I was doing some research lately into the Jewish word Shekhinah, which wikipedia translates as "the dwelling or settling place of God, especially the Temple of Jerusalem". Before the temple, the Israelites would cart God around in a golden box - the Ark of the Covenant, which would lay waste to the enemies of the Chosen People.
We saw the terrible power of the Shekhinah during CNN's gleeful reporting of the "Shock and Awe" campaign against Baghdad at the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which I now believe had more to do with revenge for the Babylonian captivity than alleged WMD or oil. Sorry Neb, payback is a bitch.
Anyhoo, looking at the pic that accompanies the wikipedia Shekhinah entry: King David with the Spirit upon him I notice the severed head of Goliath in the foreground, and besides the fact that he's the spitting image of Saddam Hussein, I couldn't help but be reminded of another image featuring a decapitated head - Heath Ledger's Joker. Symbolically, the decapitated head represents ego-death. It is the victory of Id over Ego, the I Am over the mind's illusionary concepts of I Was and I Will. The temporary state of ego-death consciousness was accomplished by the ancients via the intake or "anointing" of entheogens such as the famous Amanita mushroom.
In the image of David on the left, it is easy to see: the gold crown represents the magic mushroom of Kosmic Konsciousness - the spirit of the Lord upon him. The result is the death of his own ego, represented by the giant Goliath, brought down by a tiny, pineal gland sized stone. David sings inspired psalms in celebration of this event, represented by the harp.
But what about the image on the right? What the hell does the Joker have to do with the heroic King David? I'm suspecting that the collective human subconscious is even darker than I thought, and like Dionysus, I need a guide through this strange Underworld. Tonight, I nominate Heath Ledger as my guide - my Prosymnus.
Before Heath Ledger became the Joker, he was a knight. Heath played Sir William Thatcher in A Knight's Tale. With his handsomeness and tousled blond lion's mane, I can't help but associate him with the King of Judah - the Lion King. "He will rock you" pretty much nails it.
David was a humble shepherd, a herder, the preferred profession of the mushroom God. Perhaps that is because the shepherds were always grazing on mushrooms, along with their flock? In Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger plays a cowboy, a herder, but a herder with a difference.
Like King David before him, Heath Ledger's character of Ennis del Mar had a homosexual love affair. David's affair was with Jonathan, the son of Saul and the royal heir of the Kingdom of Judah. It was an affair doomed from the beginning, with court intrigue and royal pressure for an heir all getting in the way, and Jonathan finally died in battle. However, it can be said that Jonathan was David's "first love". Like David and Jonathan, the love of Ennis and Jack Twist was doomed from the beginning by social pressures and internalized homophobia, and the parallels with the biblical story of David and Jonathan run through the script like a ghost, even to the violent death of Jonathan/Jack.
I deliberately bring your attention to Heath Ledger's role as a Knight and to ideas of Middle Ages heraldry, because the Anglo Saxon version of the heroic David archetype is King Arthur. King Arthur is also called the Once and Future King. From the mushroom inspired ravings of St. John the Revelator, we have this remarkable line:
The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to his destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because he once was, now is not, and yet will come. -- Rev 8:17The modern state of Israel carries the Star of David as their heraldic standard - so in a symbolic sense they are acting out the prophetic archetype of the Once and Future King.
I have previously noted the odd homoerotic tension between the Batman and the Joker. It's like a sick and twisted version of David and Jonathan, or Ennis and Jack. It is obvious that David and the Joker are the same image, but one is dark and one is light - the Joker represents the dark side of King David! Both images together represent duality, yin and yang, good and evil.
I'd like to thank Heath for being my guide through Hades, but unfortunately, like Prosymnus, he has died.
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When the wine god Dionysus went to Hades to rescue his mother Semele, Prosymnus guided him to the entrance by rowing him to the middle of the lake. The reward demanded by Prosymnus for this service was the right to make love to Dionysus. However, when Dionysus returned to earth by a different route, he found that Prosymnus had meanwhile died. Dionysus kept his promise by carving a piece of fig wood into the shape of a phallus and used it to ritually fulfill his promise to Prosymus, while seated on his tomb.
14 comments:
What a fascinating article Michael! I love it when one can learn ten new things from reading an article on a blog-I love how you tied (well not really tee-hee) Jack and Ennis and Jonathan and David together!
I was really struck by your thoughts on the depths (evil) of what is in the unconscious -maybe even more dangerous because it is repressed. I agree with this and also in regards to our material world -I think if the lid was ripped off the top of this world and many people's dark thoughts we would all be shocked at what was in there.-perhaps we wouldn't even be able to imagine it and have to look away in horror-kind of like the Medusa myth -
I am also enjoying how you keep putting together the role of entheogens and cosmic consciousness as what some of these ancient writings and works of art may have really been trying to tell us -that is fascinating in itself!!
