Thursday, June 11, 2009

Mindbomb: The Dreaming Mind and the Gate of the Gods

Is creativity a form of shamanic communion with forces beyond our ordinary experience? Are there certain individuals who are able to tap into the deepest recesses of consciousness where the gods are waiting? Does visionary experience allow one to see traces of reality unbound by time and space?
There are the questions that lie at the heart of my own work and have led me to obsess further on an already long-standing obsession- the American godfather of the modern superhero, Jack Kirby.

Kirby was obsessed with many of the questions non-traditional thinkers are struggling with today, but may have had access to answers we do not.
In particular, there is a strange episode in his career in which Kirby seemed to foresee events long after his death, events which may well be linked to the Stargate- that portal between our world and the world of otherworldly entities the ancients saw as "gods."
These posts were originally written in January of '08. Some ideas I explore here have been discarded, some have evolved. But it all revolves around the idea of creativity as a shamanistic pursuit and how dreamwork and psychedelic experience are intimately related to this process.

I covered a lot of this material at Esalen, but I think you psychonauts out there might have a more immediate appreciation at the possibilities raised by Kirby's creative encounter with the Gate of the Gods...


Again, drawn 17 years before the Viking missions...


Silver Star, part 2: Down the Rabbit Hole

(Note: Read part 1 of this series here)

Kirby's 80's work may be generally overlooked, but that's not to say it isn't influential. I detail the numerous parallels between Captain Victory and James Cameron's Aliens in Spandex. And what is easily the nadir of Kirby's artistry, Super Powers, was in many ways DC's practice run for event books like Crisis on Infinite Earths and Cosmic Odyssey.

But let's look further into this strange, precognitive nexus between Silver Star and Destroyer Duck. So many of the thematic strands that we now see bubbling up from the conspiracy underground seem to hover around these books like a Lovecraftian spectre. It seems that nearly every major theme discussed in the more speculative branches of conspiracy research finds a synchronistic antecedent in three obscure Jack Kirby comic books. Granted, Kirby's work shows that he seemed to be very much immersed in the same themes that you see on conspiracy, UFO and high weirdness websites. But I'm not sure if that explains the...

9/11 PRECOGNITION

9/11 was like gasoline on the smoldering coals of internet conspiracy research, which had been whipped up by Behold a Pale Horse, Art Bell and the"Patriot" movement in the 1990's. The image above was taken from Destroyer Duck #5, published by Eclipse Comics in 1983. It's important to note that Kirby didn't write this story, Howard the Duck creator Steve Gerber did. But it may well be what inspired Kirby to completely rewrite the end of Silver Star.

In DD#5, we see the set up for the unsettingly prescient 9/11-like scenario in this story. The CEO of "Godcorp" readies a 'suitcase nuke' (that favorite bugaboo of the neoconservative Right) to celebrate the signing of a oil drilling franchise in Hoqoom, an Mesopotamian theocracy based on Iran. The conflicts and tensions that played themselves on 9/11 are presented here in reverse, with the Islamic radicals suffering what becomes a (inadvertent) suicide attack at the hands of American plutocrats. The satirical "Pahkmani the Devourer" (yes, a Pac-Man parody) and the fundamentalists of Hoqoom find their counterparts in Darius Drumm and the Foundation for Self Denial in Silver Star.

THE NEPHILIM

One popular school of thought in the conspiracy underground is derived from a dyspeptic reinterpretation of the theories of writers like Zechariah Sitchin and Erich Von Daniken. It holds that human race is secretly manipulated and unconsciously enslaved by a cabal of evil extraterrestrials, who created homo sapiens as a slave race using their own alien DNA and the DNA of proto-hominids.

Sitchin was inspired by Biblical stories of the Nephilim, which are the offspring of human women and a race of "giants," whom he came to see as extraterrestrials. Kirby himself subscribed to these theories, which formed the basis of his 1976 Marvel series, The Eternals. Best-sellers like The Gods of Eden by William Bramley and Rule By Secrecy by Jim Marrs would later combine Sitchin's ancient astronaut theories with the occult conspiracy interpretation of history put forth by writers like Michael Howard.

Another popular strain in conspiracy research is drawn from James Shelby Downard's symbological interpretation of events like the Kennedy assassination. Downard collated details like place names and other geographical details to concoct an elaborate thesis that Freemasons were manipulating world events as part of a grand ritual to reorder the cosmos itself.

When I first read of Downard's theories I was deeply immersed in Jung and was astonished that this character seemed completely oblivious of the theory of Synchronicity. The types of conjunctions and correspondences Downard wrote about seemed par for the course for any neophyte Jungian. Downard's research isn't even all that impressive- others have come along and done it much better. An entire new school of thought has sprung up around a new synthesis of Jung and some of the post-Downard researchers - it's known as "Synchromysticism."

REPTILIANS

Concurrently, researchers like former BBC personality David Icke have recombined Bramley's and Downard's interpretations and taken them to the next level, claiming that the ruling elites of the world are devil-worshipping, shape-shifting alien reptiles who use symbolism as form of mind control-cum-witchcraft. In this view, popular media is a minefield of symbolic spells, created to manipulate the primitive human mind (which come to think of it, probably isn't that far from the truth...)

Which brings me to the backup story in Destroyer Duck #5...


Where the main story explored the theocratic and petropolitical motivations behind a 9/11 type event, Destroyer Duck #5's backup feature The Starling (written by Superman creator Jerry Siegel) offers a comic book foreshadowing of Icke's UFO theorizing. In florid, erotically charged language Siegel describes the origin of his character, which are identical to the modern theories of the biblical Nephilim (or The X-Files, for that matter). In turn, this human-alien hybrid who links us symbolically back to Mesopotamia, via the writings of Sitchin.



The story is filled with the brutal emotionalism that made Siegel's Superman so compelling. In this scene, the sweet-faced teenage boy learns from his mother (now a best-selling novelist) that his father was a shape-shifting alien who seduced her to create this new child.


In another foreshadowing of Icke et al, that sweet-faced boy is himself a shape shifting reptilian.

Mind you, this was written by the creator of Superman, modern history's most iconic superhero.

MESOPOTAMIA AND MARDUK

Looking at the Starling in that scene with his mother, I'm struck by how much he resembles Kamandi, another similarly-clad, sweet-faced teenager from Jack Kirby's post-apocalyptic fever-dream from the 1970's.


The mystery deepens. Mirroring the later Destroyer Duck #5, Kirby wrote his own story of a suitcase nuke smuggled aboard in airplane. In Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth# 30, Kamandi and his mutant companion Ben Boxer discover a long-dead terrorist on an airplane that had been commandeered by a UFO. The terrorist is clutching a suitcase nuke, en route to some grim destination before the 'Great Disaster,' the nebulous Apocalypse that is the basis of the Kamandi mythology.


Remarkably, we are symbolically brought back to Sitchin's Mesopotamia by the giant statue of Marduk on the cover of Kamandi #30 (story is titled "UFO: The Wildest Trip Ever"). The desert sands of Mesopotamia (or Hoqoom) were the cradle of civilization and now this alien-made "sand pit" becomes its grave. This cover is not altogether thematically dissimilar to the Sitchin cover above, either. (note: The Angel of Death in Silver Star also reduced the landscape to desert).

This also ties us back to Jerry Siegel, since Marduk was one of Superman's mythological antecedents. Again, was any of this conscious? I can't possibly see how.

THE STARGATE

As if all of this weren't enough, the terrorist, the suitcase nuke and the airliner are all drawn into a gigantic Stargate, or interdimensional portal, that opens in the sky above the sand dunes.


Kirby writes: "Where do UFO's come from? How do they get here? Maybe they don't travel through the vastness of space, maybe they just come through things like the Door." I'm sure both Freud and Crowley would appreciate the blatant symbolism on that image- a skyscraper entering a Stargate, though for different reasons. Jake Kotzke would appreciate it for another reason altogether from them.

So would Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, whose landmark work The Stargate Conspiracy was published in America exactly one week before...

9/11, AGAIN


Since everything always ties back to The X-Files somehow, I am struck by how similar the image of the terrorist clutching the suitcase nuke in Kamandi is to this image of Max Fennig clutching a part of a highly radioactive alien generator to his chest in the episode "Max." Especially since both situations deal with an UFO taking control of a jetliner. I'm even more struck by the parallels between the plane crash in that XF episode and the contested fate of Flight 93. In the episode, the airliner Max is on is commandeered by a UFO and then shot down by a fighter jet. It crash-lands in rural, upstate New York, right next door to Pennsylvania.

