time believing was done deliberately. Either way, "synchromystics" are clearly the best movie watchers out there - I mean, we get way more out of any moive (and TV shows and books) than just about anyone else, whether or not we're seeing "the plan" or actual synchs.

"Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness." - Nathanial Hawthorne

Alex's charge of Jordan Maxwell "working for the team" sounds a bit too close to "playing for the other team," or turning from straight to gay. Who knows if a media personality is really "working/playing for the other team"? People are too paranoid, with good reason for the most part, but if they help you grow/learn, then use them until they start to hold you back. The problem is getting stuck in a mind-frame and not moving on/growing.

Correction about Slumdog Millionaire: I said the whole game was controlled, but the host tried to control only the last question, from what I remember anyways. I got a bad memory so forgive my little mistakes :D

Later on, Alex and I talk about the "pearly gates" and the gates of hell. Alex's idea of turning the Gates of Hell (anus) into the Pearly Gates (via a salty load), reminds me of this quote:

"By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise" - Adolf Hitler (German Chancellor, leader of the Nazi party)

"There's no turning back once the gates of Hell are closed!" - Evilspeak (1981)

Futurama: The Farnsworth Parabox

a fractal grid is infinite

Newcastle, the only beer for anally focused synchromystics!

pentagram = anus

not attractive, does do anal

peer into your future

Correction: I said "Christian" in Moulin Rouge was played by Jude Law, but it's actually Ewan McGregor. Sorry, Ewan!

See: Lipsynchs: Vulva Stones for more on the "cloven hoof" symbol.

Correction: I said "Monlith on Mars" when I mean the one on the Moon, but there actually is a monolith on Mars, or rather one of it's moons (Phobos), though it's not part of Arthur C. Clark's books. Sorry Arthur :)

nothing to see here, move along

Stay tuned for another installment of "My Dinner With Alex."

My Dinner With The Celtic Rebel - Part 3

2009-11-12T18:07:00.000-08:00

Alex of The Celtic Rebel blog and I, ViolatoR of this blog, got together over the phone for a couple of nights last month and yammered on at eachother in the hopes that other people would find our random musings interesting or at least mildly entertaining. This is being released in tandem, or "stereo" as Alex says, so be sure to check out Alex/The Celtic Rebel's supporting post for this podcast as well: click me! Turn up your speakers too, because Alex got carried away with seemingly half of his record collection being sampled in this. Also, my voice is like 1% of the volume of Alex's voice, and even after normalizing the audio I'm still pretty quiet. Listen to it first before reading the post or the post might just look like gibberish to you. :D So, without further doodoo, here it is:

download link

"It is quite possible that societies - much like individuals - collectively repress information, concepts, and ideas which would produce high anxiety levels if dealt with consciously." - Wilson Bryan Key

So we start attacking Jews pretty early... Don't you miss those great racist jokes of yor? My aunt, upon learning that there will be Obama Christmas tree ornaments, had this to say: "Oh, so now it's legal to hang a nigger?" Now that's funny! (No, I don't share my aunts vocabulary, but I can appreciate her humor without sharing in it.) You can agree or disagree, but once you start legislating what people can think, you've become a Nazi (National Socialist, aka: "Progressive"). In a free world, people would be able to think about things in whatever way they wanted (to be as "racist" or "anti-racist" as they please), but in the "modern" world the Thought Police outlaw and restrict free thought & speech (and as shown in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: speech is thought). I'd rather live in a world where people had a choice to be who they wanted to be, because once the choice is made for you (socialism), there's no point to living at all. Besides, my family gives it to me pretty good for my "Jew nose" which is quite distinguished, though not as "Jewish" as some. Of course, my mom's maiden name is on a list of Sephardic Jewish names, so there may be a reason for my protruding facial feature. So, the bottom line is that if you make fun of me you're anti-semetic! Oops, I failed the intelligence test. Maybe I can parlay my Jewish features into an acting gig, since apparently talent seems to be a distant second to the friends and family (and Temple) connections.

you gotta lick it before you stick it

Nicole Kidman, mmm mmm, what an ass. But seriously folks, she's got nice legs too. Umm, where was I... Oh yeah, Nicole is the female version of Nick/Nicholas, and Nick is a nickname for the Devil/Satan/Lucifer. The Devilish symbolism seems to follow her through her movies (by design, most likely), and Alex tells me all about what he saw in her recent movie, Australia. The name Nicholas comes from Nike ("victory of the people") and laos ("people"). Below, St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children, sailors and merchants, Greece (sorry Alex!) and Russia, who is the basis for Santa(Satan) Claus, stands next to a bathtub overflowing with naked young boys. Yup, that's St. Nick for you.

The logo used on some of the posters for Australia feature a red "A" with the horizontal bar repalced with the word "Australia," a word with 3 A's in it. But, the red "A" looks more like an inverted red "V" without that cross-bar. V is 6 in Hebrew gematria, so if we turn all the A's into V's, "Australia" now has 666 in it. Speaking of V's, the old alien invasion television series, V (for "Visitors") has been remade recently. The logo is a red V.

Australia is located (far away) "down under." The parched desert of Australia/Oz being "down under" brings to mind the classic vision of hell. The last human city of Zion in The Matrix is located far below the surface of the earth, where it's still warm. And as I like saying: Zion is an anagram of "In Oz." Nickhole Kidman is going In Oz, way down under (below the surface of the earth). The Southern Hemisphere of earth has the lower Tropic, known as the Tropic of Capricorn. It is also where Australia is located on the earth; this is Oz, Never-Never Land, and Wonderland (where everything is inverted: up is down). When compared to the microcosm of the human body, the top is the good/light part and the below parts are evil and dark. And down under there (where?), in your underwear(!), is your ass. The dark gates to your/the bowels (of Hell). This tropic signals the sun's arrival in Summer for them, while those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are entering Winter Solstice. Nicole's character desires a "Capricorn mare." Mare is Latin for "sea," and related to the Goddess and waters of Chaos, and the dark spots on the icy reflective Moon, former cheif of the planetary deities, who was called Sin/Sinister. The Moon is heavily cratered.

the land of oz and emerald city/pandemonium

The Rainbow Serpent is the serpent of creation in Aboriginal mythology (or of Gnosis in the Garden of Eden). The Lord of earth is Satan, or Saturn, the 7th planet connected to time, death, and lead which is transmuted into the rainbow Stone of Wisdom. Lucifer's Emerald (colored) stone fell from his crown in battle with the Archangel Michael and fell to earth and became the Grail among other objects. The Stone from Heaven would have created a crater when it his the earth (or an Emerald City of Oz) and is related to the bowl shaped volcano tops, the craters on earth (a large well preserved crater is Wolfe Creek in Australia, and featured in the movie Wolf Creek which I mention in the podcast), and craters on the moon. The "Krator" jar was a Grail shaped vessel in Ancient Greece, and is related to the idea of the Holy Grail in some art. Below, the Rainbow Serpent is seen over a "crater" of a volcano. Recall that the volcano is related to the source of the human soul in Scientology when alien bodies were dropped into a volcano in Hawai'i and then their souls moved from there into early humans. (See Land of The Dead for more)

rainbow(serpent) over the emerald stone and its crater

Moving from Nick-hole Kidman to Little Nicky:

nicky inside a man-hole-stargate-rectum

Adam Sandler and his "666" and "9" numbers made me think of the sign for the constellation of Cancer, from where the Tropic of Cancer gets it's name, which looks like a 69 or 96.

Alex mentions that Anna Farris in House Bunny gets kicked out of the Playboy Mansion because at 27 years old, she's too old to be a bunny. 27 years old is the odd age at which many famous people have died, and is also known as the Return of Saturn, and Saturn is Satan.

I noticed after hearing the final version of the podcast, that Alex specifically asked me if I "wanted to get into Jennifer's body." Meaning the movie of course, but I'm wondering now if he wasn't subconsciously probing my desire to "break my dick off in that ass"? Jennifer's Body is about a extremely materialistic whore who becomes a succubus/suck-cube-us after being tossed into a whirling vortex portal with a mysterious end-point. The Material (energy) "grid pattern" of The Matrix is known to us in the form of "X-Boxes." The X framed in a square, or by it's self, is seen all over this damn movie. Mostly the ones not framed in a box, which some think is a reference to the original Scarface movie which uses the X as a sign of immenent doom to the person it shows up around. It's on par with the Truman Show, seen below being trapped in such a grid pattern. The idea of the grid is becoming much more obvious lately, as several news items Alex has shared with me can attest.

truman's universe

The "box" (formerly the "boob tube." Hear anyone say that recently? No, I didn't think so.), television with its endless anal-focusing programming, makes an apperance in this movie as well. Programming within programming: the fractal grid.

In Jennifer's Body, we learn in the opening narration that hell is a teenage girl's body. Well, we're all trapped in material bodies, though mine is not a teenage girls, that's the personal hell of the narrator, Needy, Jennifer's friend in the movie. Actually they are BFF's or "Best Friends Forever," signaled by their BFF heart necklaces. Needy tears off Jennifer's BFF heart in their struggle. The act of doing so appears to drain Jennifer's power, or causes her to not want to resist anymore.

The necklace has a diamond on it, which will come up in a future podcast-post, but suffice to say that diamonds are useless carbon rocks which have six protons, nutrons and electrons: 666. Jennifer is played by Meagan Fox, and FOX = 666 in english when reducing to a single digit: F-6, O-15, X-24. This was mentioned earlier with the "Foxtrot" dance in Australia. My post, Virgins, Vampires and Vagina Dentata, opens with a discussion on 666 and the letter V for Vampire (V=6 in Hebrew). Below is a great screen capture (of many which Alex sent me) which shows the sexually fatal Jennifer giving us her best vagina dentata impression:

Another Crab/Tropic of Cancer synch comes up when Jennifer lures Needy's repressed homosexual boyfriend to an abondoned indoor pool (a dried up vortex?), where we can see a crab painted on the pool wall next to Jennifer's leg. There's also a seahorse which has come up in Black Dog Star's research. Hmm, Sea-Horse, and sea is mare in Latin (and a "mare" is a female horse). So with the Seahorse and Crab painted together in this scene, we have a "mare-horse," and a crab which is the symbol for the constellation and Tropic of Cancer. Thus here we have a Tropic of Cancer/"Cancer Mare," in Jennifer's Body, and in Australia we had the Tropic of Capricorn/"Capricorn Mare." What the hell is going on here?

Below is an obligitory "wonderland" symbol where the camera is drawn into the reflection of a character, usually into a mirror, to signal to the viewers that we have "gone through the looking glass." I couldn't even begin to list the number of movies that this symbol is in!

It's about as abundant in films as the "X" symbol, and another symbol which I've noticed is on the rise for the last few years: regurgitation. Find me a movie made in the last 5 years that is aimed at the largest demographic of movie patrons which does not feature throwing up in any way, and I'll send somebody to your house with a giant novelty check for a million dollars!

Needy cuts and X into Jennifer which reminds us that hell, the grid, the Matrix, is a teenage girls body, and is a microcosm of the larger energy grid around us like the dome in the Truman Show.

red x

Jennifer is sacrificed by a up-and-cuming (oh, that's where that phrase "came" from!) soft-core wuss band (Part wimp and part pussy. They do become HerO's afterall). They slice her up and toss her into the town's (Devil's Kettle) mystery vortex waterfall. Unbeknownst to them, sacrificing a girl who is not a virgin can have dire consequences. In this case, it turned a whore into... a whore. Spooky, 'eh? Jennifer may have just drained the money, time, and energy of her men before, but now she finishes the job and kills them altogether.

Above we can see the famous vortex of the Devil's Kettle town being "probed" by scientists with orange balls. I've mentioned oranges before in relation to the sun, so this vortex is sort of a black hole swallowing up these suns/sons. It is mentioned in the narration that the vortex's end-point is unknown, hence the probing, but the end of the vortext is found by Needy by the end of the movie where we can see some orange probes and the knife used in the sacrifice.

Needy gains the demons powers during her struggle with Jennifer, and so by "modulating her-self to the frequency of the hellish matrix" she can now pass through the grid, much like the idea of field modulation in Star Trek which allows weapons to pass through energy sheilds. She is seen in crossed-leg position known in meditation and practices of personal enlightenment (wearing the same color as the probes, and bunny slippers to boot), and is floating in the air before passing her-self through the grid-window and then the grid-fence, then finds the exit for the mysterious vortex, the stargate, and is free now.

She picks up the sacrificial knife and goes to pay a visit to the band which sacrificed Jennifer. They are staying in room 922 of their hotel. 9x2x2=36, and if you add everyone number from 1 through 36 it equals 666.

The song playing when the movie ends is by Hole, I'm sure The Celtic Rebel can tell you a thing or two about holes.. In the credits we learn that this movie was written by "Diablo Cody" (pen name of Brook Busey-Hunt who also did Juno. Side note: "Juno" is the name of the case worker in the afterlife for the dead couple in Beetlejuice.) "Diablo" means Devil, and "Cody" came from a trip to Cody, Wyoming. Wyoming is where the first national moument, Devil's Tower, is located.

Since I'll be mentioning the number 42 in a few paragraphs, let's end this section with a picture of a checkerboard phone from Jennifer's Body with a "242" on it:

For the topic of Sex & Death, Alex brought up the movie Dead Girl. The movie features a group of guys raping a zombie girl found chained in an abondoned mental hospital. That's about it for the plot. Anyways, zombies are known in England as "the Zed word," because they don't say the letter "Z" as "zee," but instead as "zed." In Pulp Fiction, "Zed" is an ass-raping redneck. So, Zed/zombies is/are being connected to Zombie-Vampires (or Vampire-Zombies? Same thing anyways), and the pervasive theme of anal sex, gayness, and Sex & Death.

In the scene where Bruce Willis says "Zed's dead," he and his wife are leaving their motel room, and in that very room, above the bed, is the exact same painting of a beach scene found in the afterlife waiting room in the movie Beetlejuice! (Huge hanks to Harry for donating this screen capture to my email inbox!) Also, Bruce's character is a "dead man" for screwing over the gangster who bet on his boxing match.

bruce gives us his jesus impersonation

"Zed" is also the name of Sean Connery's character in Zardoz where he plays a geneticaly engineered mortal who was made to kill humanities survivors after an apocalypse. But the true purpose of the genetic engineering was to produce a perfect human (Zed) who could infiltrate the land of the immortal humans called Eternals. Each part of the Eternals land is called a Vortex (Recall the vortex/stargate of Jennifer's Body (both literal and figurative!)). Not only does Zed penetrate their Vortex (he is the only person in the Vortex who can get an erection, because immortality has reduced the Eternal's desire to mate), he breaks through a plastic material described as indestructable, and he also breaks open the barrier of the Vortex so that his fellow men could come in and bring death to the Eternals. These matrix/grid-penetrating themes will almost certainly come up in future podcasts.

The "Valhalla" quote from Network which we play is only one of many, many, great lines in that movie. The idea of a "collective," programmed by the media, is really rubbed in during some scenes of that movie.

watch it, then kill your t.v.

Recently it was discovered that a rainbow is made not only of light refracting at 42 degrees, but at the range from 40 to 42 degrees. These numbers are often interchanged in religious text. Both are significant, but it is interesting to find that the angle of 42 degrees is the angle at which the red band of the spectrum is found. Below, in the Battle Royal poster, a large red X is seen behind the number 42. The movie deals with a "most dangerous game" theme involving Japanese highschool students. Recall in Jennifer's Body that Jennifer is "x'ed out" by Needy before Needy kills her.

Well, that's about I all wanted to say in reguards to the podcast. Here's a picture of cute pink animals:

pink is the new brown

The Holy Mountain - Nigredo

2009-10-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

I was recently turned on to Alexander Jodorowsky's films by like-minded blogger The Celtic Rebel. Jodorowsky's cult psychodelic western film El Topo was distributed in the States by John Lennon through the Beatles manager Allen Klein. John Lennon also completely financed Jodorowsky's next film, The Holy Mountain, again through Allen Klein. (The official story is that) Klein then demanded that Jodorowsky film an adaptation of The Story of O which was a BDSM novel. Jodorowsky left the country to get out of his duities which caused Allen Klein, who held the rights to El Topo and The Holy Mountain, to keep Jodorowsky's films from the public for over 30 years. We can't know the whole story, but it is odd that such illuminating films, especially The Holy Mountain, were kept from the public by a man who managed the (possibly Tavistock created) Beatles, especially when the Stanford Research Institute was directing the psychodelic energy of the late 60's and early 70's into nerfarious ends (see: A New Religion for a New Age Ch.7-b). Who knows what impact these films might have had with a large release at that time, especially with names like John Lennon behind them.

Alexander Jodorowsky was approached by a man who claimed his family had printed the Tarot for over 200 years and still possesed the original plates from which the cards were printed. He and Jodorowsky recreated the Marseille's Tarot based on these original designs. Alexander Jodorowsky is described on wikipedia as a "scholar in comparative religion, playwright, director, producer, composer, actor, mime, comic book writer, tarot reader, historian and psychotherapist." As a result of his history, I feel it necessary to include as many pictures as possible so you can see what symbolism Jodorowsky has inserted into the films and decide for yourself what they may mean for you.

Jodorowsky's movies make many references to, and comments on, religion and government. He doesn't seem to be too keen on Catholicism. Until I find a dubbed or subtitled copy of El Topo I'll refrain from trying to comment on it, so I'll let this sequential image speak for it's self.