I never heard of Prosymnus -which really isnt saying a lot -but that is a very interesting myth!!
It seems to me that the Greeks more than any other culture -that I have encountered anyway -seemed to appreciate male beauty and the idea that homosexuality could be beautiful. I miss Heath and wonder sometimes what really happened on the night of his death. thanks again for the excellent article and best as always to you and Varen!!
Devin, thanks for your thoughtful comments, always appreciated. I was struck by Autumn Forest's comments on your Gryphon post about the the native American concept of the Windigo and the concept of an evil person taking on other creature's personas to gain the attributes of the creature. I feel like that has happened to Christianity, and many Jews say the same thing about their religion, it's as if they have been hijacked by a malignant spirit. I should do a post about the concept of hijacking - since 911 happened by a dramatic hijacking event.
Cheers, Michael
Good stuff.
The names mean something here, too; 'Ennis' = Angus = Eneas = Aeneas, "who is praised." David is certainly that...
'Del Mar'- "of the sea," "from the sea," (from the subconscious)- has a long religious history. 'Jack Twist' is obvious on its face, but Jack is the familiar of John, homonymus to Jon = Jonathan. You're smack on the money here.
The fig, while not an entheogen itself, is a long-standing symbol of one (I've forgotten which one). The story we learned in school of Dionysus' rescue of Semele mysteriously left out the bit about Prosymnus' reward... :-)
The French Revelation, or The Burning Bush
http://open.salon.com/blog/scott_k/2009/08/07/bush_iraq_must_be_invaded_to_thwart_gog_and_magog
Bush tried to get French President Chirac to help with the invasion of Iraq "to thwart Gog and Magog."
"This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his peoples enemies before a New Age begins."
As any Catholic- faithful or lapsed- would know, Georgie was committing the sin of immanentizing the eschaton. Always a bad idea... :-D
John, thanks for the name game, that's great! Mar is the root of Mary, so Del Mar could also be interpreted as "born of Mary", and the gospels take considerable care to associate Jesus with David's lineage.
Thanks for the George quote. I wonder how he feels now, now that the burning bush of the shekhinha has left him? He's keeping pretty quiet.
Another interesting tidbit that struck me was the fact that Keaton, how played the dark night in the first go 'round also played a "joker", Beetlejuice.
CDH - Good point. The field of synchronistic film analysis almost couldn't have happened without Tim Burton. He seems to be everywhere.
I often wonder if the Joker wasn't some ritual punishment of Ennis Del Mar for his transgressions. There's so much fascism in Dark Knight, fascism of the esoteric variety. I really wonder who and what was really behind that film. There's a belief out there that gays 'run' Hollywood- but there's a lot of symbolic/ritual punishment of gay characters out there, beneath of the Alan Ball-type therapeutic depictions. All the more chilling when coupled with Ledger's real life death.
CK - The unbridled fascism depicted during the Bush era, Ironman, The Dark Knight, 24 Hours really did creep me out over time, and looking back now it seems like a bad dream, though if anything has actually changed for the better lately I can't detect it. However the mood has certainly changed.
It is terribly presumptuous of me to think this, but I do wonder if the sudden appearance of homosexuality in the collective consciousness since WWII isn't playing a deeper role here. I think I see a blog post forming...
I really enjoyed reading these comments and your responses Michael!! that is a fascinating theory about "punishment" for Heath because of his character in Brokeback -I can't wait to see if you do an article about these things-I will never forget what happened during the last time I was ever in school for anything -2004 - some students were talking and out of the blue (it was kind of in reference to the conversation which was about medical testing on animals -and the ethics of it) a guy that had been in the military -about 20 to 21 years old i would say said something like "say what you will about the Nazis-but we did get some priceless medical data from the testing they did on humans" -and you know what? these two stupid bitches -and one bastard haha-agreed with him!!
I thought what the fuck is going on ? now we are going to give Dr Mengele an award for his ever so priceless data he gained on testing concentration camp victims!
The comment -and the enthused reception by some in the class made me sick to my stomach almost -and really got me to thinking that whatever the future holds -that if for our own nation -if there is any hope at all!