I'm even more struck by the gematria encoded in the tail-fin of the Kamandi plane. 'N' and 'C' are the 14th and 3rd letters of the alphabet respectively, adding up to the mystical 17. G is the 7th- add the 2 and you have 9. And we already have the 11.

The two 9/11 airplanes- Flight 11 and Flight 175 struck the twin towers 17 minutes apart.

Kamandi
#30 hit the stands in March of 1975.


This story originally started as a short '2007 in Review' post. But everytime I look at it, another link comes to light. Next, we will see Kirby's prophecies of the Iraq War and the Big Brother of all Conspiracy Theories...


Silver Star, part 2: Move Over Nostradamus


Had the attacks in 2001 never happened, September 11 may have been best known as the day George Bush Sr. addressed the US Congress making his case for war against Iraq, who had invaded and occupied the oil duchy known as Kuwait. It was in this speech that the ominous phrase, "New World Order," became part of the common lexicon.
We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective -- a new world order -- can emerge: a new era -- freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony. A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor. Today that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we've known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice.


That New World Order, where a centralized global authority keeps the peace, was presented to us by Jack Kirby in living color in his incredibly prescient 1974 series, OMAC. And then some.

OMAC prophesied a technocratic utopia lorded over by a sentient artificial intelligence named Brother Eye, who orbits the planet in satellite form. Keeping things calm were a literally faceless police force known as the Global Peace Agency. In this series, Kirby forecast Real Dolls, virtual reality, non-lethal weaponry, a kind of ramped-up organ harvesting, water wars and genetically engineered Beasts of the Apocalypse that would make DARPA drool.

Any conspiracy researcher or symbology buff worth their salt should be sitting up straight, seeing that blatant All-Seeing Eye imagery upon OMAC's chest. OMAC's mohawk haircut doesn't say "Punk Rock" (which didn't really exist then) so much as it says "New Roman Empire." Again, it's almost certain that Kirby came across the juxtaposition of occult symbolism and world government theorizing while reading conspiracy literature.

Now, scroll back up to the top of the page and look at the image the government of Kuwait used to symbolize the invasion of their country in 1990. And then look at the cover of OMAC#3, that portrays a very similar scenario- a strongman invading a neighboring country in defiance of the 'World Community.' Only in this case, A 'One Man Army' is there to defend the invaded country, not an...


In the next issue, the 'One Man Army' defeats the invading force and goes to arrest the commander of the invading army, Marshall Kafka, who is trapped in his bunker.

The bewildered look on the bearded, presumed-dead warrior's face as he is arrested by the One Man Army had a strange, real-life echo three decades later when the "Army of One" arrested another bearded, presumed-dead warrior in his underground bunker...


Here, take a closer look. Notice the mouth agape on both men...


Later, Kafka is put on trial for assorted crimes against humanity. Here he defiantly reviews the charges against him, which are essentially the same charges brought against Saddam.

Note the last charge is another way of saying "Weapons of Mass Destruction."

The full-page shot below is an uncanny foreshadowing. The hair is different- this is cartooning, not caricature - but the strong features (especially the eyes) are remarkably similar to Saddam. Especially considering Kirby's tendency towards abstraction. Or considering that millions of people predict the looming Apocalypse based on some incredibly vague old French poems...

The name "Kafka" is curious for Kirby, considering the aggressive militarism of the character. But it's worth noting that more than one commentator as referred to the trial, sentencing and execution of Saddam as something out of Kafka or 'Kafkaesque.'

Remembering we are dealing in the realm of symbol, it should be noted that Kafka's confidence during his trial is due to the oncoming attack of his bio-engineered killing machine. Symbolically, this plot-line is eerily similar to the ongoing insurrection the "Army of One" has faced in the days since Saddam's downfall.

Another Kirby cover seems like a political cartoon here, with the outmatched One Man Army facing a multi-pronged chimera appearing out of the ether, raining fire and death. Just write 'intifada' on the monster's chest and put a triangle around OMAC's chest eye and you're set. Note: The battle takes place on Mount Everest, lending an Theosophical tinge to this story.

So we have the very strong thematic links to September 11, 1990 with the New World Order themed OMAC and the synch-links to the Mesopotamian Wars. What ties this all into 9/11 and the Nephilim/Stargate links discussed in the past two installments? Well, in the DC Universe OMAC has a descendant, his name is...


THE MISSING LINKS

What is amazing in the context of Kirby's visionary abilities is that the Saddam story in OMAC and the Stargate/Marduk storyline in Kamandi came out at essentially the same time- OMAC was published in January of 1975 and Kamandi in March.
This means that Kirby was visualizing this Saddam character and the Stargate at the same point in time- which ties into the work of researchers like William Henry, who claim that the Iraq War was a pretext for this struggle over the Sumerian texts that Saddam was hording.

Amazing.



Following the Silver Star series, the Mindbomb series was a freeform meditation on the shamanic nature of the creative process and how dreams and visionary experiences fed into the process as well. The first post tied into Jake Kotze's links between Kirby's first cover upon returning to Captain America and the King Kong movie poster, which featured the Twin Towers. The first installment was titled "Stargate in the Sky"

As I mentioned before, Jake picked up the Kirby ball and took it to the semiotic endzone. Not having read the comics as of yet, he may not have been aware that the Madbomb, that infernal mind control weapon of the Anglophile Elite, was devised by the aptly-named Mason Harding.


Just prior the beginning of the Madbomb Saga, we have "Slaughter in the Sky," drawn by X-Files resonator Frank Robbins. Here we see Doctor Faustus kicking Cap out of a plane that is flying towards New York City.


Given the synchronistic currents surrounding Kirby, the presence of Doctor Faustus is fascinating, given the fact that the mad psychiatrist is obviously Kirby's parody of Carl Jung.


Given Kirby's voracious appetite for anything outre or esoteric, at some point he must have read up on Jung. This is evidenced by the fact that Jung was rumored to Goethe's illegitimate great-grandson and held the figure of Goethe's Faustus close to his heart all of his life, taking the character on as his "second personality."



Who else but Jung himself could initiate such a portentous avalanche of synchronicity and symbolism that marked the last stage of Kirby's career in comics? And his stand-in seems to have a special interest in aircraft and New York City, particularly lower Manhattan there, albeit in non-Kirby comics.


Following the various breadcrumb trails and the bizarre synergy lately between the Kirby-crazed Secret Sun and the Stargate-obsessed Blob, is anyone surprised that Kirby followed up the Madbomb Saga with an incredibly strange story of an interdimensional Stargate opening up in the sky over the Ground Zero resonating "Zero Street?" Or that the the first hero through it would be the Falcon, the 17-resonating Horus stand-in? Or that the story would involve a Texas oilman and yet another reclusive sect of mind-controlled Fundamentalist weirdos?



Reverberations


Through an quirk in scheduling, I've been spending a lot of my time delving back into the symbols. And it is having a powerful effect on my dreams, which have become extremely huge and vivid.

Last night I dreamed that an enormous, mile-wide UFO was trying to phase into this physical plane over the Tappan Zee bridge. The force of this action was destroying the bridge, very much like the Point Pleasant event. I was primarily concerned with how traffic would get across the river, which is 3 miles at that point. The water was littered with construction debris and floating cars. Vladimir Putin was there, witnessing the event and he and I discussed the arrogance of the UFO's inhabitants. But the UFO was phasing in and out of this dimensional reality. Finally, the UFO - still phasing - was brought down telepathically by a small, bald Asian man. It was like watching a building collapse in slow motion- it took forever. But the bridge was still gone.

I can name any number of items in my thoughtstream lately that played into this construction, but the power of the Unconscious mind takes those bits and pieces and creates something unforgettable of them. And in a few short seconds, I could find just the right images to quickly construct a collage of to illustrate the story.

My question is why is so much of popular culture so dead and empty? Because we as a culture are not dreaming anymore. Americulture is a speed freak; unable to sleep and unwilling to dream. As with all speed freaks, our public life is becoming a dreary, ugly, miserable hallucination.

We are the Night People


A pack of gluttonous, raccoon-eyed paranoids drunk on consumerism, Calvinism and overstimulation.