El Topo, 1970

Moving on, I've decided to break this post into at least two parts to keep from forcing you to read a three hour treatise on this movie. Like El Topo, Holy Mountain is broken into basically two parts, so this post is all about the first part.

"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." - Marcus Aurelius
"Cinema is truth 24 times a second." - Jean-Luc Godard
"What truth?" - Neo, The Matrix

Now I could jump right into an hour long discourse on this poster, but I'd rather follow the movie scene by scene and let the pieces naturally fall into place. The movie opens with a drunkard and theif laying in the dirt in a pool of his own urine with his face covered by (The Lord of the) flies. This character is known only as The Thief, so that's what I'll call him from here on out.

he's getting buzzed in more ways than one!

He is befriended by a multiple amputee dwarf with a Five of Swords Tarot card tied to his back. The Five of Swords is called Defeat and suggests self-interest and discord and "intellect infeebled by sentiment" in the Thoth deck. The Dwarf (as he will now be called) and The Thief form a friendly relationship, and the tarot symbolism will become apparent later in the film.

A panther/mountain lion also walks by the passed-out Thief, possibly a hint at the mystery-school's penchant for wearing panther skins/golden fleece. Near The Thief are also two The Fool tarot cards, hinting at there being three Fools laying in the dirt including The Thief. There is also a frog near the cards which may parallel the crocodile at the bottom of some The Fool cards, and the alchemical symbolism of the initial black stage, Nigredo, "the corruption that must take place before growth."

A group of young naked boys (with their genitals panited green) run up to them and one pulls a flower out of the left palm of The Thief. (The "Spirit Palm" symbol is often mentioned at the Black Dog Star blog.) The highlighted palm of deities such as Buddha and Jesus indicate the chakra point there, as well as the Stigmata wounds of Jesus. Here the nail is replaced with a flower, and The Thief has been "de-flowered!" I've mentioned before at this blog that the act of sex, specifically deflowering of a virgin, is an initiation, and often shares symbolism with higher initiations. "Nail" (Hebrew letter V/#6) is a nickname for Old Nick, Satan, and here Satan has been replaced with a Flow-er, a possibly LucyFur feminine menstrual symbol of life springing out of death (or in this case a passed out Jesus look-alike); the animating of carbon copies of God. Similar symbolism is found in an alchemical picture of a crucified serpent; beside the serpent is a wilting flower and next to that is a dead tree stump with flowers growing out of it. Jesus is also symbolized by a flower on a cross in the symbol of the Rose Cross.

In the group of the naked boys is one with a crocodile costume (paralleling the frog near the two The Fool cards, one of which even says "le crocodile") indicating perhaps the Egyptian god Apep, the destroyer who attempts each day to swollow Ra's sun barque as it travels the heavens. The solar symbolism becomes more clear as The Thief is tied to a tau-cross and stoned by the boys. The Thief on the cross is Jesus according to some traditions which saw Jesus as the theif of the ineffable name of God (stolen by him during his Egyptian initiation), and as the as the theif of the Torah scroll from the Temple which Jesus tried to decode using the Name of God in order to give the Secret Mysteries to the masses. (Big mistake apparently. What use do the (m)asses have for wisdom?) The two other Fool cards now come into focus as the other two fools on the crosses flanking Jesus/The Thief. This all takes place in front of a cave which indicates the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Thief screams at the boys and they run, then he almost stones The Dwarf but decides against it, and they share a joint (So, The Thief gets "stoned" in more ways than one!), and then they both leave together towards town.

gettin' stoned

As The Theif and The Dwarf enter the town, a bus load of dead and bloody troops drives past, and they walk past a line of indian women ("indian" as opposed to the lighter skinned descendents of Spanish blood) trying to iron out blood stains in the soldiers clothing at gun point from soldiers behind them. All the soldiers wear full gas masks and carry rifles. A firing squad executes a group of anti-war student protesters who bleed black blood. In these early scenes in the movie, we can see Alexander Jodorowsky's vivid commentary on religion and war. Next a group of soldiers marches down the street holding up crucifixes with skinned and splayed open lambs, clearly focusing attention on the worship of bloody scenes of torture by the Catholic Church, and how soldiers are often brainwashed into thinking they're doing gods work by killing those of darker skin (the indians), or of different (and dangerous!) religious ideologies.

march on christian soldiers

All the executions are public and are attended by tourists who takes pictures of themselves near the piles of dead bodies. We can see how war was turned into entertainment during Vietnam, and instead of being deterred, people today are so desensitized that they play the song "Let the bodies hit the floor" set to scenes of American soldiers blowing Iraqis and Afghanis to unidentifiable little bits. In addition to the bread and circuses, the gladiator games (televised war) keep the public distracted from the real problems in their own country while brainwashing them into fearing imaginary enemies rather than the real enemies who are the news(/spell) casters, political elites, and our own darkside which goes along with it freely.

A soldier grabs a random tourist and begins to rape her as she smiles and waves for her effeminate dress-wearing purse-having husband to video tape this priceless moment of their vacation. (Wow, Jodorowsky was ahead of his time!) He says "watch the birdy" to his wife when he takes her picture, which traditionally means check out this middle finger I'm pointing at you (to "flip someone the bird"), but also tells us to watch the birdy because birds have been flying out of the bullet holes of the executed protesters. I think this symbol was also used in Jodorowsky's El Topo, and it is also used in The Fall when "The Mystic" is being killed and birds are pouring out of his mouth. In Egyptian symbolism the bird is connected to the soul and to Isis who became a (blue?) bird and flew around the pillar which encased Osiris.

fun for the whole family

The Thief and The Dwarf get hired by a group of performers, one of whom wears a top-hat with a Nazi swastica on it. They help put on a show called "The Great Toad and Chameleon Circus" which shows a reenactment of the Conquest of Mexico by Templar-cross-bearing Spanish ships and soldiers. The three ships may symbolize the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, the ships of Christopher Columbus. Jodorowsky would enjoy the double meaning of the Santa Maria, or Saint Virgin Mary, conquoring Mexico with it's religious suppression. German marching music is played as the "Spanish" toads conquor Mexico, some dressed in the costumes of Catholic monks. As the model city of Mexico is blown apart, The Thief croaks like a frog/Spanish conquorer/Jesus.

the conquest of mexico

Three men dressed as Roman centurions and one dressed as the Virgin Mary sell minature Christs. One tosses dice symbolizing the soldiers who drew lots for Jesus' clothes. A rich tourist buys a large cross but when he tries to carry it the Mary-Man makes The Thief carry the cross for him. (Hmm, Mary-Man: "Robin Hood and his Merry/Mary-Men"?) The Mary-men are eating right out of a skinned bull (one is even sitting inside the animal), and they are all obese (on the excesses of their "Roman"/Western civilization). The bull is an ancient goddess symbol going back to more egalitarian civilizations. Here the Roman/Western/Christian soldier guts the past to feed the corpulent and cruel future.

a woman places a heart over her heart

They get The Thief drunk and carry him into a storehose of food which has many square boxes with X's spray painted on them (X-Boxes which are synonymous with a soul trapping gird/matrix). They lay The Thief out in the iconic Jesus-on-a-cross pose and cover him with grease from the belly of a pig, they then proceed to cast a mold of his body and to use to it to produce many paper mache copies. The Thief wakes to find that he has been crudely counterfeited and screams in such a way that you cannot not feel is pain. Imagine the horror Jesus must feel to see that he has become a mass produced novelty item which causes people to focus on the messenger and not the message ("mass produced," "Christian mass"). The Theif destroys all but one copy and leaves with it.

Next we see a group of 12 prostitutes in quiet contemplation of Jesus in a small church. A common slander of Christians is that they histoically took in (and had their ranks filled with) prostitutes and criminals. Mary Magdalene was accused of being a prostitute who had reprented her sins and become the favorite desciple of Jesus. In defense of the church's approval of prostitution, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote: "If prostitution were to be suppressed, careless lusts would overthrow society." The whores vary in size, shape and age, one being around 8 years old. Another one, called The Prostitute from here on in, has a chimpanzee with her. The name "chimpanzee" refers to two species of ape, both in the genus Pan. Pan as you well know is the Satyr/Faun, the god of sexual excess who hung out with nymphs and was also the god of shepards and flocks (think of the Christian symbolism of the flock and shepard); he was also a bee-keeper which brings to mind an orderly Borgesque society. He has also been connected to Oz and the number 77 via Aleister Crowley and Hebrew gematria.

The whores mingle with potential customers in front of the church. An old man with a false left eye calls over the young whore and takes out his false eye and places it in her hand and then passionately kisses her hand. There's plenty of one-eyed symbolism, such as The Great Seal of the United States of America, or deities such as Odin giving his left eye to the foutain of wisdom explaining why it was dimmer than the right eye (moon vs. sun), and the idea that God is one-eyed because he's symbolized by the single solar orb. Here we have an old man, God the Father, giving his lunar eye to a child(virgin)-whore.

The Thief meets the group of whores who all laugh at him except for The Prostitute who cleans the paper-Jesus which is suddenly covered in green paint, and annoints it's feet (like Mary Bethany, sister of Lazarus/Osiris, which would make her Nephtys or Isis). When she looks at The Thief's face, she flashes back to the Jesus statue in the church she was just in. The group of whores, The Thief, The Dwarf and The Prostitute (with chimp/Pan in hand) all walk off together.

They walk past an outdoor dance between masked soldiers and citizens, all of whom are men. The band supplying the music is headed by a woman dressed as The Devil (wearing all red, and having devil horns); Lucifer/LucyFur, the equal but opposite counterpart to the male Christian God. The decorations for the dance are all black and white. In a secluded corner a soldier and his dance partner get intimate. The Thief walks through the dance into an old decrepid church with a worm-ridden bible and where the statue of Jesus is missing. The Theif puts the last paper Jesus in it's spot. He then notices a bed on the ground with an owl perched upon the headboard. He removes the sheet to find a priest/Pope laying in bed with the missing statue of Jesus. The Pope speaks only in animalistic screams. This convention was used in El Topo as well, where women had men's voices, and vice versa, and some only made animal sounds. The Thief is kicked out of the church with his paper-Jesus, and he cries and bites and tears at the face of the paper-Jesus which is made out of bread (?), as in the Bread of Life which Jesus asks his desciples to consume.

the material prison where predator and prey act out their Forever dance/War

The next scene has The Theif tieing a large group of red and blue balloons to the feet of the paper-Jesus which float away with Jesus hanging upside down. The colors red and blue are used by Jodorowsky a lot, seemingly in place of black and white, but representing more than duality. Later we see these colors embedded in most of his Tarot imagry, and a scene where they seem to indicate the Red and White Stones of Alchemy. Many will be reminded of a much later film, The Matrix, which used red and blue to imply that one was "awake" or "asleep" with reguard to how they see the world. Unfortunately, red and blue pills is no different than Coke-a-Cola or Pepsi Cola, Democrat or Republican; yet another dialectic trap. Amazing how Jodorowsky sends the paper-Jesus floating away with both halves of this dialectic, long before it became a cultural meme. This scene takes place at the cave where The Thief was crucified and stoned. Now there is a toppled and broken obelisk with a sun drawn on it near it's base. The sun on the face of a 3D cube as well - look closely. And a 3D cube, as we all know, can be unfolded to reveal a cross. The obelisk may represent The Tower card of the Tarot, which will be covered in the next part(s) of this mini-series. The whores spread out in a crescent shape and the naked boys with green genitals group together opposite the whores in a bizzare rendition of a possible symbol of the crescent and star. The Dwarf and The Prostitute each stand off by themselves; the two directions The Thief must choose between later in the film. The paper Jesus floats towards town and towards the second part of the movie...

Well, that does it for Part 1 of this series and the movie it's self. Continue reading part 2 of this series of posts here: The Holy Mountain - Albedo

The Land of the Dead

2009-09-29T22:45:00.000-07:00

Operating under the absurd assumption that anyone noticed I haven't written anything all month, I decided to throw together a quick post (Ha! Not possible!) of some jumbled ideas floating around in the holographic matrix of my grey matter. I'll be rehashing (and extensively quoting) some old stuff, but you should keep in mind that any-thing can be used to learn/advance/grow. This is not a movie review, it's a synchromystic investigation, and each symbol can have multiple interpretations, all of which are valid. One might even use the same scene from a movie, like The Matrix, to propose two opposing "truths." As long as you keep moving forward, your golden, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. Well it looks like this isn't going to be a short as I had thought, but hey, it's cheaper than a movie! So, grab some popcorn and, "on with the show!"

The bizarre mythology behind Scientology has aliens from another planet being rounded up in spaceships (which look like, what at this point in time are, outdated aircraft) and then dropped into a volcano on earth. The souls/spirits then come out and inhabit the bodies of ancient man and evolve them up to the point we're at now. The odd thing about this is that the less sci-fi aspects of it are very similar to mythology of shamanic cultures, fueled by entheogenic compounds such as psilocybin and DMT, as well as other older ancient-astronaut mythology.

Way back in the day, one of the first 'alternative' subjects I had read about was theories on angels, specifically Satan/Lucifer. The story went that the Archangels all ruled their own planet and the planet lorded over by Satan was the one between Mars and Jupiter which is an asteroid belt today. Satan/Lucifer/The Devil told the creatures on this planet to worship him as god. God didn't like that too much and destroyed his planet. (worship = war ship. No wonder God/YHWH got pissed, Satan was building war-ships against him!) So all that remains now is the asteroid belt. Where did Satan go from there? Well he was cast down from (the) heaven(s) to earth. "Satan is the god of this planet" sayeth Madam Blavatsky.

At around the same time I was reading some of the earlier UFO/Alien mythology on the internet as well. One version of events has a race of aliens being chased by another race of aliens from their planetary system into ours. The race which was running away landed on the planet which used to occupy the space of the asteroid belt. They set up a fake base, then came to earth and hid underground. The alien race in pursuit blew up the planet between Mars and Jupiter and then, just in case, set up an energy grid around the earth and moon so that any possible survivors would not be able to leave the solar system. Why didn't they just blow up earth too? Well, it wouldn't make a good story, that's why! So the aliens/angels trapped on earth either combined their DNA with some earlier species of humanoid, or died and reincarnated into the animals of earth, or continue to live underground in secret military installations or the "hollow earth." Interestingly, the top aliens in the reptilian theories are the "Winged Draco" (feathered serpents?), and seem to appear in the story below. Serpents are intimately connected with ayahuasca visions as well (shamanic brew with DMT in it), but these ones seem to be less earth spirits and more.. something else.

aboriginal dream time,
the rainbow serpent by lorraine williams

Here's an interesting ayahuasca induced version of events, as told in Michael Talbot's Holographic Universe:

In 1960 the American Museum of Natural History sent [Michael] Harner on a year-long expedition to study the Conibo, and while there he asked the Amazonian natives to tell him about their religious beliefs. They told him that if he really wished to learn, he had to take a shamanic sacred drink made from a hallucinogenic plant known as ayahuasca, the "soul vine." He agreed and after drinking the bitter concoction had an out-of-body experience in which he traveled [to] a level of reality populated by what appeared to be the gods and devils of the Conibo's mythology. He saw demons with grinning crocodilian heads. He watched as an "energy-essence" rose up out of his chest and floated toward a dragon-headed ship manned by Egyptian-style figures with blue-jay heads; and he felt what he thought was the slow, advancing numbness of his own death.
But the most dramatic experience he had during his spirit journey was an encounter with a group of winged, dragon-like beings that emerged from his spine. After they had crawled out of his body, they "projected" a visual scene in front of him in which they showed him what they said was the "true" history of the earth. Through a kind of "thought language" they explained that they were responsible for both the origin and evolution of all life on the planet. Indeed, they resided not only in human beings, but in all life, and had created the multitude of living forms that populates the earth to provide themselves with a hiding place from some undisclosed enemy in outer space (Harner notes that although the beings were almost like DNA, at the time, 1961, he knew nothing of DNA).
After this concatenation of visions was over, Harner sought out a blind Conibo shaman noted for his paranormal talents to talk to him about the experience. The shaman, who had made many excursions into the spirit world, nodded occasionally as Harner related the events that had befallen him, but when he told the old man about the dragon-like beings and their claim that they were the true masters of the earth, the shaman smiled with amusement. "Oh, they're always saying that. But they are only the Masters of Outer Darkness," he corrected.

ayahuasca vision by pablo amaringo
all users of ayahuasca will eventually see serpents
it's not a hallucination, it's a window into reality

From my The Journey Back Home post:

[...] 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 Judgment. 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 The Omega Man.)

I Am the Omega

The Secret of the Incas reminds me of Philip K. Dick's hypothesis. I'll quote Wrong Way Wizard:

[Philip K. Dick] thought that the rightful Apocalypse had been/was being forestalled by the work of a secret sect of evil Mystics who possess a technique to hold reality in a kind of amnesiac tape-loop. [...] 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. [...] 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.

This should remind people of the Aeon Flux movie, 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.