I am glad to have missed the Dark Knight and others but it might have helped me to have seen some of them to know exactly what people are referring to -but I think i can figure it out all right
Autumnforest is indeed a very bright woman and I would enjoy a post about the hijacking of Christianity and other religiions from you also -Jeff Wells did a priceless bit about Pat Leahy's cameo appearance? in the dark knight where he apparently said "You thugs dont scare us" or something like that-Wells pointed out that all it took for Leahy to change his attitude on the Patriot act was about 200 billion spores of anthrax mailed to his office after 9/11 -how much more obvious could it have been that it wasn't arabs who did this? they were involved maybe sure-but why would al ciaduh send anthrax to a senator who was holding out on voting for passage of the patriot act? WTF do they care if we have it or not haha- Of course I am not judging Leahy too harshly -knowing what happened to Paul Wellstone later on and other things I might have changed my tune also-but I would hope i wouldve had the balls to say no -having balls can kill sometimes tho-unfortunately!! best to you and Var as always!!
May as well throw my two cents worth in here...
The Lion is symbolically represented as a symbol of nobility and power. Quite often, as in the case of Royal Coat of Arms, and the British Monarchy, the Lion is represented in multiple ways. As previously mentioned, this particular Coat of Arms are two mottos.
1. The motto of the English Monarchs = Dieu en mon droit = God and my right
2. The Order of the Garter = Honi soit qui mal y pense = Shamed be he who thinks ill of it
What these mottos are saying is that the British Monarchs have the God given right to rule over the population, and shame on anyone who thinks otherwise. The Lion Couchant used on various symbolic emblems originated in Egypt, and is the Great Sphinx, the Lion King. (The British Monarchy are sun/son god worshippers, and are indoctrinated in the rituals of the Secret Mysteries, otherwise known as the perpetuation of a massive lie to retain power and control).
The Great Sphinx, in turn, is now represented by the LIONS PEAKS, 2 mountain peaks halfway between Vancouver and Whistler, the site of the 2010 Olympics. This also links symbolically to LINCOLN, the LION-KING, and the relationship of the Lincoln Memorial in the National Mall which coincides with the area around San Francisco and the state of California. Notice the seated position of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial Temple, is precisely the same attitude as the Lion Couchant and the Great Sphinx. Always keep in mind, everything we experience in this 3D realm is simply hypnotic suggestion on a massive scale, but a hypnotic illusory experience nonetheless.
A) You gotta listen to Marzulli. He's big into the Jews getting their homeland back as being prophetic.
B) The jews got isreal during the six day war. What else happened in six days? God made the universe.
C) Synch as I read about Amanita mushrooms yesterday in relation to Santa Claus
D)The square blue panes of stained glass are VERY similar to what I saw on my one and only salvia trip. The world splintered into panes of glass very similar. Made me appreciate the matrix.
E)You didn't mention that Heath Ledger played Cassanova. In the movie he fakes his death and replaces himself with a younger version. Could Heath have faked his death? This is a pretty big leap, I know, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
Finally,
I see now, Isreal as the Once and Future King. Very good. This is a big synch with L.A. Marzulli who I mentioned before talks alot about the founding of isreal being prophetic.
After hearing Marzulli and now this, I find isreal taking over palestine to be a VERY important event.
If David / Arthur is Isreal, then what is the new soloman's temple. Probably not something as easy as a building. The NWO? The stargate? We need to open our thinking up about this. What does Solomon's temple represent?
We're still moving in the same direction.
I'll see you in Valhalla.
Thuth.
Thuth - thanks for the comments! I love the Salvia experience - I've heard this before, that Salvia presents the time line as a frozen block experience.
The crazy thing is that Israel is totally supported by the US and England, so that "once and future king" archetype is very much a part of us.
Good question - "what is the new Solomon's Temple?" I'd guess that it was perhaps destroyed on 911? Those twin columns. We're much deeper into mushroom Revelations than most people realize. ;-)
Cheers, Michael
I'm sure you also discovered in looking into the female aspect of GOD, the spirit and hand of GOD "Shekhinah", that her aramaic character is SHIN. (ש = looks like the WE3M PSI spinner 'W' and sounds like 'S/Sh')
She, She-khinah, is represented in the hand gesture of the "Vulcan" greeting created by "Mister Spock" in Star Trek.
Leonard Nimoy used the exact hand formation of the hebrew blessing from his youth in the synagogue to create the gesture used by Vulcans in Star Trek (the double VV)
Shekhinah, SHIN, is the 'Hand of God' in the Universe and the 'Holy Spirit' (Holy Fire and Holy Water).
~SE~
StrangeEye - thanks for the Vulcan/Jewish symbolism update! I vaguely remember that, now that you mention it. Var and I just finished transplanting a shrub - he said it was "fire bush" or some such. Love that.
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