An expert diagnosis of Bush-era America? Well, that's a bit outside of the Secret Sun's province. Here, it's a description of Jack Kirby's "Night People," whom Captain America tangled with following the Madbomb Saga. Christmas is probably still fresh in your memory, so this montage should ring true....


Firmly ensconced in the endless ocean of the Dreaming Mind, Kirby foresaw the future of America and only got a few of the details wrong. The Night People have indeed come, only the Elite wasn't defeated and the Madbombs keep going off all the time.



Foreseeing the Bush Administration's policy of "Shock and Awe" or the constellation of control techniques Naomi Wolf catalogs in her book The Shock Doctrine, the Night People's Inquisitor turns the Horus-resonating Falcon and his lady into one of them using their sacrament, the "blessing" of electroshock treatment. In addition to the Egyptian stand-in superhero, we have Leila, whose name is Arabic for "night."


The Night People have their heaven, only it's not on Earth. It's in another dimension and they use their own homemade Stargate to move back and forth. The only problem is their dimension is the dwelling place of demons- their heaven is actually a Hell. Devising their own interpretation of the Rapture, the Night People concoct a plan to transport all of the demons through the Stargate to Earth, so their dimension can be Heaven once again and Armageddon will befall the fallen world they left behind.

This kind of prophecy must leave a semiotic trail to its fulfillment and here we get hit after hit.


You see, the Night People had their own Mega Ritual, transporting their asylum on Zero Street to another dimension, along with a healthy chunk of Manhattan's bedrock. Zero Street is now a fenced-in Ground Zero, its native soil replaced with alien atoms.




Which brings us to 2001. Two pages before Captain America enters the Stargate, we see this house ad for his adaption of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which draws our attention by using an early, superior cover layout. Drawing our attention even further is the 17-17 hovering above it, drawing our attention back to the Falcon.

No Ground Zero/ Stargate ritual drama would be complete without a Texas oil millionaire with patrician facial features, and here Kirby delivers the goods. Taking the role is Texas Jack Muldoon, a rootin' tootin' hellraiser jes' a-rarin' to jump on through that Stargate to the madman's heaven and kick some Ausländer ass.

Kirby gets the ethnicity a bit off but the semiotics down pat. Muldoon is an Irish name meaning "commander of the fortress." The crotch-hugging straps are a nice, prophetic touch. The twin Roman numerals need no explanation.


Nor does that reverse-Madbomb/Kong pose mirroring Cap as he emerges from the other side of the Stargate.

Ironically, fans were right when they labeled Kirby's 70s work "irrelevant." Kirby was looking through the prism of the Collective Unconscious straight into the 21st Century. The Night People saga is a pitch perfect foreshadowing of the orgy of paranoia, materialism and self-righteousness that befell America circa 2002- 2004. In many precincts, the Night People still reign triumphant.

Ironically, "The Night People" came out smack dab in the middle of America's Bicentennial but had nothing to do with 1976. It was about the next 100 years.


The Leprechaun


One of my biggest influences is Graham Hancock, the pioneering British journalist and explorer. In my opinion, Hancock is a giant of our times and his influence on popular culture is as huge as it is unacknowledged. I attended his first talk on his latest masterwork, Supernatural, as New York's sublime Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. Being a Casteneda fan from way back in the day, I was captivated by the talk. Yet at the same time I was desperately hoping that people wouldn't use the book as motivation to go out and chug some ayahusca for themselves. I see that kind of activity as the equivalent of deep sea diving or Antarctic exploration- best left to the experts.



Many of the details in Hancock's talk struck a chord with me. When I was a kid I would get respiratory infections all of the time. As a result I would get terrifyingly high fevers, often peaking at 106ºF. As a result of that, I would often hallucinate. When I was 12, I got a particularly serious ear infection and was bedridden for over two weeks. Actually I was couch ridden- I was so weakened I couldn't walk up and down the stairs. If I wasn't so incredibly sick it would have been Paradise- nothing to do but lie around and read comics. I was a big Captain America fan at the time and was reading about three years worth of the title during that episode.

One night during this illness, I woke to a most peculiar tableau. A leprechaun was sitting on a rock in the middle of the living room and there was a thunder storm flashing in the adjacent room. I call him a leprechaun only because he was small and bearded and wearing archaic clothes and a rope belt. But he didn't seem cute and charming, he seemed scary as hell. He was shouting over the noise of the storm in a language I didn't understand, maybe Gaelic. And at some point the ceiling opened up and gold coins rained from the ceiling. The noise was unbearable and I passed out.

The thing is, that happened. It wasn't a dream- it all happened when I woke up and stopped when I passed out. I remember it better than yesterday. I was painfully awake at the time. There were no coins on the floor the next morning nor any burn marks on the floor or on the furniture in the dining room. But that doesn't mean the episode didn't have weight and mass and sound and sight and smell. It also doesn't mean that it wasn't extremely unpleasant either.

After Hancock's talk I waited in the receiving line and then told him that story. His face lit up and he nodded knowingly the entire time. He told me that my experience was basically identical to any number of the shamanic experiences he heard about in the field. He said that high fever seemed to throw the same filtering switch in the brain that hallucinogens did. I was gratified by his response, but at the same time I wondered how anyone could put themselves through that kind of thing voluntarily.

Still and all, I was captivated by Hancock's research. And as per usual, the more I heard about shamanism and its by-products the more I was reminded of Jack Kirby....


Shamanic Visions


Jack Kirby may not be a household name, but we all are immersed in his visions. So many of the Hollywood wizards people celebrate today - not to mention video game makers - were raised on his comics. You can essentially separate action and sci-fi cinema at the point before and after Jack Kirby fans poured into Tinseltown and changed the look, tempo and intensity of these films. Somehow Kirby tapped into something so incredibly deep in the Collective Unconscious that it transformed his work and subsequently transformed society. It simply took some time for the technology to put Kirby's visions on the screen.


But Kirby may have been more than a mere visionary cartoonist- as if that's not enough in and of itself. I remember one night I was lying on the couch, flipping through a stack of Kirby's Eternals comics when a documentary on the Discovery Channel was talking about how shamanic art in different cultures had similar features- abstracted human figures, dots, squiggles, and odd geometric designs. What struck me about that was in the mid 1960's Kirby's art underwent a startling transformation and incorporated all of those motifs.


Subsequently, Kirby's Marvel work became popular with acid-dropping college kids. And when I am lost in my musings (which is pretty much all the time) I sometimes wonder if the man didn't drop acid himself. It wouldn't surprise me; in fact, it would explain a lot. Kirby was an artist, not a stockbroker, and had hip baby-boomer kids. But at the same time I don't know if acid or any other mind-altering drugs are necessary to tap into the deep recesses of the dreaming mind. As it is, Kirby's work was already infinitely more mind-bending than the Haight-Asbury artists, as talented as they were.


If anyone in the media was a shaman, it was Jack Kirby. Among tribal societies it's believed that shamans can transcend the limitations of time and space. So could that explain Kirby's bizarre foreshadowings of the Gulf War, 9/11 and the Bush era? Or was some outside intelligence driving his visions? And is there any real difference between the two?


It's important to remember when you see some of the wacked-out stuff Kirby put on paper that he claimed that his stories existed inside his mind, and he simply traced them onto the page. But Kirby's psychedelia wasn't the self-conscious, self-important variety of the Boomer cartoonists who followed in his wake. In fact, Kirby's stories are rife with corny dialog and silly characters. His work came from the same sensibility as 50's drive-in movies and the pulps. And it was only with the guiding hand of super-salesman Stan Lee that Kirby's fever dreams were able to reach the mainstream. He most certainly didn't think of himself as a shaman or a visionary, which may well be what allowed him to really dive into the deepest waters of the subconscious mind.


But using therapeutic terms like "the subconscious" makes all of this too pat, too easily pigeonholed. Kirby was gripped by something powerful and compelling, as are all artists and visionaries like him. Many people like that often teeter on the brink of full-blown schizophrenia. The line between a shaman and a madman is vanishingly small. It's almost always mind-numbingly depressing when the line is crossed. It's even more depressing when it's exploited for profit's sake.