"they're here." - poltergeist
ghosts with anks which symbolize eternal life

Originally here is where I plugged my first video "Here Is Wisdom," which I've since remade at a feature length video delving into several themes in movies which I've covered here and in podcasts. See the full movie, in 5 parts, on my Vimeo account here. I also go off on a tangent about dogs in movies because of the scene from The Truman Show, so.. here's that tangent: I've noticed that the theme of the psychopomp Hermes in the form of the dog comes up with great regularity in Underworld/Afterlife type situations. In The Truman Show a dog named Pluto attacks Truman. Pluto is the lord of the Underworld and is the same as Hades. Jim Carrey is often surrounded by dogs in his other films. In The Mask he, and his dog, find that reality is much more of a Wonderland than he previously thought. In The Wizard of Oz the dog Toto accompanies Dorothy around Oz. In Beetlejuice a dog causes the car accident that kills the main characters. In fact, the dog himself kills them when he jumps off of a wooden plank where his weight was all that kept their car from plummeting into the river. A dog is one of the characters in the television show LOST and often leads people deep into the island. Anyways, keep that theme in mind next time you see a dog in a movie.

The Matrix is re-booted when The One gathers 23 people to re-populate Zion, 16 male and 7 female (Referencing Genesis 16:7-10). Morpheus' Red Pill speech from The Matrix:

Morpheus: "The matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work. When you go to church. when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."
Neo: "What truth?"
Morpheus: "That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison ... for your mind (and soul)."

Another movie with Keanu Reeves, only he's on the other side of the conversation this time, is Constantine:

(John Constantine prepares to initiate Angela Dodson into the Mysteries of Hell on Earth, and to give her eyes to see the Angels & Demons all around us):
Angela Dodson: "I need to understand."
John Constantine: "You don't wanna know what's out there, trust me on this."
Angela Dodson: "I need to see [...]. Please."
John Constantine: "You do this, there's no turning back. You see them... They see you. Understand?"
Angela Dodson: "Yeah."

the freeway is hell this time of day!

The land of the dead lives on. In movies such as Constantine, The Others, The Sixth Sense, Ghost Town, Beetlejuice, and The Haunting in Connecticut, among others, the land of the dead is right here alongside the land of the living. Hell is literally on earth. Satan was cast down to earth. This is the underworld, the world under the dome of (the) Heaven(s).

black iron prison

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." (Note: "the last human" in Dogma, the last descendant of Jesus' bloodline, is called the last Sion(Zion)) The center of the earth is the traditional domain of the Christian idea of Hell. "Zion" is an anagram of "In Oz." Also, "zo" means life in Egyptian, so we might see the reverse of zo to mean death. "Oz" is a diminutive form of Osiris, the Egyptian deity of death and resurrection and of the Afterlife. Both Oz and Hell are sectioned into 4 slices, and even the Garden of Eden is broken up by it's four rivers.

In The Matrix, Agent Smith, talking to Mr. Anderson/Neo about his "double-life" as a hacker and programmer: "One of these lives has a future, the other does not." Thomas Anderson dies, Neo lives on. But in what manner? Cypher is talking to Trinity about unplugging Neo from the Matrix, and (Lu)Cypher says, "We're gonna kill him, do you understand that?"

When Neo is being unplugged and he is hallucinating that the mirror he touched is covering his body he says, "It's cold. It's cold" and he almost has a heart attack. Ever see a movie where someone was dying of a gunshot wound or too much blood loss? They say "I'm cold" or "It's cold." Neo is dying - only to "wake up" in the "real world."

The Matrix: (When Neo is being unplugged) Cypher says, "Buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, 'cause Kansas, is going bye-bye" Kansas would be the Matrix, making Zion and the "Real World" analogous to The Land of Oz, Wonderland, Imagination Land, Fantasia, etc. Note that Morpheus calls the real world, "The desert of the real." Oz is surrounded by a desert.

Cypher, "I think, the Matrix, can be more real than this world."
Trinity, "But you're out Cipher. You can't go back."
Cypher, "That's what you think. They're gonna reinsert my body. I go back to sleep, and when I wake up, I won't remember a goddamn thing."

Cypher wants to be reborn in the Matrix Reality, and as anyone can tell you, most of us don't remember our past lives. In the television series Quantum Leap, scientist Sam Beckett gets stuck jumping into the lives of other people "in his time-line" (though not always) "to set things right," and keeps praying the next jump "will be the jump home." In the last episode he finds himself in a bar with other jumpers, some of whom are dead, and it seems this place is a rest stop before he continues on to more extreme jumps in the future. (The series ended here before he got to those more extreme jumps.) He is stuck living out the important moments of people's lives, the ones where they specifically incarnated to teach themselves a lesson (according to numerous past-life regressions). Though it seems instant, it takes a week (of creation) to jump from one person to the next. It seems that what we are seeing is Sam's many incarnations, and the pivotal moments therein, which are designed to teach him a lesson as his soul continues to evolve. Some past life regressions actually go into future lives, there's no reason (which I know of) that in higher dimensions where time is not linear, that you could not live out multiple incarnations simultaneously (like Sam Beckett). In this view of things, you could be your own mother and father and best friend and worst enemy all in this life! In fact that may be a better way of looking at it then how we look at each-other today. At the end of the series we learn that Sam never goes home.

The Cletic Rebel has outlined his theory on the energy grid that surrounds us and keeps us trapped in Philip K. Dick's "Black Iron Prison"(time loop):

(a) we are immortal spiritual beings,
(b) reincarnation is indisputable (heck, even "the Jesus" spoke of it),
(c) we are trapped in some type of construct that facilitates the process,
(d) we die and repeat the process before we can achieve gnosis,
(e) this prison construct serves a beneficiary outside ourselves,
(f) we have little comprehension of the nature of this/these being[s],
(g) there is some kind of fail-safe system/aetheric barrier that prevents our spirit from leaving should we manage to escape/break the cycle

In The Matrix, The Merovingian said: "Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without." Wasn't taking the Red Pill or Blue Pill a choice? Is Merv telling us that the Red and Blue Pill dichotomy is yet another us vs. them, awake vs. asleep, democrats vs. republicans, coke vs. pepsi scam? Did I just compare enlightenment to The Cola Wars? In Total Recall, Arnold is told that he is still in the memory-vacation simulator at Recall, and not really on mars. The head of Recall offers Arnold a Red Pill which symbolizes his mind's desire to "wake up" from the simulation. Of course, the truth is that Arnold is awake (well, "is waking up" might be a better choice of words), and that the Red Pill will only knock him out so that they can re-brainwash him. The Red Pill keeps him in the game, like Neo in The Matrix. In the second "Matrix" movie, Neo learns that becoming "The One" (taking the Red Pill) is another layer of control and is meant to continue the Matrix, not stop it. "Neo" (or more specifically the anomaly in the Matrix programming) is immortal: Thomas Anderson dies, Neo lives on.

Looking back to the last picture of Eden, Hell and Oz, there's a logo in the bottom right from the movie Fido. In it, Carrie-Anne Moss ("Trinity" from the Matrix) and her son form a close relationship with their pet zombie named Fido. In the movie, certain fenced off areas in the world are back to (almost) normal after a zombie outbreak. They have captured some zombies and turned them into slaves, servants and pets. So the last human(s) live alongside the dead in a fenced-in area. The company that did all this is Zomcon, and has an "Oz" resonating logo. The Celtic Rebel muses:

"So, yeah, it’s OZ. Oh, the wizards are crafty. Recalling the movie about zombies being domesticated, hence controlled. Question: What is Oz? Answer: 'A Better Life Through Containment!' Argh, how fucking obvious!"

Jesus asked us to drink his blood (vampire/werewolf) and eat his flesh (zombie). What the hell kinda choices are those? After doing so, you become immortal upon your death (like in every zombie & vampire movie). Immortality is granted either way, but is that the kind of immortality you want? The Will Smith messiah vehicle I Am Legend was a remake of The Omega Man which in turn was a remake of The Last Man On Earth starring horror icon Vincent Price. They were all based off of the same book which inspired all the later vampire and zombie books and films. In The Last Man On Earth, Vincent Price wards off the zombies with garlic, mirrors, crosses and stakes through the heart. They're zombie-vampires (or vampire-zombies?), combined as one immortal being - closer to the original story (and Jesus' desciples) than movies which later separated the two.

Philip K. Dick called the (c)age in which we are trapped the Black Iron Prison. Fulcanelli calls this the Age of Iron with the seal of Death and attributes of Saturn. In the movie The Haunting In Connecticut, a minister is called upon to help exercise an apparently evil soul trapped in a house. He brings with him a cross made of two crossed iron magnets. He explains that "iron defends from evil," and that "prisons have iron bars to not only contain the body, but the evil contained within it." One must wonder whose definition of evil we're using here; Yahweh's? The chapter on iron in Sorcerer's Stone A Beginner's Guide to Alchemy is called "Mars' Challenge: The Angry Metal Iron." The author explains that the name for iron is derived from early words which mean "holy metal," because it was used to make swords for the Crusades. Yup, nothing more holy than, acting in the name of YHWH, committing the wholesale slaughter of Gnostic Christians and Muslims who had kept the Egyptian wisdom alive until then. Iron is the most abundant metal on the surface of the earth, while at the same time "natural" (earth formed) iron is extremely rare. Most of the iron here came in the form of meteorites, and "It is postulated that another planet similar to earth (a rocky planet) broke apart early in the formation of the solar system and is responsible for the iron-nickle debris that rains down upon the earth on a daily basis." What?! Satan/Lucifer's planet is the source of iron which literally rains down all over planet, keeping our "evil spirits" contained here? "Heavy dark iron oxides such as hematite, marcasite, magnetite, and siderite are the primary iron ores. Along with iron meteorites, they tend to exhibit distinctive radial and spherical crystalline spiraling, which is very significant in an esoteric sense. These signatures show the fundamental role that the iron archetype plays in the formation of matter in general. Several noted astrologers believe that iron is the mechanism by which the ether penetrates the planet and human body and brings life force to dead matter."

In The Haunting In Connecticut, as in many haunting/ghost movies, the souls of the deceased are shown to continue to exist right along side the rest of us. Sometimes there's an explanation for why they haven't passed on into the light (of rebirth, and another trip 'round this Hell on earth), but the basic premise still stands - the dead are right here, though most of the time we can't see them. We are literally living in the land of the dead - the "real world," or Zion, from The Matrix, Wonderland, Fantasia, and Imagination Land; all right here. 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."

The above scene is from The Haunting In Connecticut. In the alcoholic dad's recreation room (or re-creation room?) is the completely out-of-place poster of the Egyptian afterlife. There's no indication in the movie that anyone is interested in Egyptian mythology, so why is that poster there? It's presence indicates to the viewer (subconsciously for most viewers who don't see it, but have probably seen it in their lives, or who gather the necessary information from the collective unconscious) that what we are seeing is the Underworld/Afterlife. It's all around us.

In the third Pirates Of the Caribbean movie, Johnny Depp/Captain Jack Sparrow finds himself in "Davey Jones' Locker," the Underworld (quite literally). His only company is other versions of himself, and a ton of crabs. In The Last Mimzy, where the kids open a portal to the future via a white rabbit and sri-yantra shaped rainbow bridge, crabs make a couple of appearances; once in possible reference to a live action version of the Mad Hatter's tea party from Alice In Wonderland. And in The Haunting In Connecticut, crabs appear out of nowhere in a waking dream had by the main character who is a boy dying of cancer who can see the spirits of the dead in his house. The minister, who is also dying, explains that those who are closer to death can see the other side clearer, therefore, the crabs are from the other side. From my The Journey Back Home: "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."

Michael at Gosporn linked me to this article (titled: "The Star of the Sea") in his comment below. In a previous post of his he connects 8-legged crabs to the Vatican via the octagonal St. Peter's Square. In Star of the Sea, he connects Mary to starfish (obvious really, now that he mentions it!) and at the end informs us the the King Crab eats the giant Sunflower Sea Stars, as opposed to smaller crabs who are eaten by sea stars. I thought this connected well to the decidedly king of crabs, the constellation Cancer, who as I stated above signals the "movement of the Sun into the Underworld." Anadæ Effro, gifted synchro commenter, chimes in on Gosporns site with the comment that: "Those born under its sign [...] are also called Moonchildren, since that planetary body is our ruler." This gives me reason to mention the fantasy world in the movie The Never Ending Story known as "Fantasia" (Disney film as well), wherein the "Childlike Empress" (as she is named in the credits) has no name and must be given one by the child who is reading the book "The Never Ending Story," (rainbow)bridging the veil between "reality" and "fantasy." The name he gives her, almost completely undiscernable due to a raging storm, and never again mentioned, is: Moonchild. The Moonchild rules Fantasia, a land analogous to South Park's "Imagination Land" which was populated with Egyptian deities. It is another silhouette of this Otherworldly local.

Because of continuously excellent comments at the end of this post, I decided that (yet) another paragraph on the crab phenomena was warranted. "Bartholomew" comments that the sign of Cancer was known as the "Gate of Man," and was through which our soul becomes incarnated. This probably had something to do with the sun's solstice being in the Tropic of Cancer in the summer (and of Capricorn in the winter). However, today the sign of the summer solstice is Taurus (my sign :D). Previously I've mentioned how the sign of Cancer is symbolized by it's two stars which form a yin-yang or "69" type symbol, and that this comes from the ancient depiction of the sign as two donkeys. These are the donkeys the Egyptian Pharaoh rides, as well as Jesus on his entry into Jerusalem (per the messianic myths) which is celebrated on Palm Sunday. If the messiah is supposed to come into Jerusalem riding two donkeys, and we come into this incarnation riding the two stars of Cancer, are we not all messiahs of our personal spiritual evolution? We come into the sign of the crab, a shelled animal, and as an anonymous commenter and as Michael Skaggs said in his comment, "Shell Beach" was the border to the "wonderland" rat-maze in Dark City. We are incarnated into our mortal shells.

moonchild, fairy queen
atreyu on flying dog...

Crabs are usually found on beaches, but they keep showing up in the underworld and in near-death visions; perhaps the land of the dead is on a nice beach-front property? The Land of Oz is surrounded by a desert after all (in other depictions, the whole of Oz is an island and a desert surrounds the central lands). Here's an interesting passage from an interesting book which brings up the beach scenario, though not in a specifically "near-death" situation, I think there are interesting parallels nonetheless. The Holographic Universe, by Michael Talbot:

[Charles Tart, professor of psychology at UCDavis] found two graduate students, Anne and Bill, who could go into a deep trance and were also skilled hypnotists in their own right. He had Anne hypnotize Bill and after he was hypnotized, he had Bill hypnotize her in return. Tart's reasoning was that the already powerful rapport that exists between hypnotist and subject would be strengthened by using this unusual procedure. He was right. When they opened their eyes in this mutually hypnotized state everything looked gray. However, the grayness quickly gave way to vivid colors and glowing lights, and in a few moments they found themselves on a beach of unearthly beauty. The sand sparkled like diamonds, the sea was filled with enormous frothing bubbles and glistened like champagne, and the shoreline was dotted with translucent crystalline rocks pulsing with internal light. Although Tart could not see what Anne and Bill were seeing, from the way they were talking he quickly realized they were experiencing the same hallucinated reality. Of course, this was immediately obvious to Anne and Bill and they set about to explore their newfound world, swimming in the ocean and studying the glowing crystalline rocks. Unfortunately for Tart they also stopped talking, or at least they stopped talking from Tart's perspective. When he questioned them about their silence they told him that in their shared dreamworld they were talking, a phenomenon Tart feels involved some kind of paranormal communication between the two.

In the above scene from Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice sits in the waiting room for the recently deceased directly below a painting of a beach. Another painting in the room is of a bridge (who knows, it could be The Golden Gate bridge which is nicknamed "the bridge of death" due to the high number of suicides) representing the Rainbow Bridge perhaps, as well as a painting of a skyline with two partially destroyed towers... Below is the desert a recently deceased soul encounters when they try to leave their house in Beetlejuice.

remind anyone of the movie dune?

Here's an interesting quote from a user of the Synchromysticism Forum which reminded me of the hypnosis story as well as near-death/past-life experiences and fit in well with this theme here. Keep in mind the greyness of the hypnosis world before it became a beach. Username 888Fae777:

[...] I always used to have [a recurring dream] of being a ball of light, traveling with other balls of colored light, through the sky. It was raining, and the skies were beautifully grey [...]. Suddenly, we all crash landed on a beach, and I felt a powerful, sudden sense of loss. [...] The balls of light, very briefly, became white birds, laying on the beach with broken wings. Then we all became people. A girl said to me, "See you when we're older," and then we all left the beach (I always presumed, to go and be born.)

The above is a screen-capture from the end of another "last man on earth" movie called The Quiet Earth. In this film, a man awakens after a mysterious "event" to find himself alone in the world. Later (as is usually the case) he finds a couple of other survivors. All the bodies of the rest of humanity (and animals) have simply vanished. There are however a couple of dead bodies at the scene of a car crash which clue them in to what happened to the rest of the people. Everyone who died at the moment of the "event" remained alive, and everyone else disappeared. The protagonist sacrifices himself in an attempt to destroy the government experiment which may have caused the event, hoping that this will keep it from happening again or getting worse. After he dies (again) he wakes to find himself on the eternal coastline of an alien beach. Saturn rises in what occultist might call a "blacksun rise." He appears to be on a beach of one of Saturn's moons. In Beetlejuice, the deserts of the Afterlife are referred to by Beetlejuice as Saturn, and in the script it was apparently meant to be Saturn's moon Titan.

