The Land of the Dead

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, you're 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has aliens from another planet being rounded up in spaceships (which look like, what at this point in time are, outdated aircraft) and then dropped into a volcano on earth.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.