The problem is that trying to write about all of this without sounding like a credulous idiot is a pain in the neck. It's tempting to leave all of the interlocutory jargon behind and speak the language of the Dreaming Mind itself. You see this language in Blake's poetry, the Bible, and the work of writers like Plutarch or Ovid. But there's always the danger that you can follow shipwrecks like Syd Barrett into the abyss. I often wonder how Jaz Coleman is able to function, he can be so terrifyingly unhinged at times. I wondered the same about Philip K. Dick after reading through his Exegesis or Elizabeth Fraser in 1994. Which is why I find the guiding hand of Jungian analysis so incredibly important.


The Convulsive Power of the Dreaming Mind



Not only is it no accident that a Jung stand-in pushed Captain America into the ether just before Kirby's return, it may have even been intentional on the part of the writer, Marv Wolfman. The 70s were a pretty dreary decade, but it didn't lack for pop intellectualism. Marvel was full of writers who came in from the counter-culture, and a smart cookie like Marv Wolfman may well have realized that Kirby's obsession with the gods resonated with Jung's work. Captain America was about to embark on a 22-issue descent in the depths, a Jung-like 'night sea journey' into prophecy, conspiracy and visionary madness. Free-falling over the skies of Manhattan would be the least of Cap's problems.


When I was writing Our Gods Wear Spandex, I hadn't read up on my Jung for some time. But when I was promoting the book it suddenly hit me: my book was pure Jung in its approach. I was analyzing readers' motivations for being drawn towards superhero comics, and broke the myriad characters down into a handful of mythic archetypes. I had integrated Jungian thought to the point it became unconscious.


When you look into how dream-driven artists like Jack Kirby or Chris Carter create fiction that becomes the world's reality, you are smack-dab square in Jung Country, where internal thoughts become external reality. Dont ask me to explain it, but when you delve into this line of thinking and make it your own, sooner or later things start to happen- synchronicity, coincidence, manifestation. And eventually you live in a tangibly numinous world, whether you are awake or not.


Jung and New York are intimately linked in my mind since I immersed myself in his teachings when I was working in the world famous obelisk known as the Empire State Building, doing designs for kiddie togs. The ESB may well be the inspiration for much of the pre-9/11 plane-skyscraper symbolism we see, having been the site of such an event in 1945. I remember being evacuated from the ESB after the first WTC bombing, and having some plainclothes guy give my co-workers and I a 'routine' lecture on 'fire safety' during the Gulf War. I lost touch with Jung when people like Scott Peck and Thomas Moore were watering him down, making his very challenging work safe for middle-aged housewives. Or maybe it was because there were other ideas I wanted to explore. I'm not certain yet.


While working on the Silver Star series, I had an astonishingly vivid nightmare of being trapped in Manhattan during a 9/11-like scenario. Only this one was a 'dirty' bomb that arrived by way of a cruise missile. My friends and I watched it zoom overhead as we lunched in Bryant Park. People were bursting into radioactive flames all around me. SWAT teams were on the streets preventing people from leaving the city, because we were all contaminated. I couldn't get a signal on my cell phone so I couldn't call my wife and tell her I was all right. And at one point I was chased by an armored cop down a staircase. It was real as life - I woke up with my heart pounding, drenched in sweat.

So no one can tell me the dreaming mind is trivial or unimportant. Some of humanity's greatest achievements have been born there. I think in many ways modern society's contempt for the Unconscious is at the root of its malaise. When desires or fears go unanalyzed they metastasize and distort our personalities. A state which some people seem to aspire to.


If there is one thing I am trying to do with the Secret Sun, it is to add my two cents to the cultural conversation. What I would like to ultimately see is artists and writers digging deeper into their inner reality and creating better art as a result. All art is the manifestation of inner reality in one way or another, and our inner reality is a hell of a lot deeper and profound than our present popular culture would have you believe.

Not so long ago, I felt like I was walking into a dream when I stepped into a movie theatre. Good or bad, it had an immersive effect. Nowadays I mostly feel like I wandered into an accounting seminar. My wife and I love to watch movies in bed, but I feel as if anything new we rent from the video store is going to be medicore by definition. We recently watched Superbad- a well-regarded comedy written by an actor I like very much named Seth Rogen- and we couldn't wait for it to end about halfway through. There were so many absurd crowd-pleasing bits in the film I was taken completely out of the narrative. And once you step outside that, you're basically left with a bunch of people running around pretending to be someone else and reciting lines written by someone else. And that was one of the better recent films we've rented.


The magic is totally gone from our cinema -hell, our mass media- and what's left stinks of desperation. Most of today's producers and writers and actors seem to care about nothing but the opening weekend gross. Hollywood has always looked down on the rest of the world, but never before has the contempt felt so overt. And the rest of the world is returning the favor by finding other things to do with their leisure time.

Mark my words- people will continue to lose interest in film or theatre or TV or novels unless someone can figure out how to recapture that dream reality again. And as culture goes, so goes the society. Culture is a barometer of a people, and our culture is telling us that the Bush years have ripped out our collective soul and replaced it with narcissism, cynicism and despair.

Were he alive today, Jung would look at this nation and instantly recognize it was on its own night sea journey.



Sunday, April 26, 2009

The Alchemical Romance of The Fifth Element




Like The Matrix, the 1997 film The Fifth Element mines the feverishly imaginative world of comic books. But whereas The Matrix derives from Marvel Comics and manga, The Fifth Element draws its visual punch from French comics, formally known as bande desinee (BD), familiar to readers of the American magazine Heavy Metal, which reprints a great deal of comics from Europe. Bande desinee is, like manga, a medium and not a genre. Any number of types of stories are produced, usually in hardcover oversized albums. But the most familiar form of BD to American readers are the kinds of outrageous and decadent science fiction yarns serialized in French magazines like Pilote and Metal Hurlant. These sci-fi stories are characterized by lavish, nearly-baroque art and design, and a narrative sensibility that emphasizes sophomoric nihilism, sadistic violence and decadent sex.

The dizzying visual imagination of the BD sci-fi subculture is mirrored in The Fifth Element . In fact, Besson enlisted one of BD’s premier talents, Jean Giraud, to forge the visual look of the film. Giraud is known to BD readers by his pen names ‘Gir’ and ‘Moebius.’ As Gir, he has drawn the long-running adventures of the Western hero, Lieutenant Blueberry. And as Moebius, he illustrated a large body of science fiction stories, often in collaboration with Alejandro Jodorowsky, the South American filmmaker best known for his films El Topo and Santa Sangre.

Giraud’s own work is also of a distinctly spiritual bent, but defining the precise nature of that spirituality is often elusive. Moebius is (or was) the follower of a French New Age guru named Jean Paul Appel Guery, who changed the course of Moebius’ work from dystopian sci-fi to incredibly opaque new age sci-fi. Moebius has also worked on several sci-fi/fantasy films, including Alien, Willow and The Abyss.

Besson also enlisted the visual talents of another French legend for The Fifth Element. Jean Paul Gaultier, the fashion maestro best known for his work with Madonna, designed many of the sexually-provocative costumes for the film, and gave the film a distinctly decadent and androgynous sheen.

The plot of The Fifth Element. concerns a struggle between the forces of good, here in the form of the alien Mondoshawans and their human accomplices; and the forces of evil, represented by a malevolent Death Star-like planet (known only a “Mister Shadow”) and its alien and human enablers. Gary Oldman, scenery-chewer extraordinaire, plays Zorg, an evil weapons manufacturer who works in concert with the alien Mangalores to help make manifest the destruction of earth by this ultimate Evil.

The Mondoshawans send their champion, the so-called “Supreme Being”, to Earth to help destroy the Ultimate Evil, but the Mangalores shoot down their ship before it can reach the Earth. A salvage team is sent to the crash site (which is on a moon) and a piece of a arm is recovered, which turns out to be from the Supreme Being. The severed limb is brought to Earth and through DNA something-or-other is reconstituted into an intact replication of the supreme one. Happily, it transpires than underneath their bulky and cartoonish armor, the Mondoshawans look like hot, young, naked supermodels. Hence LeeLoo, the reconstructed supreme being, is played by hot, young, naked supermodel Milla Jovovich.

However, LeeLoo freaks out when she is reborn, busts out of her rebirthing chamber and ends up in the care of soldier-turned-cabbie Korben Dallas (played by Bruce Willis). At her urging, Dallas then brings Leeloo to the priest Father Cornelius, played by Ian Holm. Cornelius is part of a hereditary line of priests that do the Mondoshawan’s bidding in protecting the Earth.