Gustav Holst's Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity plays on my computer right now reminding me that Jupiter served as the location of the Monolith and second sun ("Lucifer") in Stanley Kubricks sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey. As we all well know, the original planet from Arthur C. Clark's book was Saturn. In the apparent attempt to create a second sun in real life, NASA has deemed it necessary to send nuclear payloads to these gas giants, the first one apparently nuked Jupiter's atmosphere already. The second payload, via the Cassini probe, will impact Saturn in 2010 (fitting the year in Clark's sequel to 2001) or possibly 2012 if the mission gets pushed back again. This time they will send it up the eye of the south pole storm which would allow it to get much deeper into the atmosphere before the gravity compresses the material into nuclear fission, presumably igniting the gases of Saturn. Saturn's moon Titan is already surprisingly earth-like, who knows what affect a closer sun would have on it. In Clark's trilogy, a moon of Jupiter (remember it was meant to be Saturn) gains oceans and living organisms. Could The Lucifer Project be an attempt to populate our Afterlife, which is on Titan, so the souls there can reincarnate again? Let's hope not!

In the script for Beetlejuice, Titan was only one part of limbo, another part had giant clock gears tearing apart the fabric of space and time as they moved. Saturn is the lord of time and death. It's symbolic, but unlikely that we actually go to Saturn when we die. It would seem that the land of the dead is right here, and the beach is a staging ground between lives, or perhaps a popular vacation spot for those not hindered with bodies? Speaking of bodies, those of the Heaven's Gate group were clad in Saturnian black and Nike shoes with their trademark "swoosh" symbol of Saturn's rings. Not only is the "swoosh" representative of Saturn's rings, but it's the angle the rings are at, when seen from earth, when Saturn is in the constellation of Aquarius - Saturn in the Age of Aquarius?

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four:
[observing the Prole woman from their hideaway]
Winston Smith: The future is hers... we are the dead...
Julia: We are the dead...
Big Brother: YOU ARE THE DEAD!

We are the dead, only some of us have bodies and some do not; and we all share the same prison.

The Apocalypse of Adam
The revelation which Adam taught his son Seth in the seven hundredth year, saying:

Listen to my words, my son Seth. When God had created me out of the earth, along with Eve, your mother, I went about with her in a glory which she had seen in the aeon from which we had come forth. She taught me a word of knowledge of the eternal God. And we resembled the great eternal angels, for we were higher than the god who had created us and the powers with him, whom we did not know.

Then God, the ruler of the aeons and the powers, divided us in wrath. Then we became two aeons. And the glory in our heart(s) left us, me and your mother Eve, along with the first knowledge that breathed within us. And it (glory) fled from us; [...]

After those days, the eternal knowledge of the God of truth withdrew from me and your mother Eve. Since that time, we learned about dead things, like men. Then we recognized the God who had created us. For we were not strangers to his powers. And we served him in fear and slavery. And after these things, we became darkened in our heart(s). Now I slept in the thought of my heart.

Lucky 68 - Repost - Nothing New

2009-08-26T21:43:00.000-07:00

Originally posted on 7/9/09 at 3:22AM.
Update: Some Japanese spam-bot is hitting the original post with a new comment every day, and I would prefer to keep the ability to comment easy and open to everyone, so instead of moderating comments I'm reposting this article and deleting the old one so hopefully the different URL keeps me from getting spam comments.

I spent a few days near Los Angeles recently and being out in the real world I was able to check out some synchs that normally I wouldn't see while being sequestered in my darkened room hunched over a computer keyboard. I remember seeing a sign which shows the temperature as I was leaving to LA, and the temp was at 68-degrees. The night I came back from LA the temp was again 68-degrees. The number on this sign would bookend my trip which pushed me to finally write about the numbers 6 and 8.

I've already covered these numbers in numerous posts, mostly in relation to synchromystic stargates and Hermes/Thoth and his relationship to these numbers. In my The Numbers Game, I throw in some 68-86 stuff which came up while writing that post. In the movie Pi, there was a 216 digit number which represented the true name of God. Two of the characters in that movie produce the same set of 216 numbers, though the sets of numbers are actually 218 digits long; the extra 2 digits are "23" in one set and "32" in the other. Playing with the number 216 and 218: 2x16=32 and 2x18=36 and 32+36=68. There is an additional "216" set of numbers in that movie which really does have 216-digits in it. It is seen on the "Lancet-Percy" newspaper advertisment (the stock broker company which is hounding the main character for his number). Max scribbles a sequence of 216 digits on this advertisement, which bare no resemblence to his print-out of the main 216 digits oddly enough. Around this random number sequence is the phrase "86% Accuracy, only God is perfect." (Pictured below is a screen capture from before he scribbled the numbers on the newspaper) Lancet-Percy obviously wants Max's 216 number, which they think is the perfect number/name of god. The number, or whatever process, that they are using is apparently only 86% accurate when used to pick stocks.

It's interesting that "86" was part of the movie dealing mostly with the numbers of pi, and the golden ratio, and somewhat 23/32 as those numbers are strangly added to the sets of 216 digits in the movie. 8 = 2^3 and 0.6 = 2/3. 6+8=14 and 1+4=5 (5=2+3), 6x8=48 and 4x8=32. From my Numbers Game post: "6-8 suited is my favorite Texas Hold'em poker hand. I also won $68 bucks when I got my first royal flush on video poker, and when cashing out the cashier said: 'Lucky 68.' Hey, I'm watching the first X-Files movie right now, and in the scene where Mulder is at the bar, the bartender says: 'It looks like 86 is your lucky number.' (referring to his bar tab.)" The other number which is part of this collection is 72-27. The 216 digit name of God is really the combination of 72 3-letter names (72x3=216).

So, as you can imagine, these numbers stand out for me. I turned 27 recently, and was trying to explain the numbers 72 and 27 to my less open minded family members, but they did find it interesting that so many talented people happen to die at 27 and join "The 27 Club." My guitar-playing cousin, who already plans on dying early (in true musician form), greatly respects Jimi Hendrix who is a member of the 27 Club.

The ages 27 thru 30 are known as the Return of Saturn, coinciding with the time it takes the planet Saturn to make one orbit around the sun. It happens again at ages 58-60 and again at 86-88. It was on my mind because my other cousin had No Doubt's Return of Saturn album on his mp3 player. So he and I were pondering the numbers 27 and 72 as we went to El Pollo Loco to eat lunch. (Looks like as of right now I have 27 people following my blog!)

The date was 07/02/09 when we entered building number 729, an El Pollo Loco which happened to have a max. occupancy of 68. On the windows was an advertisment for a deal they were having, 8 pieces of chicken for $6.99. A google search later turned up some more El Pollo Loco 6-8's.

Why does El Pollo Loco, or The Crazy Chicken, have so many 6-8's, a number almost as perfect as god in the movie Pi? Well, "El" stands out right away as the name of God/Lord/Saturn. It's fitting then that my Return to El-Saturn Pollo Loco after so many years of not eating there happens on a date and in a building with the numbers 7-2-9 and a max. occupancy sign showing 68, synching with that day's discussion of 27-72 and my secret ponderings of 68-86. 7x2x9=126, an anagram of 216, the number from the movie Pi. 7+2+9=18, which added to 126 equals 144, a number from the fibonacci sequence which was mentioned in the movie Pi. El Pollo Loco has 4 L's and 4 O's. L=12, so 4x12=48, the same value as 6x8. Oops, I'm getting carried away again! But, so what, I got the calculator out... And the other letters (e+p+c) = 24, half of 6*8. The 4 O's = 60. The word TOY in Toyota has a value of 60 as well. Toyota happens to make a car model number AE-86, a Toyota Corolla, known in Japan as the Hachi-Roku (8-6). (Hmm, Corolla has the same number of L's and O's as Pollo...) A+E=6 too, making AE-86 into "6-86." While living in Japan, I had a friend who drove a Toyota Supra. Under the hood of the Toyota was a cap for something which had written on it "Toyoda." I guess the Japanese spelled it out phonetically. Toyoda = Toy Yoda, a toy of the oldest and most powerful Jedi in the Star Wars franchise.

Also in the above picture, you can see Peter Griffin of Family Guy wearing number 86, while in UFC 86, one of the fighters is named Griffin. The Big 6 and Big 8 of a craps table is also in the picture. The numbers 6 and 8 are equal in craps, because with 2 dice there are five ways to roll a 6 or an 8.

As I mentioned earlier, the numbers 6 and 8 have come up in Stargate phemomena, usually in the form of hexagons and octagons. The god Thoth/Mercury/Hermes is connected to both numbers as well. The planet mercury, which was thought the be the domain of Thoth, draws out a hexagram with it's superior and inferior conjunctions. When you view a 3-Dimensional cube rotated so that you are looking straight at one corner though to another corner, the 2-Dimensional profile is that of a hexagon. (See below pic.) This gives a cube 8 corners normally, and 6 when viewed in 2D. I noticed another interesting connection between the 6 and 8 when I took another look at the Cabbalistic Tree of Life. It's kinda hard to tell in the picture, but the 6th sphere Tiphareth/Sun/Beauty has a number 6 on it (looks like an 8 oddly enough!), and has 8 paths connecting it to the other spheres on the Tree.

The heart of the Tree of Life is the Sun, the Christ Consciousness, and also has a 6-8 connection. The two numbers flank the important Christian number of 7 in the odds of rolling numbers with 2 dice; almost as if they represent two paths or sides like the 6th Tarot card, The Lovers. 6 is the number of Man, 7 is God, and 8 is Christ; the gematria value for Jesus Christ = 888. Visually, it takes very little to turn a 6 into an 8, but you gotta make that leap over the 7 to turn Man into Christ. The 7-day week came out of trying to mesh Saturn's orbit into a 365-day year. Saturn/Satan/El/God/Time/Death must be overcome... If all else fails, call El Pollo Loco for help:

Update: I thought this was interesting, and in order to preserve the number of comments on this post (currently) at 17, I decided to add it as an update and not a comment. The Secret Sun blog's favorite number to find is 17. The list of post-tags includes a tag for 17 incase you want to see all posts related to that number. The number of "17" posts are currently 86! Just interesting that both of our favorite numbers to spot are synching eachother... OK, I get excited easily, sue me. (For a bit of fun, check the first picture again. The number in the headline and the number in the last line on the bottom...!)

I thought those three 47's at the bottom of this list were interesting, I was just thinking about that number today for some reason... Anyways, the number for Superheroes went up to 48 right now while I was posting this update! Couple of night owls I guess :D

I'm copying the Comments from the original post so they don't get lost when I delete the original post:

Michael Skaggs said...

This was incredible!! A Truly syncronic piece!! And you posted it at 3:22! Wow man, hope your enjoying Pi for desert!

This reminded me of an episode of "Millennium" called "The Curse of Frank Black" [a series by Christ Carter from the X-files]. You can see the synopsis of the show breakdown here.
He continuously sees combinations of 2-6-8 in the episode.

Brilliant work bro!
July 9, 2009 7:44 AM

Vapo said...

Great post! Still digesting and going back over it. I have always found 8 to be a interesting number. To try to keep this short here are some ramblings(most pertains to the G8 Summit):

Spain is the 6th most populous country in Europe
Spain is still the UK's 6th largest export market 2009
Aquila - site of G8 summit started on the 8th 2009
Aquila is a constellation
Main stars 8
One of its stars Beta Aquilae spectral type is G8
Year of EU entry: 1986
1968 was a year of upheaval and revolt
2001: A Space Odyssey premieres 1968
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86_(number)
WHO tally on A(H1N1): 11,168 cases, 86 deaths

http://www.daylife.com/photo/0aBi51vbui4rD?q=G8+Summit (shows the G leaders(political pinheads)in a backdrop of 3 mountain peaks - or as in 3 pyramids ;) (same as the picture on a Coors Light)

Just some trivia and will leave it at that..your welcome to 86 it if you like. Again great post!

Cheers!
Vapo
www.planetearthbillboard.com
July 9, 2009 8:06 AM

tommy said...

Awesome stuff... I found this 86 in the movie "Daredevil": Link to picture, seen just after someone dies.
July 9, 2009 10:39 AM

ViølatoR said...

Hey Michael, thanks, I rarely see synchs cause I spend all my time indoors, but after that I finally decided to do a post on 6 & 8. I had noticed when I opened the new post and pasted my notes in, that it was 3:22. Considering I mention 23-32 here, it was pretty synchnificant; though the time on my computer is 20 minutes fast, so it was 3:44 on my desktop, a number aferrismoon points out a lot.

Hmm that Millenium episode synch is interesing, at least when considering my recent musings on Lazarus: "Though Frank doesn't realize it, the envelopes all contain the accentuated letters, 'A-C-T.' Then, as he watches television, the numbers '2-6-8' again appear in various combinations. Frank realizes Crocell's address was '268.' He also remembers seeing the Bible at the Yellow House, and the book's title: 'ACTs of the Apostles.' He searches through his Bible until he reaches Chapter 26, Verse 8. There he finds the sentence, 'Why should it be thought incredible by you that God raises the dead?'"

Vapo, thanks for your input! I like how G8 looks like 68. Interesting A(H1N1) tally too.

tommy, great screen capture, thanks. I'm still collecting 68-86 stuff if anyone else has any interesting pictures!
July 9, 2009 6:34 PM
Jon Kidd said...

Nice one Violator. This helps with my own repeating fractal. Connecting Thoth to the cube excites me.

Thankks
July 9, 2009 10:22 PM

aferrismoon said...

Some news on da 8T6
ALHYM = 1+30+5+10+40 = 86 [ Eloheem]
This is the word that gets translated as 'God' in the Bible.

In the Torah the word ALHYM appears 32 times in Genesis Chapter 1. The whole chapter contains 430 characters and 43x2=86

After compulsively numeralising the whole chapter I found a couple of other words coming to 86 aswell, but forget how many.

Bl - bal -'lord' and LB - lev - 'heart' both come to 32

Oddly if u do 86x32 it = 2752
2752/2=1376
1376/2=688
688/2=344 aka 4x86

cheers
July 10, 2009 6:14 AM

Michael Skaggs said...

Excellent info per usual Aferris!!

Cheers
July 10, 2009 10:17 PM

ViølatoR said...

Another Family Guy 8-6: in episode "Road to Road Island" (I think) Brian is quickly shown in a "86" jersey during a song and dance number with Stewie.

Jon Kidd, you might want to check out my old Thoth and the Octagon, Part 1 and Part 2. Unforuntately, they were posted when I used a temporary image hosting site and some of the pics are gone :(

aferris, mind blowing as usual! I was afraid there was no Biblical connection, though I felt there had to be one. Thanks!
July 11, 2009 3:18 PM

Michael Skaggs said...

Had to toss this in..the DAY I read this post, on my way to work, I stopped at a 4-way light, and looked to my left to see Utility Pole 68! LOL

Be well!
July 11, 2009 8:53 PM

aferrismoon said...

Also Jaromir Jagy weras 68 [ after Sovs invaded Prague in '68]
He plays Ice hOckey
July 12, 2009 4:42 AM

ViølatoR said...

I was just reading the monthly wrap up at the Konkrete Junkyard, and was reminded that while pointing out 68's to my cousin, we saw on TV the guy set a record in a hotdog eating contest for eating 68 hotdogs!
July 12, 2009 2:51 PM

Jon Kidd said...

Really dug those links Violator. Thoth creating himself via consciousness opens my mind even further. Plus the 6X8 interchangeability is hotter than the hubs of hell.

Cheers :D
July 12, 2009 6:53 PM

Jon Kidd said...

"Astronauts first flew in the Apollo spacecraft in October, nineteen sixty-eight"
July 12, 2009 8:48 PM

ViølatoR said...

Another possible 1968 one is in the movie Full Metal Jacket (which I'm watching right now :D) soldier "Joker" has a "68" on the right side of his helmet. Also it is just after the Tet Offensive, which took place in 1968. Joker also has a peace symbol and "Born to Kill" on his helmet which he calls a "Jungian thing" about duality.

1968 is called the "Morning After the Summer of Love" (1967) which signaled the death of the hippie movement. The Year of the Hippie, 1967, ended with a mock funeral, the "death of the hippie." 1968 had the Paris Riots and the "Prague Spring."
July 12, 2009 11:53 PM

ViølatoR said...

Seems 86-68 is popular on sports jerseys, just saw another one (86 I think) in a athletes foot medecine commercial. Anyone know of any real athletes with those numbers (besides Jaromir Jagy)?
July 16, 2009 12:45 AM

Vapo said...

Additions to your sport numbers-

Hines Ward #86 Pittsburgh NFL
Joe Delamielleure #68
Jaromir Jagr NHL #68
Russ Grimm, Redskins offensive lineman 1981-91 wore both #68,#86

Sport trivia-

How Many Famous Athletes Are Gay? Jan 18, 2009 .... poll 86 percent of Americans think that openly gay male athletes should be able to play in team sports. However, the poll went on to say that 68 percent of respondents think it hurts

Tiger Woods - Wikipedia, Tiger Woods rose to number one in the Official World Golf Rankings, the fastest-ever ..... a record 29% (68 out of 231) of his professional starts on the PGA Tour.

Cheers!
Vapo
www.planetearthbillboard.com
July 16, 2009 7:10 AM

ViølatoR said...

Thanks Vapo!

Hey, I just realized that V8 = 68. V in Hebrew = 6, like Volkswagon's 3 V's in the "VW" logo = 666. So, the health drink V8 and the car engine size of V8 are both 68's.