What must be done next is to recover the ritual stones symbolizing the four elements and get LeeLoo to Egypt post-haste, in order to perform the ritual that will repel and destroy “Mister Shadow." However, the stones are being kept by an alien chanteuse on a galactic pleasure cruiser halfway across the galaxy. Hence, Dallas, Cornelius and LeeLoo rocket out to the cruiser to recover the stones. Along the way, LeeLoo immerses herself in human lore and language, with the aid of a laptop computer supplied to her by Father Cornelius. The messianic troupe also make the acquaintance of a maniacally-epicene galactic talk show host named Ruby Rhod, played by Chris Tucker.

Along the way they are countered by Zorg and his Mangalores cohorts. All sorts of mayhem ensues, and the alien singer protecting the stones is killed by the Mangalores. As she lays dying, she tells Dallas that the stones are located inside her body, and Dallas must pull them out of her corpse. Zorg is also after the stones, but is ultimately destroyed by a bomb he places on the cruiser (literally ‘hoisted on his own petard’, you might say). Dallas, Cornelius and LeeLoo escape just in the nick of time and return to Earth to perform the ritual.

The trip back seems to be going well until LeeLoo stumbles across the subject of war in her humanities studies. She is so driven to despair by visions of man’s inhumanity to man that she is unable to perform the ritual. The stones are put into place, but the Fifth Element isn’t activated. Cornelius reckons that LeeLoo needs a first hand lesson in the ways of love to ease her despair over man’s barbarism, so he orders Dallas to have a snog with her. Dallas and LeeLoo neck and the Evil Planet something-or -other is destroyed in an orgasmic burst. The film ends as Korben and LeeLoo enjoy a hearty shag in a sarcophagus-type reactor chamber in a Nucleo Lab, as the President of the Earth and a worldwide television audience look on.

METATEXT

Aside from the obvious comic book, action movie and Solar ritual drama motifs, Besson seems to borrow heavily from Alchemical symbolism. Or, more precisely, Jungian interpretation of Alchemical symbolism. That final scene where Korben and LeeLoo copulate in the reactor chamber while the lord of Earth look on is directly taking it cues from three of the pivotal stages of Alchemist’s so-called “Chemical Marriage” process.

As depicted in numerous Alchemical texts like the Mutus Liber, the Chemical Marriage is a process in which the Sun (represented by a king), and the Moon (represented by a queen) are reunited into a single primevel being, the Royal Hermaphrodite, or the Rebis. In some texts the King and Queen copulate in a chamber filled with Mercurial water ( water collected from the morning dew), in others they commingle in a furnace.

Another product of this Royal Copulation is the Lapis, otherwise known as the Philosopher’s Stone. The Philosopher’s Stone is the device the Alchemists beleived could transform base metals into gold. This fabled Stone is now familiar to hundreds of millions of people the world over thanks to the Harry Potter novels.



Alchemy is the most arcane of ancient sciences, and since the Alchemists deliberately obscured their teachings either in wordless books or in arcane symbols, scholars disagree as to their meaning. Was the Chemical Wedding purely symbolic and spiritual, or was it some arcane recounting of an actual process? My vote is for the latter, but no one can say for sure. Carl Jung thought it was a metaphor for a person’s “individuation process” where the two halves of human nature- spiritual and rational- are conjouned.

However much Alchemy is scoffed at today, in many ways it was the forerunner of modern chemistry, and had a huge influence on modern medicine as well. Sir Issac Newton, arguably the most important scientific thinker in history, was obsessed with the alchemical arts. When Sir Issac wasn’t discovering the laws of gravity or inventing calculus or revolutionizing the study of Astronomy, he busied himself amassing England’s largest Alchemical library and conducting Alchemical experiments.

The language of Alchemy is the crux of The Fifth Element. The Alchemists believed that all matter was composed of four fundamental elements- Earth, Air, Water and Fire.

Some historians that the word "Alchemy" itself is derived from Al Khemiya which in turn is derived from Kemet (“the black land”), the name the ancient Egyptians new themselves by. ”Egypt” is a Greek name given to Kemet by the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty, and derives from aigis or “shield.”

The etymology of the word “Alchemy” is directly referenced by the location of the Mondoshawan temple in Egypt. And again, the use of the four elements is drawn from Alchemic arts. And the “Fifth Element” is not LeeLoo alone, but the by-product of the Coninunctio, or the Chemical Wedding between Korben and LeeLoo.

Their make-out session overseen by the priests in the Mondoshawan temple was their nuptials, and the episode in the rebirthing chamber was their royal consumation. The kings, queens and princes of the Earth are their to witness their apotheosis, which signifies the supreme status of the Alchemical arts in this ritual drama.

Not surprisingly, this Alchemical ritual drama is rife with Solar imagery. The big baddie, Mister Shadow in the tale is depicted as a Black Sun, a burning orb that gives no light nor heat. In other words, a spiritual force that exists only to serve its own needs, and possesses neither love nor compassion. It is pure, elemental Evil. It’s a sun that gives off light instead of shadow. It’s accomplice, Zorg, is a disciple of Evil. He believes that destruction and warfare are necessary facets of existance, and that personal enrichment is the highest good.


In the Alchemical Wedding drama of The Fifth Element, Korben is the Sun King and LeLoo is the Moon Queen. Leeloo herself represents the prima materia of the Alchemical grail quest.


LeeLoo is reconstructed from a genetic fragment recovered from the Mondoshawan ship, which crashed on a barren and dusty moon. The moon, being traditionally untouched by man, is thereby a source of the prima materia , or the “untouched matter” which the Alchemists sought to transform into gold. The Moon also reflects the Sun, which accounts for the solar touches in LeeLoo’s outfit.

Korben is a depicted as deactivated soldeier from an elite military order. Exactly which order Korben serived is no mystery to those familiar with medieval or military iconography. When we first meet Korben in his small, Spartan apartment we see has a golden trophy adorned with the Templar cross (00:18:27) And in a nod to Horus, Korben’s never-seen mother complains that she has left him 17 messages on his answering machine in the same scene.

Finally, the Mondoshawan priests dress in red and gold robes, and their Egyptian origin and extraterrestrial and godly alliances links them with the Shemsu Hor, the priest kings who ruled Ancient Egypt when the Netjer, or gods, returned to the Heavens. The Shemsu Hor are traditionally believed to be the guardians of the sacred arts, not the least of which is Alchemy.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Solar Symbology in the Chronicles of Narnia

Far from being the dour hermit of Evangelical propaganda, CS Lewis was a much more complex and fascinating character. His eccentric personal life has come under scrutiny in recent years (his only marriage came in his late middle age and was an immigration scam, he also never fathered any children) and his religious eccentricity has never really been a secret. He once wrote to a friend, "I had some ado to prevent Joy and myself from relapsing into Paganism in Attica! At Daphni it was hard not to pray to Apollo the Healer. But somehow one didn't feel it would have been very wrong - would have only been addressing Christ sub specie Apollinis." Lewis biographies are rife with this kind of enthusiasm.

Indeed, Lewis came to Christianity from a lifelong obsession with Nordic and classical paganism, which he never disavowed. Indeed he imagined Christianity as the fulfillment of paganism, particularly that of the Solar tradition. As a serious scholar, Lewis understood how similar the Solar monotheism of the late Roman Empire was to Christianity, and it's the earlier tradition that informs his most famous work of fiction...



Lewis' first novel in The Chronicles of Narnia series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, tells the story of the four Pevensie siblings- Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy - sent away from London during World War II to the countryside to stay with a kindly professor named Kirk.

Stuck inside on a rainy day, they explore the professor’s large estate and find an empty room with nothing but a wardrobe in it. Lucy, the youngest, enters into the wardrobe during a game of hide and seek and finds herself in a snowy forest. She stands near a lamppost in a clearing and encounters a faun named Mr. Tumnus. The faun then invites Lucy to his home for a typical British teatime. There, Tumnus informs Lucy that he was instructed to kidnap her. Overcome with pangs of conscience, he then lets her escape.

Lucy returns to Kirk’s estate through the wardrobe and tells the others of her adventures. They dismiss her story as childish fantasy, but during another round of hide and seek Edmund, the second youngest, follows Lucy into the wardrobe, and then into Narnia, the snowy land. Unable to find Lucy, Edmund encounters Queen Jadis the White Witch, ruler of Aslan. She offers Edmund a dessert called ‘Turkish Delight,’ which Edmund finds irresistible. The Witch then asks him to bring his brothers and sisters to Narnia.

Following this, Edmund finds Lucy in the woods, and the two return through the wardrobe together. Lucy tells Susan and Peter that Edmund too discovered the land of Narnia. Edmund's denies this, much to the consternation of Lucy. But the others end up hiding in the wardrobe one day when the professor has over visitors. They then enter the land of Narnia together. Lucy takes her siblings to see Mr Tumnus, only to discover that his home had been trashed, and he had been arrested by Maugrim the wolf, head of the White Witch’s secret police. They decide to try to find him, since they are unable to find the way to the wardrobe.

The Pevensie children then meet Mr and Mrs. Beaver, who take the kids to their home in a dam. The Beavers feed their guest and tell them of the horrible curse of the White Witch, who has kept Narnia in winter for a 100 years. They tell the Pevensies of the prophecy of Aslan, who will come and defeat the white witch. He will bring the Spring with him. The Pevensies then resolve to go meet Aslan at the Stone Table, where is supposed to appear. But Edmund flees the beavers’ home while this conversation takes place and returns to the White Witch. He lusts after the Turkish delight the witch keeps. He betrays his siblings by telling the Witch and Maugrim all that the Beavers had said of the return of Alan.

The Beavers then take the other children on journey to find Aslan. They spend a cold night huddled together in a cave. That morning they meet Father Christmas, who gives them all presents. Mr Beaver proclaims that the return of Father Christmas is a sign that the Witch’s spell is beginning to break and that Aslan’s power is on the rise. Meanwhile, the Witch takes her sleigh and her wolves to find Aslan and defeat him. Edmond is dragged behind her team, quite miserable. But the sleigh runs aground as the ice and snow begin to thaw. Springtime is coming to Aslan.

The other children then meet Aslan at the Stone Table. He greets the children and tells Peter of his destiny of king of Narnia. Aslan then learns that the Witch is planning to sacrifice Edmund, so he sends the Talking Beasts to rescue the boy from her clutches. But the White Witch comes to Aslan’s camp and claims that Edmund is rightfully hers. She claims his life on the basis of the ancient law that allows her control over all traitors. Aslan and the Witch confer and come to an agreement. Then Aslan leads his followers to the Fords of Beruna, to prepare for battle against the forces of the Witch.

That night, Aslan leaves camp for the Stone Table, where the White Witch has set up her camp. Lucy and Susan accompany him. They hide as Aslan presents himself to Witch for sacrifice. The witch orders that Aslan’s mane be shaved and that he be tied to the Stone Table. Aslan is then killed, and the Witch takes her minions to Beruna to finish off his forces. Lucy and Susan go weep for him at the Stone Table. As dawn breaks, mice begin to unravel his bonds and he is restored to life as the Sun rises. The Stone Table cracks. He and the girls then go frolic on a hilltop. After this idyll, Aslan goes and frees the animals that had been turned to stone by the Witch and kept in her courtyard.

Aslan then leads the freed beasts to battle against the forces of the White Witch. She is defeated and the Pevensie children are crown the Kings and Queens of Narnia. Years pass and the children- now grown- go hunting for the fable white stag and end back at the lamppost which marked the doorway between the two worlds. They then tumble back into the wardrobe and back into their present day. They are children once again. The Professor warns them not reenter the wardrobe, since they will return to Narnia soon enough.

AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOLAR SYMBOLS

The use and placement of pre-Christian symbols in The Lion, the With and the Wardrobe correspond with their role in the course of the narrative. And what is clear is that it is not Christ, but rather the reborn sun of the Winter Solstice that Aslan actually symbolizes. Most modern Christians are almost as weak on their Bible as they are on the traditions that influenced the construction of Christianity, so this fact is mostly lost.

  • The first signifier we see in Narnia is the lamppost in the forest, an obvious phallic/obelisk symbol. Ancient obelisks were often topped with lamp-bowls. The Victorian model he uses is merely a utilitarian version of that ancient device.
  • Mr. Tumnus is simply Lewis’ fanciful name for Pan. He is the first denizen of Narnia that Lucy meets, which points to his significance in the story. Pan is identified with nature and fertility, and his capture by the White Witch’s minions corresponds to the diminution of fertility in the winter months.
  • Mr. Tumnus tells Lucy “about long hunting parties after the milk-white stag who would give you your wishes if you caught him. “ (pg.17) The White Stag is a manifestation of the Celtic sun god, Lugh.
  • Tumnus reveals to Lucy that the Witch represents the cold winter months in this elemental struggle: “It’s she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas, think of that” (pg. 20) It is never Christmas there, because December 25th is the day when the recovery of daylight first becomes noticeable.
  • Mr. Beaver then reveals that Aslan is the strengthening Sun of the post-Solstice days as the Winter gives way to Spring on the Equinox. He tells the children that when Aslan bares his teeth “Winter meets its death. When he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again” (pg. 85) The Lion’s mane is an ancient symbol of the Sun’s rays.
  • Lucy is identified as a representation of the summer months when Lewis tells us "At the name of Aslan, Lucy got the feeling you get when you wake in the morning and realize it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer." (pg. 74)
  • The children shout out "Tell us about Aslan...once again that strange feeling - like the first sings of spring had come over them." (pg. 85)
  • Mr Beaver says when Father Christmas shows up, “This is a nasty knock for the witch. It looks as if her power is already crumbling.” (pg. 116) This is a clear reference to the ‘Nativity of the Sun god’ on December 25th. Indeed, this is when the power of Winter “begins to crumble.”
  • Similarly, Father Christmas himself says that his coming showed that “Aslan is on the move. The Witch’s magic is weakening.” (pg. 117) This is exactly the reason the Ancients celebrated the rebirth of the Sun on the day we now know as Christmas.
The gifts receive from Father Christmas correspond to their identities as the four seasons.

Father Christmas gives Susan a bow and a quiver of arrows. Arrows are an ancient symbol for the rays of the Sun, predating both Judaism and Christianity. In the ancient Egyptian hymn to Aten, the Sun’s arrows are praised:
“Thy rising [is] beautiful in the horizon of heaven, O Aten, ordainer of life. Thou dost shoot up in the horizon of the East, thou fillest every land with thy beneficence. Thou art beautiful and great and sparkling, and exalted above every land.. Thy arrows (i.e., rays) envelop (i.e., penetrate) everywhere all the lands which thou hast made."
This identifies Susan as the Spring, the season where the Sun comes into its fullest power, from the Equinox to its peak on the Solstice.

Father Christmas gives Lucy a bottle with a tonic made from the fireflowers “that grow in the mountains of the Sun.” He tells Lucy that the elixir will restore anyone who is hurt to health. (pg. 118-9) Again, this reinforces Lucy's role symbolizing the hot summer months, which are signified by the fireflowers.