I also noticed a few 89's and 98's, which are inverted 68's and 86's. The 8 looks the same but the 6 turns into a 9. This happens in Minority Report where Tom Cruise's character looks for room number 9 but is confused because the number has rotated around into a 6. It's also used in at least two horror movies where a house number like 696 turns into 666 when the number rotates around.
July 16, 2009 6:10 PM

dynamitrios said...

Its a real sore on the eyes to read tiny white letters on a pitch-black background
July 22, 2009 3:23 AM

ViølatoR said...

Isn't it better thn reading tiny black letters on a white screen which is basically the face of a huge flashlight?
July 22, 2009 12:57 PM

Jon Kidd said...

Hey Dyna - Control '+' until readable.

Pa
July 22, 2009 1:26 PM

ViølatoR said...

Thanks for posting that tip John.

I updated this with a synch with The Secret Sun added at the bottom.

I went to a fast food restaurant today and my receipt has a couple of interesting 8, 6 and 7's: Order number 86, discount of -$6.08, total of $7.70, by server #7 on 07/22/09, at a time which reduces to 7 and my complete order number 286 (they leave off the first number) reduces to 7.
July 22, 2009 9:21 PM

Here Is Wisdom

2009-08-20T03:16:00.000-07:00

or, Showier Deism

This post is just meant to compliment my first video project - yes, it was about time wasn't it? Due to technical difficulties, any videos I make will be few and far between. I actually built my computer probably right before Window$-XP was released (9-10 years ago), so as you can imagine, it's pretty much dinosauric by current standards. I have to compile all the bits on another computer which I only have limited access to. So, hopefully nobody wants me to continue making videos and I can just forget about it, otherwise I need to build a new computer soon!

For this experiment, I decided to cover some themes already discussed here, specifically those in my post The Numbers Game. I also wanted to see how the medium of video would allow me to possibly present the information in a way which might have more impact than tiny white text on a black background mixed with some large pictures in-between. I'm still learning how to use the program (which is technically a music making program, not a video specific proggy), so don't expect to be blown away. (Boy, the quality really suffers during the upload process! I guess the computer I had to use to make the videos (which is 4-5 times faster than mine) is still not good enough for quality videos.) The "Special Features" are found below the movie.

"Study your math, kids. It's the key to the universe."
- The Angel Gabriel, in The Prophecy

So, here's the movie until it gets removed:

done? good, now watch it again!

In Pi, there are two sets of "216" numbers. One was shown in the video, and incase it was hard to see, here it is again (along with the second "216 number" from the movie); the extra 23 and 32 are marked in red, along with the vertical 666:

94143243431512659321054872390486828512913474876027
67195923460238582958304725016523252592969257276553
64363462727184012012643147546329450127847264841075
62234789626728592858295347502772262646456217613984
829519475412398501

94143243431512659321054872390486828512913474876027
67195923460328582958304725016523252592969257276553
64363462727184012012643147546329450127847264841075
62234789626728592858295347502772262646456217613984
829519475412398501

I had to cut this bit out to keep the length of the video below 10 minutes, so continuing from "If you add every number from 1 thru 36, it equals 666." The Magic Square of the Sun is numbered from 1 to 36. Each of it's 6 rows and columns add to 111, and 111x6=666. The Magic Square of the Sun also has another numerical relation to 666. There are 9 "squares" of 4 numbers each, all adding to 74, 9x74=666. I haven't done a synchro-wiki page on 74 yet, but here's on one 47 if you're interested.

9 x 74 = 666

After Pi came LOST, which many think is a representation of Purgatory, Hell, Heaven, or even a video game. I've seen a speech given by one of the writers for LOST who explained his writing stratedgy with a sealed box with a question mark on it (meditate on that!). The previous season ended with the indication that a couple of ancient gods are playing some sort of game against eachother. It seems reminiscent of the movie The Nines, where, if God was a 10, the protagonist was a 9 and had created 90 parallel over-lapping realities to play around in (in one, he was a video game designer, and a creator of a television series in another). He is one of the "gods" who had forgotten where he came from, and became stuck in his fantasy world. In one scene, he sits at his table with a painting of a 72 behind him. The numbers add to 9 of course, but it's an interesting number to find, along with a "17" hit in the movie as well. (Check out 17 at the synchro-wiki) There's some audio clips from The Nines in my video incase you were wondering why I mention it.

The Prophecy starred Virginia Madsen (Virgin Mary?) who was the wife of Jim Carrey's character in The Number 23. The Prophecy is about a second angel war in heaven over the angel's jealousy of Man and his soul. The indication is that Man is even better than Angel. Some theories of "Man's Fall" (Lucifer's Fall From Grace and the Fall of Adam) have Man as Gods brother and equal, who fell in love with his reflection in the watery veil of the chaotic waters of creation, and then fell in and became trapped in ignorance (the Stygian waters erase one's memory of past lives).

The Truman Show is quite explicit about (True)Man being trapped in an artificial construct which conspires to keep him trapped. The Celtic Rebel realized a very important symbol, I think, when he first brought up the "X-Box" symbol found in movies and television. In fact, if you become familiar with seeing the symbol (just like when you buy a different car, then suddenly seem the same model car everywhere) you will notice that it is apparently in every single movie and television show ever made. It's not always a simple byproduct of human construction techniques, sometimes it's just seemingly randomly thrown in there. Anyways, I've been seeing it as a symbol, possibly a hint (like "Look for the Nines" in The Nines), or perhaps just the "bars of the prison," reminding us that we're trapped in the Matrix of matter. And, in The Truman Show, the X-Box is literally every-fucking-where. In fact, the huge dome which contains the microcosm of Truman's world is covered in x-boxes as part of the construction. It seems more symbolic when one realizes that it's actually not the best shape to use in the construction of domes; per Buckminster Fuller.

Is this not just the perfect picture:

truman's universe

The 6th Day opens with the "Phoenix Pictures" logo. The logo begins with the striking of a friction match. A friction match is known as a "Lucifer." Lucifer is Latin for "brightly shining" and is synonymous with Venus, the light bringer, the brightest "wandering star" second to the sun (Sirius is the brightest fixed star, and may be connected). After this "light-bringer" rises the sun, which then fades out into a flaming phoenix-shaped logo.

Next is the opening montage which explains the events leading to the future setting of the film. There are two dates shown, 02/23/97 and 06/26/00. 0+2+2+3+9+7=23, and 6x2x6=72, a number which I left out of the video. 06/26/00 might also be "6 times two 6's," or 6x(6x6)=216.

The precession of the equniox takes about 25,920 years, changing where the pole of the earth points, which star is the northern star, and which constellation the sun rises in on the spring equniox. This cycle is broken up into 12 "Ages," each lasting about 2,160 years each. 2160 = 72x30, 216 = 72x3. The earth takes 72 years to travel one degree in the Great Year. Interestingly, 360 degrees divided by 216 = 1.666 [repeating decimal]. 36 and 216 seem more related than I initially thought. 36 x 216 = 7776.

Somehow, as usually happens, while I was looking deeper into "Adam Gibson" of the 6th Day, and trying to find a good transition into the next part of the video, I found out that Adam comes in two flavors, a Spiritual Adam and Earthly Adam. Dwaye Johnson, whose played a "Jericho Kane" just like Arnold, was also twinned in Southland Tales. There are also numerous other examples of "twins" of the protagonist, though often it is the "good twin bad twin" dichotomy, or the ever popular hero-villain dichotomy where the villain claims that he and the hero are essentially the same person, though perhaps on opposites sides of the spectrum (see: Unbreakable).

The image of "Adam Kadmon" as the Tree of Life, and Jesus as the Tree of Life, fit nicely as I transitioned into The Prisoner.

tree of life

Below, Touchstone Pictures shows a lightning bolt striking a blue sphere, posibly representing the spheres on the Tree of Life which are known as Sephiroth. Jerry Bruckheimer films logo has lightning striking a bare tree which then fully sprouts as if it's been given life from heaven. This reminds me of the Tree of Life symbolism in Sublime (see: Purification for more).

touchstone pictures & jerry bruckheimer films

The intro the The Prisoner begins with a view of the clouds and the sound of lightning and thunder. This fades into future prisoner "Number 6" driving down a long lonely road in his Lotus 7 single-seater sports car. He is the Lotus Born Babe, or Harpocrates in the Egg. When you first see his car, he is leaving a deserted airfield and headed into the city.

With a couple (possibly symbolic) exceptions, the number 7 does not show up in the Village. The series was intended originally to have 7 episodes, but ended up having 17. This is important, because in the last (originally, 7th) episode "Number 1" is finally revealed.

(Future prisoner) Number 6 goes to his place of employment, into an underground parking garage, down a long tunnel, through double-doors marked "WAY OUT" and into the office of his employer. (I say, "future" Number 6, since he's only an unnamed British Agent at this point, and not yet "Number 6.") He slams down a resignation letter, says some angry, but unheard words, and storms out. Behind the desk of his employer are two maps of the world (two worlds?). He then heads home and prepares to leave on an apparently much needed vacation. Meanwhile he is "x'ed" out of the system, and his file is put in the RESIGNED box. The large "X" over his picture, made with smaller x's, forms a nice X-Box image and alludes to his predicament.

Number 6's address is #1 Buckingham Place, London. Anyways, a hearse drives up to his house and a man dressed as an Undertaker (as in, he takes you underground) steps out and up to the door. He gasses (future) Number 6 who passes out in his house only to wake up in a perfect replica. He goes to the window and is surprised to see that through it is not the familiar city-scape, but The Village.

groupies love the cock

The typical farewell of The Village is the phrase "Be Seeing You." It hints at the ever present surveillance of all the cameras in the Village/Prison. It also highlights the single eye which indicates the "Eye of God" symbolism we're all so familiar with; as seen on the back of the dollar bill and elsewhere. I hinted at this symbol in the title of recent post: Bee Seeing You Through the Veil. As noted in one youtube video I saw about symbolism used by FOX News anchors, the "OK" handsign connects the thumb and forefinger leaving the other 3 fingers upright. The gives your (right)hand the shape of a lowercase "b," or a "6," or three 6's since it's with 3 fingers.

Continuing with the analysis of the intro, Number 6(66) enters the headquarters of Number 2, the day-to-day operator of The Village, and demands some answers. Number 2 tells him that they want information, information, information. They want In-Formation; they want him to be in formation, to follow the group, to get-in-line, etc.

Number 6 asks: "Who is number 1." Number 2 replies "You are Number 6." YOU ARE number 6. Who is number 1? YOU ARE.

"6 of 1, and a half-dozen of the other." (6+1=7, the Holy Number) Number 6 is awarded the gift of meeting Number 1 because of his ability to remain rebellious. Number 1 has a black and white (duality) mask on which Number 6 pulls off. Underneath that is an ape mask. When Number 6 rips this mask off the face of Number 1, we see that Number 1 is Number 6, the Prisoner.

There was one who arrived there.
He lifted the veil of the goddess.
But what did he see?
Wonder above wonder,
he saw himself.

In at least one episode, Number 2 sits at a chair with an Eye-in-a-Pyramid shape to it. In fact, the sides of the chair seem to indicate the other two iconic pyramids of Egypt. The Eye of God, the Eye in the Pyramid, the Eye of the Illuminati is "Me, Myself and Eye." You are the Eye/I in the pyramid, the "I of God," "I and I," "I AM."

Robert Anton Wilson said something about wondering what the whole #23 thing was until he realized that the 23rd Psalm is about living without fear. I'll add to that, living without fear of death:

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Virgins, Vampires and Vagina Dentata

2009-07-29T07:06:00.001-07:00

Well, I really couldn't put it off much longer. Lots of pictures will be stolen from The Celtic Rebel (he's always got such good stuff!), and Quinta Esentia (check out this True Blood post, as well as Lipsynchs!), as well as much inspiration from both and others. I've just read A Few Shots To Shaman's recent opus (part 1 & 2) which also has a few synchs with some of the stuff in this post. And vjesci left me this link in the comments Fangs on Film. So, get ready for another epically long post! I do a significant amount of quoting in this one, so my notes will be in a combination of parenthesis (my favorite form of communication (realliy, it is!)), and itallics. I wouldn't be surprised if my blog joins The Celtic Rebel in getting blocked by web censors after this post! There's a zillion vampire novels, shows and movies so I'm not really going to go "in depth" in any of them, otherwise we'd be here all week. However, my mom did leave me her True Blood season 1 DVDs, I guess assuming I would want to watch HB-hOe's glorious display of boobies flopping around in most of the episodes (which I do!). So, I will mention that show more than the rest, but obviously there's going to be parallels with most other vampire media. At first I thought this was going to be a nice vacation from my usual stuff, but I kept noticing tie-ins to previous posts here. So, lean back, put your feet up, and enjoy the show.

I almost added more "V" words to the title, but three seemed a perfect fit. As probably everyone in the synchromystic and semiotic blog-o-sphere is well aware, V/Vau/Vav in Hebrew has a value of 6; thus, VVV = 666. It can represent the letters u, v, and w, each with a value of 6. Vav's astrological correspondence is Taurus. It also carries the meaning of nail, like the three nails (VVV/666) which fastened JC to the cross/cube so that his spirit may fly free. The Kabbalistic Tree of Life seen below is sometimes esoterically seen as the crucifixion of Jesus, the three pillars being the three crosses of Jesus and the two theives. It is even said that the cross Jesus was crucified on was made of wood from the Tree of Life from the Garden of Eden.

tree of "life"

I just finished watching classic vampire movie The Lost Boys (vampire/vam-pyre, some sort of firey resonance there), and when I turned it off, on the television was a very firey red sex scene where the man cut his chest with his thumb nail and pulled the woman close to drink his blood: another vampire movie! (It turned out to be an earlier adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula) What are the odds? Well, pretty good these days. The same blood-suckling act was carried out in the True Blood television series where Sookie drinks from Bill's chest. It also happens in an X-Files episode I saw while writing this, a vamp girl drinks from a human man's chest.

Anyways, in The Lost Boys, half-vampire girl Star cares for a very young half-vampire boy, Laddie. I thought the symbolism fit nicely as a "Madonna with Child" theme. Now that I think about a girl suckling from the chest of a male vampire, it's an odd reversal on the theme of Madonna with Child, which traditionally has Jesus at the breast of Mary. Below is a picture of Madonna as Jesus (a reversal of the roles of "The Madonna" or Virgin Mother and her son), and as a vampire.

The name Dracula comes from the House of Drakul (Dragon, Devil). Dracula meaning "son of the dragon" here, or as the dragon/serpent is a representation of the devil and/or lucifer, he is a "son of the devil." Even in one vampire movie I've seen, vampires were called sons of the devil; more on this below. So above, Madonna is the (Son)Daughter of God and the Devil. The Celtic Rebel mentioned in his Burning Ring of Fire series that "Peter Tosh believed Lucifer was, in fact, the head vampire." Lucifer/Devil/Dragon, father to Dracula/Vampires.

Also in The Lost Boys, Star is the girlfriend of vampire David, thus she is the "Star of David," and is lusted after by Michael (named for dragon-slayer archangel (He does slay David afterall), and he shares his name with Michael Corvin from Underworld, a descendent of the original immortal). Michael becomes a half-vampire like Star and Laddie by drinking David's blood and he is supposed to be Star's first kill; though it has a sexual quality to it as if she were a virgin: "her first" (it's clear none of them are actually virgins, so it's more realistic than recent vampire movies/shows!). Star and Michael do have sex on the night she is supposed to kill him.

The theme of sex is quite strong in vampire movies, books and television shows. In Interview With A Vampire, the vampires would prey on prostitutes or otherwise loose women, and might make it as far as foreplay, but never actually went beyond that. Maybe this is because without a heartbeat it would be difficult to acheive and maintain and erection? These days, the new pop-vampire books and subsequent movies have changed many points of the Anne Rice vampire myth, such as how vampires now do have sex. It may be that the changes are bringing modern vampire lore more in line with a realistic view of vampires. While the non-sexual vampires are found in myth, the very human vampires are found in history, and we can assume they did have sex, though what a blood-lusting violent person would do in the sack might not even be considered sex by traditional standards (while today it may be becoming the norm). In Twilight, the sex is so violent that the headboard of the bed gets broken and the pillows are all torn up. In True Blood, people who have sex with vampires are known as "Fangbangers," and vampires are known for being very agressive during sex. In the show, Jason (a human) was being interrogated over the deaths of several women he had sex with who were later murdered, and the detective asked him if he "kills them then fucks them, or fucks them then kills them?" The theme of sex and death started to get noticed at this blog in the recent series beginning with Heart Shaped Coffin, and continuing with the rest of that on-going series. Speaking of vampires, hearts and coffins... What does one do when they want to kill a vampire? Stab them in the heart! (A common symbol for "love," or more directly, sex.)