  • Edmond- who symbolizes the dying sun of the days following Autumnal Equinox- then becomes a witness to the Sun’s gathering strength while the Vernal Equinox approaches. Lewis writes that “the mist turned from white to gold” and that “(s)hafts of delicious sunlight struck down onto the forest floor.” Edmund sees the ground “covered in all directions with little yellow flowers” (pg. 131)
  • The Witch’s dwarf henchman reiterates Aslan’s identity as the Sun when he cries to her, “Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you! This is Aslan's doing.” (pg. 133)
  • Aslan’s power is such that the forest is seen “passing in a few hours from January to May.” It is explained that only the Witch knew that this is what would happen when Aslan returned to Narnia. (pg. 136)
  • Lewis’ description of Aslan’s camp is rife with inarguably Solar imagery, here expressed in color: “A wonderful pavilion it was - and especially now when the light of the setting sun fell upon it - with sides of what looked like yellow silk and cords of crimson and tent pegs of ivory; and high above it on a pole a banner which bore a red rampant lion..." (pg. 138)
  • As the Sun sets, Aslan later takes Peter to a hilltop to show the boy his future domain. Lewis describes the sight of the castle as “shining because it was a castle and and of course the sunlight was reflected from all the windows which looked toward Peter and the sunset, but to Peter it looked like a great star resting on the seashore.” (pg. 142) This tableau was used in Disney’s The Lion King.
  • The juxtaposition of the “sunset” and the boy’s future seat of kingship show that Peter will be the guardian of the Sun while it works to regain its power in the winter months. Castles were designed as fortresses meant to protect the King or lord.
  • Aslan leaves his camp for his sacrifice at the Stone Table while “(t)he moonlight was bright” (pg. 163) This recalls the primacy of the moon in the winter skies of the Nordic lands that Lewis was so obsessed with.
  • Aslan’s face is linked to the sunrise when Lewis writes that it “ looked nobler as the light grew and they could see it better.” Remember that the name Horus comes from the Egyptian Heru, meaning “face.”
  • Aslan’s resurrection is presaged by a pack of mice who chew at his restraints to free him. Susan note that the mice “think it’ll do some good untying him.” (pg. 175) In Ancient Greece, mice were sacred to Apollo, who later became identified with Helios, god of the sun.
  • Aslan’s resurrection is linked unmistakably to the sunrise. “The rising of the sun had made everything look so different...the Stone table was broken into two pieces ...and there was no Aslan.” (pg. 177)
  • Christ remains in the cave for three days and nights in the Christian resurrection story, but Aslan dies at night and is reborn with the sunrise. This directly parallels the Sun’s ‘rebirth’ on the morning following the Winter Solstice, when the daylight hours begin to lengthen.
  • The reborn Aslan is then depicted as “shining in the sunrise.” Aslan is bigger and stronger than before and is depicted as triumphantly shaking his regrown mane, again a ancient symbol of the Sun’s rays (pg. 178)
  • Hilltops are important in this story, just as they were to ancient Sun Worshippers. After his resurrection, the first thing Aslan does is take Susan and Lucy for a hearty romp atop a hill. (pg. 179)
  • The girls then "climbed onto his warm, golden back" (pg. 180) and rode atop Aslan through the forest. This corresponds to the girl’s identity as symbols of the fertile spring and summer months, when the Sun is in its glory.
  • Aslan’s breath melts and thaws the ‘stone curse’ of the witch. This action compared to "lighted match" put to "a bit of newspaper.” (pg. 184) This “slow burn” corresponds to the thawing power of the Springtime sun.
  • In Chapter 17 (the final chapter) we see the grown up Pevensie siblings hunting the white stag. Secret Sun readers are familiar with the number 17 as being identified with Horus avenging the death of Osiris, and the number of the New Age through the Aquarius symbolism in the Tarot.
  • At the end of the story, the remnants of the Witch's army linger in the forest just as the fields thaw first and the forest stays frozen longer.
  • Chasing the white stag into a thicket they come across the iron lamppost, then return to Britain as children. (pg. 203) This is the ‘reversal of time’ motif, yet again.
The day Lewis chose to first show the printed proofs for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to the ‘Inklings’ - June 22 - is the first day following the Summer Solstice, and the day the Sun enters the astrological sign of Cancer. The significance of this day in relation to Biblical prophecy was discussed in an earlier chapter, and given the promiscuous use of Solar symbolism in his novel, my guess is that he understood the inherently Solar nature of those prophecies as well.

CORONA-TION

The Pevensie children’s coronation scene in the Disney/Walden adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe reveals what they are meant to represent and their thrones are all decorated with golden rising sun motifs. The order in which they are placed and each character’s role in the death and rebirth of Aslan correspond to the four stations of the Sun- the Autumnal Equinox, the Winter Solstice, The Vernal Equinox and the Summer Solstice.

  • The first in line is Edmond. He is the traitor to the Sun. It is through his subjection to the power of the White Witch leads to the death of Aslan, the Sun King. He represents Autumn, when the Sun's power weakens and dies. Aslan dies in Edmond’s ‘place’ (meaning the Autumnal Equinox in the Fall) and is then reborn.
  • Second in line is Peter. Just before he leaves Narnia, Aslan bestows his authority upon Peter, who represents the Lion in winter. The name ‘Peter’ comes the Greek petra, meaning ‘stone.’ The significance of his name is symbolized by the stone statues in the garden of the White Witch symbolize the frozen earth. Peter is the young apprentice king, and his uncertainty in wielding his sword represents the reborn Sun in winter as it slowly regains its power after its ‘death’ at the solstice.
  • Next is Susan. The name Susan comes from the Hebrew Shushan, meaning ‘lily.’ The lily had sexual connotations in the ancient world, and hence became associated with the ancient mother goddess Astarte (or Eostre), and the arts of sexual love and procreation. Today, lilies are used by Christians in Easter celebrations. Since she and Lucy found the reborn Aslan, she represents the Spring, when the Sun regains its power against the night.
• Last in line is Lucy. Lucy means ‘light’ and she represents the power of the Sun at its zenith. It is she who discovers Aslan, and it is her arrival in Aslan that breaks the spell of the White Witch. It is Edmond who follows her through the Wardrobe, just as the Autumn follows the Summer.
THE BATTLE OF WINTER AND SUMMER

The idea of the a dramatized battle between the summer Sun and the Winter is nothing new. Sir Frazer tells us that such dramas have an ancient and venerable history:
SOMETIMES in the popular customs of the peasantry the contrast between the dormant powers of vegetation in winter and their awakening vitality in spring takes the form of a dramatic contest between actors who play the parts respectively of Winter and Summer.
In Morals and Dogma, Albert Pike also explored the origin of the Solstice celebrations in ancient times:
(Prehistoric humans) knew nothing of the immutable laws of nature; and whenever the Sun commenced to tend Southward, they feared lest he might continue to do so, and by degrees disappear forever, leaving the earth to be ruled forever by darkness, storm, and cold. Hence they rejoiced when he commenced to re-ascend after the Winter Solstice, struggling against the malign influences of Aquarius and Pisces, and amicably received by the Lamb. And when at the Vernal Equinox he entered Taurus, they still more rejoiced at the assurance that the days would again be longer than the nights, that the season of seed-time had come, and the Summer and harvest would follow. And they lamented when, after the Autumnal Equinox, the malign influence of the venomous Scorpion, and vindictive Archer, and the filthy and ill-omened He-Goat dragged him down toward the Winter Solstice. Arriving there, they said he had been slain, and had gone to the realm of darkness. Remaining there three days, he rose again, and again ascended Northward in the heavens, to redeem the earth from the gloom and darkness of Winter, which soon became emblematical of sin, and evil, and suffering; as the Spring, Summer, and Autumn became emblems of happiness and immortality.
In this regard, Lewis’ use of the Lion as the protagonist in this Solar ritual drama is also significant. The association of the Lion with the Sun goes back to at least the ancient Sumerians, in the third millennium before Christ. The constellation of Leo also has been invested with Solar significance:
Leo has always been associated with the Sun. Pliny wrote that Egyptians worshiped the stars of Leo because they knew that the Sun appeared to enter them during the time when the Nile flooded to bring fresh fertile soil onto the land. Because of this, it was thought that the Sun rose in Leo at the time of creation. Thus, Leo was the emblem of the fire and heat that nourished the land, intimately associated with all the blessings that rained down from the greatest of the gods that filled the world with light each day.
It’s important to remind ourselves that that lion was also a pivotal symbol in the Solar religion of Mithraism as well, as is December 25th and the militaristic symbolism we see in the Narnia books.

Christians often note that Christ is named as the "Lion of Judah" in the book of Revelation, but in I Peter 5:8, the Bible tells us that the devil is also a lion: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”

Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly coincidental that Disney's Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe premiered 666 months after Lewis first presented the galleys of the book to the Inklings at Oxford. But again, 666 represented the Sun in many ancient traditions, and modern Biblical scholarship has proven that it is actually 616 which was "the number of the Beast."
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Tracy Twyman Speaks on Creation Myths, Gnostic and Otherwise...

Tracy Twyman is one of the top esoteric scholars in the world. The former editor of Dagobert's Revenge, Tracy more recently has published important works on the occult in our present times. Her two latest books are Solomon's Treasure: The Magic and Mystery of America's Money and Mind Controlled Sex Slaves and the CIA, a harrowing collection of essays on the hideous legacy of Operation Paperclip (which brought Nazi spies to the US) and MK-Ultra, the CIA mind control program run by Sidney Gottlieb, the man that Psi pioneer Russell Targ called "America's Josef Mengele."