Then the Babylonians managed to edge the plot slightly in the direction of fully endorsed Vampireship by introducing the 'Ekimmu'. The After-life suddenly opened up to everybody - God and 'fellah' alike. Basically all you needed to do was drop down dead and have no well-intentioned friends to cover you with sand. After a suitable time passed the departed would leap up, re-embodied and ready for anything. Especially of a sexual nature. The bonus for being a member of the Ekimmu set was that you entered your new profession massively endowed. It is said that the maidens subjected to the advances of the Ekimmu and his sacred weapon were at first terrorised and then overwhelmed by this mighty phallus. And this is where the Vampire thing kicks in. Once the Ekimmu had had its wicked way with the girls he whipped out their entrails and gorged on their blood. I know it's not what you might call standard vampire procedure but more elements have been added to the lore. (http://www.vampyres.ca/)

Vampire history may begin before Adam and Eve. Lilith was the first wife of Biblical Adam in the Garden of Eden. She was created along with Adam, making her equal, which apparently Adam didn't like (perhaps a microcosm of God and Lucifer, where Lucy wanted to "be like god"?); her name means "one who lays under," and she didn't feel like living up to it. After Adam, she hooked up with Samael (Angel of Death & Soul Collector, and tempter of Eve), and she became a demon who preyed on pregnant women and infants. There is also a belief that there is a second smaller moon (which came here from somewhere else at the same time as the moon) called Lilith. I remember a thread at the abovetopsecret forum where someone had a recording that was made of a "secret masonic meeting" where the members talked about how there was a second moon hidden behind the first, and about the aliens who used the moons as spaceships to come to earth. Whatever the story may be, the (second)moon is connected to Lilith and to all vampires.

Lilith, “she of the night” or “the howler”, said to be Adam’s first mate, had wings and was always portrayed with owls. Lilith was said to have left Adam because he tried to dominate her.

pic from my goddess post

The Black Madonna has her roots in this pre-patriarchal first partner of Adam, Lilith. She thus represents the strength and equality of womanhood-a proud, forthright, and commanding figure-as opposed to the strictly subordinate image of the conventional White Madonna as seen in church representations of Jesus’ mother. It was said that Lilith knew the secret name of God [a secret held also by Mary Magdalene, ‘the woman who knew the All’] -in this case it would have been Lucifer’s original name Be’el-zebub. She is black because in gnostic thought Wisdom (Sophia), is black, having existed in the darkness of Chaos before the Creation.

beeyonce, "black madonna"

In ancient Sumer, the key females of the royal succession were all venerated as lilies, having such names as Lili, Luluwa, Lilith, Lilutu and Lillette. (source)

Having wings and knowing the true name of God reminds me of the source of "veil" symbolism and wings on goddesses going back to the hymen of a virgin. From my post, Bee Seeing You Through the Veil: "Neith/Isis was known as the Veiled Goddess, and thus the reference on her temple inscription to 'lifting the veil' is intriguing, for Bees are often called hymenoptera, stemming from the word hymen, meaning "veil winged," representing that which concealed the holy parts of a temple, as well as the veil or hymen."

The next closest thing in mythology would be the succubus. Succubi seek sexual relations with humans, mostly those leading celebate lives. Despite being depicted as female (in contrast to the male incubus), succubi are actually male and have a penis! This is interesting, especially after watching Interview With a Vampire in which the relationships between the male vampires had an overt homoerotic quality.

Well most of the vampire stuff concerns virgin girls and oversexed people in general. However, a less well known part of it is the gay/lesbian side. (Lost Boys: "My own brother, a goddamn shit-sucking vampire!") Vampire friendly clubs are mostly gay friendly clubs which have fetish rooms and S&M dungeons. Some wont even let you in unless you are covered in leather, buckles and spikes (gimp mask gets in free!). One of the Wachowski brothers, those guys who made The Matrix films, is into fetishism; which probably explains the Merovingians "Club Hel" with all it's vampires and other baddies dressed in freakish pleather outfits. The best movie to fit this theme is obvisouly The Rocky Horror Picture Show which features Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a transvestite from Planet Transsexual in the galaxy Transylvania. Frank-n-furter is a common name for hot dogs. Speaking of hotdogs, 12 year old Oskar(Mayer Wiener?) has a relationship with a vampire of "indeterminate gender" in evocatively titled vampire novel: Let The Right One Slip In. A similar movie to Rocky Horror, sans the aliens, was made by Madonna. (Madonna, please leave the movie making to your ex!) Filth And Wisdom "revolves around a Ukrainian immigrant who finances his dreams of rock glory by moonlighting as a cross-dressing dominatrix."

the great vampire con. convention i mean...

Moving on, we come to vampires who in occult lore prey only on the energy of the living, not their actual blood. Today, some people call themselves psychic (or psionic), etheric, or energy vampires. It was believed that vampires left the grave only in etheric form, like an asteral traveler or out-of-body experience, and drain the life force from the etheric bodies of the living. In some channeled information about the nature of the after-life, it was explained that souls who refuse to reincarnate (after about 10 years it becomes necessary to continue to exist), instead remain on the etheric plan and feed off the life force of the living (utilizing religions to channel psychic energy to the desired source). The result is that they lose their natural forms and become grotesque giants; basically demons.

For the source of "vampires" of history, I'll just quote this book which I've been dying to quote for sometime now. I'll try to cut it down as short as possible, so you might want to check it out on your own for more details.

The Dragon Legacy: The Origins of Vampirism
The Turkish, or properly Galatian word Uber, meaning ’witch’ [...], as Upari, we discover that originally Uber - Vampire - meant Overlord. In summary vampire [...] the witch or druid - was a Scythian High Queen or King: an Overlord. We can say with confidence then that real vampirism was indulged in by living beings who, unerringly, were members of the pre-christian and anti-christian high nobility and royalty. The most famous vampire stories, those of Dracula, Bathory and de Rais, support this conclusion. The historical evidence therefore supports the etymological origin of the word ’vampire’ - An Overlord.

I'm reminded that someone once said that Jesus was the first vampire because he died and returned to life as an immortal. His disciples drank his "blood" (wine) and were also promised eternal life. "Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." (John 6:54) The Christian mass has been described as cannabalistic because of such symbolism. Jesus is thought to have married Mary Magdalane (possibly at the wedding at Cana where he turned water into wine) and with her spawned the Holy Bloodline down through the Merovingian (and other) kings. The blood is also described as the true Holy Grail. Above we can see the Merovingian with "grail" martini; he keeps vampires in his service, along with other non-human beings. Speaking of Jesus, I'm reminded of the Will Smith movie I Am Legend which presented Will's character as a Jesus figure whose blood holds the cure to a plague which has turned the rest of the world into vampires! Folklore often held that certain types of people would return to life (or un-death?) as vampires, in this case it was plague victims. The original story which became The Last Man on Earth and I Am Legend inspiried the zombie movies too, which is why there's some similarities. Hmm, Jesus asks us to drink his blood (vampire) and eat his flesh (zombie)...

Above, Jesus, the King of Kings (2K), and Mary M. (MM) and the implied red V shape, hinting at the grail. Below, Viktor of Underworld (a title which resonates Hell-Heaven, Otherworld, Afterlife, Oz, Wonderland, etc.) drinks blood from a grail, he is a Vampire Overlord. Next to him is "Vlad the Impaler" over checkerboard, and above that is a scene from Underworld showing the classic royalty/elite idea of vampires. In the top right is Drake from Blade: Trinity, the original vampire, holding vampire merchandise (Count Chocula?). He was unearthed in a Sumerian Ziggurat, possibly the Tower of Babel. The giant mud-brick step pyramid, like the Great Pyramid, is just a base for the top, which in this case was a temple (similar to Central and South American step-pyramids). The temple was originally to the Moon god Sin/Nana. Ancients held the moon as cheif of the lumenaries which ruled their stellar cults. A similar theme is found in Robert Rodriguez and Tarantino vampire gore fest From Dusk Till Dawn where the "Titty Twister" biker bar is at the end revealed to be the top (sacrificial temple) of a Mayan/Aztec step-pyramid.

The similar source of the word for vampire (Uber) leads to witches and witchcraft, or wicca, as well as daemons or inter-dimensional beings, aliens, angels, elves, etc.

The Dragon Legacy: The Origins of Vampirism
Wicca, derived from the same Saxon word as Willow, means to "bend or yield" ones spirit to that of a daemon (Greek, meaning praeter human intelligence or inspiration), giving the christian idea of possession, though erroneously. (See Opening the Stargate for a little bit on Alyson Hannigan as Willow.) The witch was indeed possessed by a daemon and that daemon was certainly praeter-human and not of this world. This is confirmed in the word genius, meaning inborn intellect or inspiration. Closely related to this word is genie, meaning a spirit, as in genius loci - ’a spirit of place’. In Arabic the jinni is a spirit of fire or inspiration.

brand of christian merchandise sold in my mall in store: C2K

The theme of fire (genie being a fire spirit) is connected to sexuality ("burning passion," to "stoke the flames of love," etc.) and comes up a lot at Celt's blog. Fire is one of the methods used to kill vampires as well. So, these quotes are dedicated to The Celtic rebel:

Her lap is a sacrificial altar; her hairs, the sacrificial grass; her skin, the soma-press. The two labia of the vulva are the fire in the middle [Brhad-Âranyaka Upanisad, 6.4.3]
(Shiva's methods to attain enlightenment) "At the start of sexual union/ Keep attentive on the fire in the beginning,/ And so continuing,/ Avoid the embers in the end.

Moving on... Dracula's habit of carting off boxes full of earth from his homeland was also practiced by the Scythians who believed it was the: "source of sovereignty and power and that ones soul was linked to ones homeland." The Scythians were known to make cloaks out of the scalps of their fallen enemies. They, like many other groups, drank the blood of their friends and foes, and even ate the flesh at times.

The Dragon Legacy: Scythians and Druids
The Sumerians appeared first in Mesopotamia in 3500 BC. Prior to their emergence they were preceded by the Ubaid migrants from what is now southern Romania, from Carpathia and Scythia, who had fled south to escape the Black Sea flood of 4000 BC. Dated to about 5000 BC, archaeologists working in Tartaria in the Ubaid territory of Transylvania, discovered a ’tepes’ or Rath under which they found a fire-pit. Buried amongst the ashes were the human remains of a cannibalistic sacrificial victim and two clay tablets. On these were inscribed the name of Enki ((representing)Samael), the number of Anu - 60 - and the image of a goat, Enki again, and a Tree - (representing) Lilith. In Hinduism, Siva is the Goatherd of the Mountains. The pictographic nature of the inscriptions convinced the archaeologists that the language was the forerunner of Sumerian and so they called it proto-Sumerian. Making it fairly obvious that the Sumerians were originally Ubaid Overlords from Central Eurasia. (Remember Drake from Blade: Trinity, found in a Sumerian step-pyramid)

The symbol of Samael the Serpent reclining in the Branches of Lilith’s Apple Tree in the Garden of Eden actually depicts the concept of the Dragon eating the fruit itself. This can also be found slightly more abstractly but conversely and paradoxically more graphically at the same time, in the Tantric equivalent of the serpent entwined around a female figure.

dont overlook the obvious lilith and mary magdalane and merovingian connection of red hair!

The most potent vampire is the Dracoi or female Dracoica, from whence the House of Drakul obtained its name, meaning ’Satan’ or ’Dragon’ whilst Drakulea or Dracula means ’son of Satan’ or ’son of the Dragon’. Lying at a close second place comes the Stregoi or female Stregoica, a being that manifests itself as either a wolf or a raven. We can see where this is leading, can’t we?

The Stregoi or Stregoica represents both the Morrighan or Morgana, the Valkyrie and the Werewolf or Verewolf, which is simply another manifestation of the vampire. (Remember in Dracula, Dracula could turn into a werewolf.) Typically and especially where wolves were in short supply, the werewolf was represented variously by the Bear and the Fox; and elsewhere by the crocodile (the Sobekh of Egypt - patron and protector of Royalty - whose fat was used as the Messach or anointing oil of the pharoahs, the Messiahs or priest kings).

In this neck of the woods it was also common to replace the werewolf with the Panther who was sacred to the lunar goddess Diana and also to Bacchus (Dionysus). Panther was the clan name of Jesus (Yeshua ben Panthera.), and much earlier, the Ubaid priests wore the skins of Panthers as their totem animal. The Panther’s feeding ritual involves it opening the jugular vein in its victims neck and drinking the blood prior to eating the carcass.

middle image is of lunar goddess selene/luna/diana/lucifer

The association between werewolves and the moonlight which drove them loopy, according to fable, is repeated and reinforced by the traditional belief that witches (aka vampires) were sacred to Diana and worshipped her by the light of the full moon. The link between the full moon and the vampire of the Gothic Romance is also well represented in tradition. The reason that moonlight drove werewolves round the twist and elicited devotion from witches was because the full moon was seen as the menstrual moon that signaled the impending flow and was worshipped particularly by the witches of Italy and the surrounding area. These ladies were called Strega, that is the Italian name for a witch and rather than worshipping the full moon they were celebrating what the moon and Diana stood for - food for the soul - the blood of virgins!

In True Blood it is mentioned that baby blood is the most tasty to vampires, with virgin blood a close second. In the show, Sookie human love of vampire Bill was a virgin when they got together, as was Bella in Twilight. Chapter III of the Book of the Law: "The best blood is of the moon (menstrual), monthly: then the fresh blood of a child, or dropping from the host of heaven: then of enemies; then of the priest or of the worshippers: last of some beast, no matter what."

The traditional male vampire is characterized as a "handsome aristocrat, fatal to women... he is interested only in virgins; he sucks their necks; they die; he lives"(Joan Acocella)

Symbols of virginity and sexuality explored at this blog include the veil, apples, hearts and flowers. Speaking of hearts, here's a great scene from True Blood:

Sookie is working off her extra libido energy from drinking vampire blood by doing yard work. She tells her grandma that she is struggling between what shes thinking and how she feels for the vampire (Bill). She says: "I dont know if I should trust my head or my..." She looks down, and her grandma adds "Heart." They both leave "vagina" unsaid, though it's quite obvious. Grandma: "Well, it is scary opening your heart for a guy."

I already posted this link, but incase you still haven't read it, see previous long post: Opening the Stargate for a little bit on apples. The Celtic Rebel, at his blog, has gone in depth with the "V" and heart shapes, as well as a "vampiric" energy grid design which started out as a single X in a box, and grew into a whole grid which connected several of the themes he explores there.

If you do read his blog (I recommend it!) then you know what I'm talking about, otherwise let me skip ahead and point out an interesting synch. In Burning Ring of Fire IV, Celt comes up with an interesting shape seen below. His explanation:

Playing with Geometry on my bar napkin, it occurred to me that were I to convert the SE into their Greek equivalents, the word “SEX” itself is an entire quadrant of the M/W spiritual gird. Continuing on, since a V is technically a woman’s frontal arrow pointing to her sweet spot, there is an O below the V. Putting those together, not only looks a bit like Taurus [the second major constellation], but rather devilish as well. Does that mean anything? I can’t say for sure. Maybe?

The design he is talking about is seen below. Remember that Taurus is the constellation associated with the Hebrew letter V/6, and it also has the birthstone Emerald which is associated with Lucifer, the father of vampires. And as he said it does indeed look devilish, similar to the shape explored recently at A few Shots To Shaman, "For Dead Or Dying" Parts 1 & 2.

To take a girls virginity is called "deflowering." She flows, or is a flow-er = flower. The vampire-wolF & the Flow. In alchemy, menstruum (the menses, mestrual fluid) is a solvent capable is dissolving solid material. The idea would be the dis-solving of the gross material body, or imperfect state. The purified elements are brought together again as the Philosopher's Stone. The Rose is a potent symbol in alchemy as well as general esoterism and basic everyday symbolism as well. In True Blood, vampire Bill buys human Sookie flowers for one of their dates, the flowers were red and white roses.

alchemyguild.org:
The rose has obvious connections with sexual energy in alchemy. The “rose colored blood of the alchemical redeemer” or the “warm red tincture” were references to healing effects of purified (alchemically distilled or sublimated) sexual energy. [...] In other words, rose-colored blood carries the natural essence or soul, while ordinary blood simply functions on the physical level to supply oxygen to cells, etc. That is the meaning of the alchemical phrase, “The soul of the Stone is in its blood.”

The above quote (blood as "essence of the soul") combines psychic vampirism with blood suckers. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dracula states that "The blood is the life." The "Healing effects of purified sexual energy" reminds me of the effect that Vampire blood has on humans in the television series Moonlight and True Blood. In both, vampire blood is used as a drug by humans with the main effect of increasing the users senses and libido. In True Blood is it called V or V-Juice. Below is a pic of vampire themed vodka and a fictional advertisement for the synthetic blood drank by vampires. Inbetween these is the symbol for planet Earth from the movie Stargate. Remember that Lucifer, father of all Vampires, was cast down to Earth like a lightning bolt. Below it is an inverted version of the glyph which mirrors the picture of the "V" with blood dripping from it on the vodka bottle (Similar to the V on the Vampire-Con poster above). As A few Shots To Shaman might say, the two branches of the V/Y shape merge into One, the purified energy of male + female in the blood droplet.

alchemyguild.org:
In spiritual alchemy, the single red rose represents the mystic center of a person, his or her heart of hearts - one’s true nature. It also represents the process of purification to reveal one’s essence or the inner “pearl beyond price.”

Alchemist Daniel Maier discusses the symbolism of the rose in his Septimana Philosophica: “The rose is the first, most beautiful and perfect of flowers. It is guarded because it is a virgin, and the guard is thorns. The Gardens of Philosophy are planted with many roses, both red and white, which colors are in correspondence with gold and silver."

Because of its association with the workings of the heart, the rose in alchemy has come to symbolize secrets of the heart or things that cannot be spoken or an oath of silence in general. In the folded structure of the rose, the flower seems to be concealing a secret inner core. “Mystery glows in the rose bed and the secret is hidden in the rose,” wrote the twelfth-century Persian alchemist Farid ud-din Attar.