Readers of The Secret Sun know that I view the historical claims of ancient scripture and mythology primarily from an AAT/Interventionist perspective. But I also want to present alternative views from scholars and researchers whom I respect and have been influenced by and Tracy tops that list. The topic at hand is Gnostic creation myths and "aliens." Like a lot of Secret Sun readers, Tracy approaches this material from a more mystical, occultist viewpoint than my more pragmatic, nuts-and-bolts take (which I admit is a bit out of favor these days), but also offers some fascinating insights from years of serious research. So let's get into it....
CK- Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman believes that the Gnostics were not converted Pagans but disillusioned Apocalyptic Jews. They began to see the promise of Jehovah's saving his people from their oppressors as being broken after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD. They called Yahweh "Yaldaboath" and created a new host of fallen demiurges like the blind idiot god Samael.
Yahweh in the Book of Exodus could be interpreted as an alien being in a classic cigar-shaped flying craft. And his behavior in the early books in the Bible (commanding his followers to rape and murder children, for example) is nothing at all like the more spiritually-evolved figure in the prophetic books, particularly after the Babylonian captivity.

Tracy: Well, I wouldn't want to say that the Bible is telling UFO stories. That would be backwards, wouldn't it? Because the Bible is old and UFO stories are fairly new. I am more likely to believe that the modern myth of UFOs and grey aliens is a recent manifestation of an ancient religious archetype, rather than to say that the religious archetype is just a garbled memory of aliens.

In other words, the flying saucers in the alien stories are modern man's way of expressing a concept and an experience that is as ancient as civilization. Just like you see modern superheroes as manifestations of ancient god-forms. You would not say that this is evidence that ancient man really worshipped comic book superheroes.

"Alien" just means something outside of our normal experience. I recognize that many people have encounters with unexplained phenomena, including things that they describe as aliens in flying saucers from other planets. Other people describe encounters with angels, demons and ghosts. It is impossible to make a judgment about the validity of most of these stories, how much of the experience was purely internal, or how much of it happened in physical reality. All we can be sure of is that the same sorts of stories have always been told, and indeed this is the subject of most of the world's oldest stories.

That said, I agree with you to a certain point. Clearly, the Bible describes beings (Watchers, Angels, etc) that are capable of taking physical form and mating with humans. The offspring are described as being quite different from the rest of humanity. Specifically they are described as being "giants."

This meshes with myths from other cultures as well. They seem to have otherworldly qualities too: like blinding white skin, piercing red eyes, and enigmatic, hypnotic magnetism. In some cases they do take people for trips to the various "heavens."
This might seem similar to alien abductions scenarios. And of course, the megalithic wonders of the ancient world could have been built by aliens using technology instead of being built by giants or gods, as our ancestors claimed they were.

Then you have Kabbalistic stories and Gnostic creation myths about God and the Devil mating with humans (God mates with Lilith, God rapes Eve, Samael mates with Eve, Lilith mates with Adam, etc.). So then the obvious question arises: are God and the Devil aliens too?

Fact is, I just don't know if we are talking about aliens from another planet. My gut instinct is that this is an oversimplification. But then again there may be some truth to it. Like I think I said in my previous answer to one of your questions last year, if the aliens had to cross the universe to get here, they'd probably have to travel inter-dimensionally, and that takes the concept of an alien to a whole other level I think. Then they are more akin to our current conception of gods.

And maybe they did come down from "the heavens" and give us a head start on civilization thousands of years ago. Maybe even did some interbreeding and genetic engineering. But who taught them how to do that? Who gave them a head-start on civilization? Does that negate the concept of God as a spiritual being or as the creator of the universe? I don't think so. I just think that gods and demons (and perhaps aliens) are way more complicated than any theory that anyone has ever come up with.

If I drew a circle on the ground and evoked Ialdaboath into visible manifestation inside of the circle would you say that he was an "extraterrestrial mortal being" or a "spiritual entity"? Do you deny that it is possible to do this? Because there is no doubt in my mind that all religious scripture is describing interaction with higher beings on a spiritual level. That's part of the definition of religion. And I have no doubt that religion works: all religion works, in my opinion. But sometimes people interact with their gods on a physical level as well. Yet if we are dealing with transcendent beings, then they can probably manifest on any level they want to. Mormons certainly see no distinction between the heavens in outer space and spiritual Heaven.

I suppose aliens from another planet, manipulating our world inter- dimensionally, could be doing all of this. Allen Greenfield wrote about this possibility in Secret Cipher of the UFOnauts. It seems there are quite a few people in modern times that have channeled beings which they believe to be aliens from another planet. I guess this all ties in with the so-called "Typhonian current" which appears to be a space alien interpretation of Aleister Crowley's writings, assuming that he was channeling an alien when he wrote The Book of the Law.

I think it was the Thule Society in Germany that used to have seances where they channeled Sumerian gods. They believed that these gods came from outer space, but at the same time they believed that they could commune with them spiritually. And the gods gave them instructions for how to build flying saucers. These diagrams ended up in the hands of Nazi scientists who went about trying to create them. Then after WWII all of the sudden everyone was talking about UFOs and aliens.

My take on UFOs, after having had all these years to think about it, is this: Most sightings of UFOs (those that haven't been thoroughly debunked as something else) are probably sightings of experimental military aircraft. I think that during the 50s and 60s, the US intelligence community purposely floated stories of human interaction with aliens, particularly stories that indicated the US government had a secret alliance with aliens. The Soviet Union also floated similar stories. This was just psychological warfare. They were trying to scare each other and waste each other's intelligence resources with red herrings.

It was part of what led to the space race. Both the US and the Soviets were afraid that the other side was going to get the upper hand in space, and be able to launch missiles from there. So they needed to get up there right away and make sure that didn't happen. They also needed to make sure that there weren't any aliens up there.

It seems to me that the UFO hype has really died down in the last 20 years, in direct relation to the relaxing of hostilities with Russia, along with the explosion of satellite technology. There are still unexplained sightings of things (which could still be experimental aircraft and other fringe technology experiments). But there are fewer abduction stories and supposed "government informants" coming out to tell all. Because the government is no longer hiring people to do this for them.

But could our gods be aliens? Sure, I suppose. I think we are dealing with a complete unknown here. If you are praying to something, or channeling it, it's like talking to a stranger through a screen. You have no idea what's on the other side. And if it appears to you physically, and seems to interact with you physically, you're still just seeing and feeling what it wants you to see and feel. So maybe it wants you to think of it at various times as a god or an alien, depending on what suits you, or what suits its purposes.

We shouldn't assume that they would ever be benevolent enough to tell us the truth or to show us their true form. But for some reason, they seem to want to involve us in their intramural disputes.

They want us to take sides: to worship them, to hate their enemies, and to hate the followers of their enemies as well. And thus we end up hating each other.

CK- Do we have evidence in the Gnostic texts of any of the heavenly host as being possible extraterrestrial mortal beings as opposed to being spiritual entities? There are plenty of examples you can cite in the Old Testament, but are there any such parallels in the Gnostic literature?

And further; Could someone infer that Yaldaboath was a renegade alien who rebelled against a larger alien hierarchy, which is why he and his followers fled to the desert for several decades?
The Gnostic interpretation of creation rightly interprets the story of Genesis as a fight amongst the gods over who was "first." And the Gnostics took sides with a different character in that drama than the Jews did. They saw the creator god as having himself been created by someone else, and said that he was insane for believing otherwise, or was "rebelling" against the true hierarchy by proclaiming himself the one true god.

But I think they got this information through channeling, which is how I think the Torah began as well. So I don't look at Genesis and the Gnostic creation stories as history, really, any more than I would the Delphic Oracles. It's myth and prophecy, and while I'm sure it must contain some residual memory of things that happened to ancient man in the distant past, it would be impossible to determine the "truth" about any of it. Certainly we would never be able to determine the truth about which god came "first" or who is the rightful heir to whatever. In the case of Genesis, it seems like we are discussing events outside of linear time anyway.

But to get back to your specific question: Yes, it seems to me that Yahweh was one of several gods, all together in a family dynasty, who at one point overthrew the existing hierarchy to proclaim himself the one true god, just as Zeus overthrew the Titans in the Greek myth.

This is spelled out pretty explicitly in the Gnostic creation stories, but there are many traces of it in Genesis as well. Perhaps this is why, in the Bible, God always favors the younger sons of his chosen people instead of the eldest, rightful heirs to the family blessing (Seth over Cain, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, etc.) He will even allow them to resort to subterfuge to get it. It's a family tradition. And yes, I think the patriarchs were "children of God", quite literally. You can choose to see Yahweh as an alien if you wish.

For more on Tracy and her work, visit the Quintessential Publications website.