In the above picture, the flowers in the bottom right are five-petal cistus. The spade shaped bush is given more meaning by reading The Celtic Rebel's A Burning Ring of Fire [IV]. The painting of Jesus was in a church I went to recently for a funeral. It depicts the "Blood and Water" which flowed out of Jesus' heart when it was pierced with the Spear of Destiny. This odd mixture returned vision to the eyes of the Roman soldier who did the spearing (don't ask why a half-blind soldier got the job of stabbing Jesus), and was caught in the Holy Grail. The Philosopher's Stone (Stone of the Wise, Elixer, Universal Panacaea, Cornicopea, Holy Grail) comes in two flavors, White and Red. The first one you make is the White Stone which clears the way for the Red Stone. Jesus turned Water into Wine at an (Alchemical) Marriage ceremony, which some believe was actually his wedding to Mary Magdalane. The Metallica album cover design in the above picture was made by mixing blood and semen together.

The explanation of these fantasies is surely not hard. A nightly visit from a beautiful or frightening being, who first exhausts the sleeper with passionate embraces and then withdraws from them a vital fluid; all this can point only to a natural and common process... blood is commonly an equivalent for semen. (Jones, 119)

angelina jolie and her vial of vital fluid

Menstruum (menstrual fluids) is the name of the solvent in alchemy, usually in plant alchemy, distilled red wine does the trick. Ros(e) in alchemy is Dew and is used as a distilling agent and was collected in large sheets by alchemists in the hours before dawn. Hmm, this reminds me of the old practice of consummating the marriage over a white sheet so that it would catch the blood and provide evidence that the bride was indeed a virgin (Remember this pic from Heart Shaped Coffin?). Speaking of dew being collected on sheets (symbolic veils?) at dawn: in The Dawn of Astronomy, the author makes the claim that Isis (the veiled goddess) represented the Dawn and the Twilight (vamp movies: From Dusk Till Dawn and Twilight). In fact, in the 4th Twilight novel "Breaking Dawn," (breaking the hymen/veil) Bella has had sex with her vampire lover and lost her virginity. The Germanic origins of 'dew' (deaw, dau, tou, dauwaz) in alchemistic false etymology have been linked with Devil (deofol, diubul, tiuful).

The Dragon Legacy: The Rose of Sarai
The cistus (flower) is white with deep, blood red blotches, like the dappling of menstrual blood. The cistus belongs to the family cistacea and is also known as the gum cistus whose botanical genus is ladanifer from which is obtained laudanum, the dream-bestowing prize of poets and visionaries across Europe and the Middle-East, including Thomas de Quincy who, having taken it, were transported into the darkest, most terrifying realms of the Underworld or the highest reaches of Heaven, both being the deepest recesses of their own psyches. (Laudanum was often added to Absinthe, and I believe Johnny Depp does so in the movie From Hell. "Absinthe is the aphrodisiac of the self. The green fairy who lives in the Absinthe wants your soul." - Dracula by Bram Stoker )
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matt. 6:28-29)
Sheba, as the Lily of the (Nile) Valley, the nymphaea lotus and the the rose of Sharon: the ladanifer, was being likened unto a living, narcotic pharmacopoeia. As neither of these plants grow in Northern Europe, we have contented ourselves with the nearest familiar symbols, those being the virginal Fleur de Lys and the Plantagenet or English Rose.

The Rose represents therefore the magical menstrual flow of Solomon’s beloved, whilst the name Sharon or Sarah means princess. The Rose of Sharon is therefore the Royal Blood, the Sang Real; and the San Graal, the Holy Blood of the Holy Grail or rosi-crucis. As the Latin Ros-Sara or rosary which is devoted to the Virgin Mary, the pure white Lily, which itself is the "dew of the princess."

The word Rose in Germanic means Horse, from Hros, a deity who is identifiable with the goddesses Rhiannon and Epona, who were symbolized by the white mare and immortalized in chalk, hill carvings across Britain. [...] The Hros [...] were the goddesses who conducted the King to the Otherworld. This was exactly the job of Sheba, the Rose of Sharon, and all the other watery nymphettes in history. So the Rose of Sharon, whilst referring to the flower of the royal menses, also refers to the function of that fluid as a method of transport to the otherworld.

The "horse" connection was an interesting find. (Horse from Hros/H-Ros/Dew) The Goddess is associated with water, the chaotic waters of creation, and the bitterness of the sea. Sea in Latin is Mare (Some goddesses have names like Mary). The god of the Sea is Posiedon who is also the god of horses, the females of the species being known as Mares. The Moon also has mucho goddess connections and many locations on the moon, which are also the sites of NASA missions/landings, are named as various seas. The dark areas are the "seas" of the moon, and the shape they form, sometimes known as the Man on the Moon, has also been seen as a Rabbit on the moon. The rabbit (who has been connected to stargates, see Live From the Logosphere's work.) is the one who transports Alice to the Otherworld, like the Horse/Hros goddesses. A white rabbit who draws blood from the necks of Grail questing knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail guards a cave/entrance to the Underworld.

Keeping on the tasty theme of menstrual blood, John Allegro helps me connect Sex & Death in his fantastic book The Sacred Mushroom And the Cross:

Should menstrual discharge occur when the moon was not visible the blood was reckoned to have uncontrollable power: “if this female force should issue when the moon or the sun is in eclipse, it will cause irremediable harm; no less so when there is no moon. At such seasons sexual intercourse brings death and disease upon the man.”
There is another reference to menstrual blood in the description Pliny gives of a fabulous dragon called the basilisk. It could apparently. kill bushes with its breath, scorch grass, burst rocks,’ and put other serpents to rout. It was its blood, however, that was most in demand. According to the Magi, it brought a successful outcome to petitions made to gods and kings, cured diseases, and disarmed sorcery. This last claim was also made for menses, if daubed like Passover blood (Exod 12:7), on the subject’s doorposts.’ The name basiisk actually means, “womb-blood”,’ that is, menses. Pliny adds that some people call it “Saturn’s blood”, which looks like a reminiscence of the same verbal origin, since the name Saturn is partly composed of a Sumerian word ShA-TUR, “womb”.’

An interesting side note is that John also feels a strong connection between menstrual blood and the color purple, as well as the idea of "Blue Blood" (Vampire Overlords again). The Basilisk lends it's name to the large church of the Vatican known as St. Peter's Basilica. It was a dragon (Dracula) creature who, like Medusa, had a killer gaze which would kill anyone that met it. In fact, there are many parallels with Medusa, and Medusa type deities, to the vampire legends. (Remember earlier I mentioned Posieden? Well, he raped Medusa which caused Athena to turn her from beautiful to hideous. Posieden also carries the Trident, which is barely seen in the picture of Kali below.) Medusa was often depicted with fangs and her tongue sticking out. She always usually connected to serpents (dragons?) as well. In my 4 part series on Medusa, I found a number of very similar myths and legends from around the world which match the Medusa myth. One interesting detail about all of those stories is that fits in nicely here is that they all had an insatiable blood lust. Medusa is not shown to be quite as vampiric (despite her appearance), but that is the only thing that is lacking from a perfect fit with all these other tales of blood sucking and heart eating demons. Another thing I surmised in my series was that Medusa was a representation of the moon, more specifically, the moon during a solar or lunar eclipse (remember that during a lunar eclipse the moon looks blood red). Since I'm sure most people missed that series, and probably don't want to read 4 more blog posts after this one, I'll quote some of the similarities for you.

Earlier I showed a picture of Selene the moon goddess (also the name of the main vampire chick in Underworld), with an indication that she also represents diana, luna, and lucifer. Interestingly, wikipedia shows the same picture of Selene with alternate names including lucifer. This is because the name mearly means "bright, shining" and the moon is indeed bright, being highly reflective and lighting the night. Another connection is that the planet Venus, also called Lucifer, has phases just like the moon. Venus is the planet associated with the Devil/Lucifer due to it being the second brightest object in the sky after the sun (god). Immanuel Velikovsky in his much maligned work Worlds in Collision suggests that Venus/Lucifer may have at one time (in human hisory) been a comet which was then trapped by the sun's gravity. He asserts that the old names for the planet meant "bearded" or "having a mane of hair," which are a result of it's cometary tail; and as such was associated with dragons/serpents. The reason I mention that is that Medusa is also quite hairy, often being depicted with full facial hair. Remember, the succubi were really male demons. (Medusa Touch part 2.) Speaking of succubi (and psychic vampires), Medusa is oddly reminicent of the female vampires of the Phillipines, those night-time bloodsuckers, the Visayan manananggal ("self-segmenters") who would detach their upper bodies and fly through the night looking for victims (like an asteral projection?).

I spent a lot of time connecting Medusa to the moon, and in my research I came across similar deities who were also connected to the moon. Medusa Touch part 4: There is the moon god (male) Khonsu, associated with knowledge and time; and as such often represented along with the ever present Thoth. Khonsu "appears in the well known 'Cannibal Hymn' (Utt. 173-4) as a bloodthirsty deity who assists the deceased king in catching and slaying those gods that the king 'feeds upon' in order to absorb their strength. Specifically, it refers to him as 'Khonsu who slew the lords, who strangles them for the King, and extracts for him what is in their bodies.' Though only mentioned once in the Pyramid Texts, he is also referred to in Spell 258 of the Coffin Texts, where he is 'Khonsu who lives on hearts'." Sonds a lot like those Scythian witch-druid Overlords who gave us the word vampire. Another similar deity was actually the face in the center of the Aztec Sun Stone, the Aztec's version of the Mayan calendar. The face looks a lot like Medusa, even having it's tongue sticking out: "The tongue, stuck out is the form of an obsidian knife, indicates that the diety demands to be fed with blood and human hearts." (Medusa Touch part 3) In the picture above is the goddess Kali, known as the "night of death" who carries away the spirits of slain warriors and animals. Her name means "appointed time" and can mean "death." This reminds me of Interview With A Vampire where Lestate says that they (vampires) are death.

I hope I don't ruin his future post, but Celt has been talking about doing a post called "Romance is Dead." I'd have to say that at this point I would have to agree with him. Girls humping 200 year old corpses, succubi sucking energy and blood, and heart-eating demons... which brings me to my next point: Vagina Dentata.

Look up again at the Medusa montage, the picture in the bottom left was turned on it's side on purpose. What does that look like to you? ... I'll give you a hint, it's been connected to roses, hearts and V's... give up? A big hairy tooth-filled vagina, otherwise known as the Vagina Dentata.

anyone else think parker posey was really hot as a vampire?

In Blade: Trinity, an ex-vamp boy-toy turned vampire slayer says of his former vamp lover (above) that: "Her fangs are located in her vagina." Talk about sex and death! In True Blood, the flaming gay cook claims that "all men fear the puss."

In 2005, inventor Sonette Ehlers introduced The Rapex, an anti-rape female condom which can be inserted into the vaginal canal like a diaphragm. The product is lined with microscopic barbs which attach to a rapist's penis and which must be surgically removed. In an article about the Rapex, Ehlers stated that she was inspired to invent the device after meeting a victim who told her, "If only I had teeth down there."
(randomnessunexplained.blogspot.com)

There's a strange weaponization of the vagina going on here. In the cyberpunk novel Snowcrash, a girl has an anti-rape device inside her vag which consists of a needle with fast acting knock-out poison. Unfortunately she forgets about it when she has sex... In From Dusk Till Dawn one of the male characters (Sex Machine?) has a gun-codpiece; ok it's not a vagina, but it's still a deadly genital (it shows up in the guitar case in Desperado too). I just watched an X-Files on TV which had some vampiric themes with plenty of sex and death. In the episode, a highly arousing shapeshifting alien was having sex with people who would then die of severe heart problems afterwards (their arteries would explode, severe enough for you?).

if you see this girl, run!

Notice the rose in the above (right) movie poster: "every rose has it's thorns."

If there’s one thing the new horror flick Teeth teaches us, it’s that nothing sours a romantic soirée like a vagina dentata. The phrase - Latin for “vagina with teeth” - conjures men’s primal fear of sex, the opposite sex, the word “vajayjay,” and dentistry.

The term seems to have come into use in the early 20th century, around the time Sigmund Freud was dreaming up his theories about castration complexes. But the idea has roots in numerous ancient cultures. There are Native American tales like the Ponca-Otoe story in which Coyote spends a night snuggled between the sexy daughters of an evil old witch. One girl warns him that they have lethal jaws in their private parts. So Coyote kills the other girl and the witch. Then, according to Richard Erdoes & Alfonso Ortiz’s 1984 book American Indian Myths and Legends, he bashes out his gal pal’s vaginal grill “except for one blunt tooth that was very thrilling when making love.” (thephoenix.com)

Erich Neumann relays one such myth in which “A fish inhabits the vagina of the Terrible Mother; the hero is the man who overcomes the Terrible Mother, breaks the teeth out of her vagina, and so makes her into a woman.” (randomnessunexplained.blogspot.com)

The vagina with teeth reminds me of the Hellmouth theme covered in a recent post. Something about putting your most sensitive part into a dark abyss... Is a movie like Teeth part of the "gay agenda" to make us all like South Park's Mr. Garrison who "doesn't trust anything which bleeds for 5 days and doesn't die."? (If you don't get it, look at the picture below.) It seems to indicate a fear of losing our manhood (skip that if your a chick), which reminds me of the Fight Club post I did recently. In Donnie Darko, Donnie says being a Smurf is illogical because "why would you want to live if you didn't have a dick?" Sex is an initiation into man/womanhood, and is symbolic of higher initiations, and vice versa. This may indicate a fear of failing the initiation into adulthood and having no reason to live (like the smurfs).

Every theme mentioned in the title: virgins, vampires and vagina dentata, seems (to me at least) to be represented in the first picture (repeated below). Well, thanks for reading, see you in the S&M dungeon of a vampire bar near you!

Bee Seeing You Through the Veil

2009-06-24T03:00:00.001-07:00

This is part 5 of a series: Heart Shaped Coffin, Opening the Stargate, The Journey Back Home, Purification, and Bee Seeing You Through the Veil. It's not necessary, but I imagine it would be less confusing if you've read the previous parts of this series before continuing on below.

The above mosaic is part of the ancient Tel Shiloh church, also known as the Church of the Ark because the ark of the covenant was kept there in a pre-Temple of Solomon enclosure until it was taken by the Philistines. It features a double-square with hexagonal star (symbol of the heart chakra) in the middle, near the wall (where the man in the blue hat is pointing), as well as an equal-armed templar cross (in front of the man in the white) and a shit load of vesica pisces. The whole section is contained in a cirlce that is contained by a square. The symbol of the Double-Square in the center of this image forms an Octagon and is found in many important areas of esoteric and religious symbolism. I mention double-cubes in relation to magickal altars and in relation to the Labyrinth in Pan's Labyrinth:

Prehistoric labyrinths are believed to have served either as traps for malevolent spirits or as defined paths for ritual dances. During Medieval times the labyrinth symbolized a hard path to the God with a clearly defined center (God) and one entrance (birth). [...] The labyrinth is located in the nave of the Cathedral. Aleister Crowley insisted that his student magicians construct their altars with two perfect cubes stacked atop one another, “symbolizing the Great Work... The height of the altar is equal to the height above the ground of the navel of the magician. The altar is connected with the Ark of the Covenant, Noah’s Ark, the nave (navis, a ship) of the Church, and many other symbols of antiquity.”

The nave of church is where labyrinth is located, which is a symbolic of (re-)birth, where, in antiquity, 7 male and 7 female virgins were "sacrificed" after doing the hobbling dance to the center. The hobbling dance represented the lame king, also known as the Fisher King, and his lame leg represented the failing virility/vitality of the king.

Another navel/navis connection is Navel Oranges, a variety of seedless oranges which contain "a partially formed undeveloped fruit like a conjoined twin." (Remember Philip K. Dick's twin-god cosmology? The Gnostic view that the evil demiurge (Yahweh) left the womb only partially developed, accounting for his insanity.) All navel oranges come from the first tree which produced this mutation, and are propagated through cuttings grafted onto other trees. Oranges are "Golden Apples" which grant immortality, what if that first tree was the Tree of Life in Eden? I previously mentioned there being 7 oranges tumbling down the stairs in The Ninth Gate. Oranges ("Golden Apples") show up in a number of movies, such as when Kevin Bacon's character craves orange juice after his third eye is pried open through hypnosis in Stir of Echos. Oranges have 10 sections, bringing to mind the double-pentagram of the apple cross-section from the previous posts. "Apples and Oranges" brings both items together in a slang term for opposites (duality, yin-yang, black and white, etc). Having no idea where to go with this post, I'll just follow a synch in a recent movie I watched, Merlin, a made-for-TV movie starring Sam Neil as Merlin. The movie follows the life of Merlin more than that of King Arthur and only barely mentions the quest for the Holy Grail. The opening credits for the movie shows Merlin riding towards the semi-mythical "island" of Avalon.

Where there are apples in myths there’s usually serpents or dragons. The Celts called Eve’s paradise Avalon, or Apple-land, the land across the western sea where heroes and gods fed on the apples of immortality. (Blue Apples)

Two thousand years ago, the sea washed right to the foot of the Tor, nearly encircling the cluster of hills. The sea was gradually succeeded by a vast lake. An old name for it is Ynys-witrin, the Island of Glass; "island" because, from most angles of approach, it would have looked like one, but it is from Celtic legend that the name Avalon has its true origin - named after the demi-god Avalloc or Avallach, who ruled the underworld. In Celtic lore Avalon was an isle of enchantment. Ancient myth has it that Avalon, where the sea met the land, was the meeting place of the dead; the point where they passed to another level of existence, and the Tor was the home of Gwyn ap Nudd, the Lord of the Underworld, and a place where the fairy folk lived.

(The description of Avalon sounds like "Limbo/Mobil Ave" from my "Purification" post. Limbo = Edge of Hell - My note)

In the beginning, when the legends of mystical Avalon began, Glastonbury, a small town in Somerset, cradled in a cluster of hills in the south of England, was thought to have been a site for pre-Christian worship.

For safe keeping, Joseph (of Arimethea. - My note) is said to have buried the Holy Grail just below the Tor at the entrance to the Underworld. Shortly after he had done this, a spring, now known as Chalice Well, flowed forth and the water that emerged brought eternal youth to whosoever would drink it.

Because of the large number of St.Michael and St.Mary churches situated upon the lines, these energy pathways have been dubbed the St.Michael and St.Mary lines. While the lines are of far greater antiquity than Christianity, it is not entirely inappropriate to have given them such Christian names. St.Michael, or more properly the Archangel Michael, is traditionally regarded as an angel of light, the revealer of mysteries and the guide to the other world. Frequently shown spearing dragons, St.Michael is widely recognized by scholars of mythology to be the Christian successor to pagan gods such as the Egyptian Thoth, the Greek Hermes, the Roman Mercury and the Celtic Bel. (crystalinks.com)

thoth conquers a dragon

Blue Apples have also been connected to Blue Stones (notes/tones) in William Henry's work; as seen in deity carvings of an ancient goddess with a necklace of Blue Stones. The Blue Apples famously appear at Rennes Le Chateau which I mention in Opening the Stargate, where I connect grapes with the heart and the continuing theme of Sex & Death.

The Pommes Bleues, or Blue Apples, are apparently the blue circles made from the stained glass window in Rennes Le Chateau; the orbs appear around January 17 every year. The window depicts the scene of Jesus Raising Lazarus from the Dead (Horus raising Osiris/Asaur/El-Azar-us), and the blue orbs rest on the altar with its bas-relief of Mary Magdalene kneeling in prayer with a skull at her knees. (Somehow this is at least the third time I've mentioned Lazarus in this series, it's one of the main themes that keeps coming up, and like in school, if the teacher keeps talking about it - it's probably gonna be on the test!) Gnostic depictions of this scene famously depict Jesus using a magic wand to raise Lazarus who looks like a mummy, very much like his original form as Osiris, the mummified God/Green Man of the Underworld (who concieves Horus after he is brought back to life temporarily (Sex & Death)). The music of the Blues (blue notes/tones/stones) typically use the notes of the flattened third, fifth and seventh scales. Known as long notes or worried notes, blues notes create a feeling of, well, having the blues! For a synchromusikologists interpretation of Blues and the pentragrammic scale (there's that pentragram again!), see The Pentagramic Scale at the Kulide o sKope eye blog. But aside from that, "blue" stuff such as language and pictures usually refer to stuff you don't want your children to read, hear, or see; such as sex and profanity. Not to mention blue-balls of course: pent up sexual/creative energy. Here's some more on Blue Apples and Doves, from Blue Apples:

The doves of Nestor’s cup described by Homer in the Iliad are also thought to refer to the Pleiades. Fascinatingly, the Pleiades have also been likened to a bunch of grapes or Blue Apples. Ancient coins depict doves with bodies formed by bunches of grapes. The dove appeared in migration at the time of vintage, its purple-red breast like wine reminding the wine makers of their grapes. Suddenly, the story of Jesus’ “curing” Mary Magdalene, his chief apostle, of “possession” by “seven demons” takes on New meaning. These seven demons may well be the seven stars of the Pleiades. His “curing” would therefore represent him mystically attuning her soul or telling her stories about the seven stars (or Blue Apples) of the Pleiades.

Mary Magdalene symbolism is found all over Rennes Le Chateau, much of it doing with the number of her feast day, July 22. 7/22 is an approximation of pi and was used in the construction of many ancient sacred sites, and the ratio of 7:11 is found in the Great Pyramid. Connecting back to the previous posts discussion of The Cyclic Cross of Henday and it's Secrect of the Incas: the date for the End of the World, encoded into the cross, was decoded as September 22, 2002 (eerily close to Sept. 11th 2001). The "Sept" in September means 7, because it was the 7th month before January and February were added to the beginning of the calendar; thus this end-date might today be seen as July 22nd, Mary Magdalene's feast day. July 22nd: 22=BB/BeeBee, "2-B or not 2-B." The sting of getting shot by a BB-gun? A Bumble Bee? Speaking of Bumblebees, I had noticed that in Transformers, Shia LaBouf drives the Transformer called "Bumble Bee," and has Ebay username "LadiesMan217" (ladies-man = a drone for the Queen Bee?). 217 is the gematria value for the Hebrew name Deborah - which means Bee. Jan. 17 is the date of the appearence of the Blue Apples at Rennes, and Jan. 17th is the day that Nicholas Flamel first used the Philosopher's Stone (Elixer/Holy Grail).

if you draw an "M," for mary magdalene, using these statues in the rosslyn chapel floor-plan, the first letter of each of the 5 statues spell GRAAL, which means "grail."

Mary M. was called a whore by the church, though in recent history she has been cleared of those charges. I feel that the church had to symbolically call Mary a whore because it is such a big part of the Virgin-Whore-Goddess mythos. Mary the Virgin and (Mary the) Whore. Ok, I'm clearly going off-track, but let's see if I can swing back into the main story. Temple Priestesses were called Bee's/Melissae, as well as Temple Virgins and Temple Whores. Temple Virgins are only "virgins" because they are un-married. They have to have sex at least once to be a temple-virgin, and most would trade sex for temple donations, thus the Virgins were also Whores in a very literal sense. The below picture explains the origin of the "veild goddess" idea, before it was incorporated into Isis, it was part of the myth of Neith. (Neith/Net/Nit was mentioned in Journey Back Home because of her connection to the phallic-arrow symbol) And now we can more easily understand the connection to sex:

mary-vagina-veil pic stolen from the celtic rebel

Andrew Gough ponders if the phrase "The birds and the bees" refers to sexual union "as something magical and sacred, something that needs to be learned by an initiate and which is unknown to a virgin," combining the symbolic Langage of the Birds with the mystery of the virgin priestess Bee. Which goes well with what I've been saying, that sexual symbolism goes hand-in-hand with the Mysteries, especially when concerning initiations.

Bees were discussed at the synchro forum previously as well, which included lots of connections to the Goddess meme, specifically concerning Beyonce ("Beeyonce") Knowles (pic). For much more on Bee/Goddess symbolism I turn to a large quote from the Alchemy Key:

However, the bee also had a very dark side. It remained a primary symbol of the Afro-Asiatic Triple Goddesses such as Demeter, Hecate, Persephone, Aphrodite and the pre-Indo-European aspect of Artemis. Arcadians worshipped both Artemis and Persephone under the name Despoina, which means mistress. Aphrodite, the nymph-goddess of midsummer, would destroy the sacred king by tearing out his sexual organs just as the queen-bee destroys the drone. Her Priestesses displayed a golden honeycomb at her shrine on Mount Eryx. Butes is the most famous beekeeper of antiquity. (Similar to the Bee-keeper Pan. The Bee was the symbol of Egypt, and Beekeeper was the title given to the Pharaoh. - My note) He was a priest to Athene on Mount Eryx who represented the love-god Phanes, son of the Triple Goddess. The Greeks often depicted Phanes as a loudly buzzing bee called Ericepaius. Incongruous with Aphrodite’s beauty, the Greeks also knew her as the Eldest of the Fates, Melaenis or black one, Scotia or dark one (the "Black Madonna" (Beeyonce). - My note), Androphonor or manslayer and Epitymbria, which means of the tombs. (Side note, Scotia was the Egyptian princess (Meritaten, firstborn daughter of Akhenaten) who fled to Ireland and lent her name to the people and land, Scots and Scotia, older terms for Irish and Ireland (also Nova Scotia). - My Note.) Artemis was an orgiastic Nymph like Aphrodite. She was the Maiden of the Silver Bow, which symbolized the new moon. Her male consort received the arrows of death. Besides the bow and bee, her other emblems were the date-palm signifying birth and the stag symbolizing her control of wild things. Artemis’ bees were the melissae priestesses who daubed their faces with gypsum or white clay in honour of the White Goddess. Artemis' chief priest was, as we may imagine, the king bee.

Removing the fertility of the old king disenfranchised him thus allowing the young king to rule. In Egypt Set castrated his brother Osiris, in Sumer, Kumarbi castrated Anu. In Greece, Zeus castrated his father Cronos and Homer writes of Cronos castrating his father Uranus. In Israelite myth Canaan, the son of Ham, castrated his grandfather Noah. The importance of castration is a sign that covenants were cut, not made (As in "cutting a deal." - My note.). The contracting parties severed an animal in two and walked between the pieces that this may happen to me when I break this covenant. This is why circumcision is reserved for a special promise. The separation of the foreskin cuts the covenant that appeases the Mother Goddess’ demand for the sacred marriage with its ritual castration, death and rebirth.

The Goddess demands every man’s phallus. Jewish women offered the foreskin as a substitute for their husband’s phallus. For example, the substitute sacrifice of circumcision even saved Moses: And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met him [Moses], and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, surely a bloody husband art thou to me. So he let him go: then she said, a bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision. It is a custom observed by the British Royal Family who called upon the Rabbi Jacob Snowman, the respected Mohel of the London Jewish community, to perform the religious rite of Brit Milah with Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace. This is also the Covenant of Circumcision. [...] The Bible provides other grand stories of the sacrifice myth. Moses died before Joshua received the fertile land of Israel. King David similarly died before Solomon brought prosperity to the land with the building of the Temple. In the same way, the wounded and impotent Fisher King of the Holy Grail finally passes to his rest before prosperity returns to his wasting land.

Well, getting back to the Blue Apples/Grapes:

Moses and the Israelites were enroute to the Promised Land. Yahweh ordered them to stop short and to send out some spies. One of Moses’ operatives, Joshua, an ancestor of Jesus, was called the “Son of Nun.” Along with a companion, Joshua was dispatched to the valley of Eschol (‘valley of the cluster’ as in grapes) where he stole a cluster of grapes from the sons of Anak who were living there. He returned the grapes to Moses. Nun and the cluster of grapes later became cryptograms that were extremely important to the Essenes, the priesthood of which Jesus was a member, and the Gnostic Grail heretics that they held sacred and secret. The cluster of grapes symbolized the secrets of creation, the secrets of manipulating the mother substance and the symbol for the Grail.

[At Chatres Cathedral], on the ‘Symbolic Window of the Redemption’ we see an identical pairing of the two thieves carrying the cluster of grapes beneath a green Cross. This window illustrates the medieval belief in the concordance of the two stories. Old Testament scenes are grouped together with the Passion of Jesus as if they happened at the same time. In the scene of his Passion, Jesus is shown carrying another ever green cross, symbolic of the life-giving power of the blood of Christ and a reference to the belief that the Cross was made of the wood of the Tree of Life from the Garden of Eden. Beneath him is the Old Testament prefiguration, the depiction of Joshua and a companion stealing a huge bunch of grapes upon a staff. According to Isidore of Seville, the grapes suspended on a pole symbolize Christ hanging on the cross, for he is the [Mystic] grape whose blood fills the Grail. In the following scenes on the Passion window, Jesus is crowned with green thorns, once again inviting us to conclude that his starry helmet or crown of thorns was made from the same material (or technology) as the Cross or Pillar. (Blue Apples)

The belief that the green Cross, and green Crown of Thorns came from the Tree of Life reminds me of the idea of the green jewel from Lucifer's crown having fallen to earth (see my post: New Age Ch.9 for more) and was eventually shaped into several objects including a spear (Spear of Destiny) and a chalice - the Holy Grail.

A little known fact is that de Troyes was unable to start [the first ever Grail Romance, Perceval, the Story of the Grail] until he travelled to Spain and studied with a Cabalist, leading scholars to conclude that the Cabala uniquely enables the understanding of esoteric subjects such as the Grail. Some years later, Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote the Grail Romance ‘Parzival’, and in his account we are told that the Grail is a stone from heaven.

This is interesting, given that the word ‘meteorite’ carries the same numeric value (443) as ‘Bethel’ - which translates as Bee in Egyptian. (andrew gough's arcadia)

Bee in Egyptian is Bit/Bet, leading to Bethel which translates to Beth=House and El=God/Lord, or the "House of the Lord" in Hebrew. This could refer to Heaven, from which meteors fall, or even a temple or shrine, symbolized as beehives in the past.

It is also interesting to note that the prophet Muhammad lived in Mecca, where a sacred stone from heaven is worshiped to this day - as it was in Delphi, where Bee Priestesses were consulted as seers. And [...] the most famous of all Grail Romances portrays the Grail as a stone from heaven. Might it also be related to the Bee? (andrew gough's arcadia)

scarab + bee from heaven befriends the cube(cross) symbol

The International Space Station, ISS (or Isis), was threatened by space debris earlier this year: "'It's a bit like a swarm of bees in a beehive up there,' said William Jeffs, a spokesperson at Nasa's Johnson Space Center in Houston, 'the trajectories can sometimes be erratic.'" By studying meteorites which have impacted ice on earth and resisted being blown apart or melted, scientists have learned that they consist of about 20% water (manna/dew from heaven?) and may be the source of all water on earth. Obviously water would be hard to come by in a volcanic proto-planet, so it seems all life on earth may have originated in space where all the nessesary elements including water exist. The Transformers movie contains the "AllSpark," a cubic device which has the ability to give life to things it comes in contact with. (watch Labyrinth of the Psychonaut video featuring the AllSpark) The AllSpark, also called the Matrix, is the Transformers afterlife/heaven: it is intelligent, it contains "all sparks" (souls) of everyone who will ever live, and is also a record of all knowledge and wisdom ever gathered by the individual sparks/souls.

Getting back to the floor mosaics at the Church of the Ark (or Tel Shiloh) we find that the borders are lined with clusters of grapes growing out of krator vases/jars. "Krator" is the name of the style of jar.

The grapes coming out of the Krator/Grail are also a pointer to immortality, and are called Blue Apples by William Henry who believes that the Blue Apples/Stones/Grapes indicate or represent ancient knowledge on the transmutation of elements and possibly ancient electrical or nuclear technology.

An answer for why the Blue Apples symbolize these secrets comes from Harold Bayley who made a massive study of the history of European paper manufacture. He also began collecting the earliest watermarks, which he published in his book The Secret Language of Symbolism. Bayley concluded that, after their persecution by the Church, the Cathars (French Gnostics) and other residents of the Languedoc region were among the earliest paper makers of the Middle Ages. Their watermarks, he says, are nearly all symbols of religious nature, the total comprising a secret language shared by those ‘in the know’. One of their most important marks was that of the Grail. Frequently it was shown as a vessel with a cluster of grapes or Blue Apples. (Blue Apples)

Expanding on the idea of krator jars and craters, Adam of the Inside the Cosmic Cube blog tells us:

In Neil Gaiman's "Stardust", protagonist Tristan (the name of one of the Knights of the Round Table) goes on a quest over the Wall into the Otherworld to retrieve a fallen star for the shallow girl he's smitten with. (The star is named Yvaine, possibly after one of the knights in Arthur's Round Table, and therefore representing a Grail Quest. - My note) In the magical country the star becomes a woman who turns out to be his true love. (This "fallen" star is noted in the movie to be the "Evening Star," which would make it the planet Venus/Lucifer. - My note) Naturally, as she's a fallen star, [Tristan] finds her in a Crater. At [Star Wars'] outset Luke Skywalker, the son of the fallen messiah Anakin Skywalker, lives in a hole in the ground. Not a Hobbity hole, but an open Crater. I think this is a pretty neat item of synchronicity if a Crater is a Grail and the Grail is the Holy Blood.

The thread at the synchro forum was spawned from old Aferrismoon post, X That Bridge, about the movie Starman which features and alien's journey to the crater in Arizona where he is taken up by a giant spaceship with a mirrored spherical surface. The spaceship (see link for larger pic) looks grail-like with it's ring of cosmic dust at it's equator and red beam of light as a stem or pillar beneath it.

In fact, before I realized it was a mirrored surface, I thought it was grail shaped due to the reflection of the earth in it's bottom half. The reflective surface of this grail/enlightenment resonator brings to mind the mirrored "Dragon Scroll" in Kung Fu Panda (which rests in a dragons mouth in the center of an Octagon), and the realization that the I/Eye in the Pyramid/Capstone/Cornerstone is "me, myself, and eye"; the answer to Number 6's question (6th Day God created Man), or Mankind's question in The Prisoner: "Who is Number 1?" Afterall, you "gotta look out for number one," who is yourself, and only your-Self can bring you enlightenment, or passage through the reflective veil into immortality. The Mystery schools gave initiates an experience of self-annihilation, thereby clearing their fear of death as they no longer cling to the fleeting nature of a mortal life. Once one acknowledges that, yes, "I'm mortal," they become "Immortal."

Georg Philip Friedrich von Hardenberg (Also known as Novalis, an 18th century author and philosopher) penned this riddle:

There was one who arrived there.
He lifted the veil of the goddess.
But what did he see?
Wonder above wonder,
he saw himself.

To be continued...