The Lord of the Dance

The big story out of the Curiosity Mars landing was the NASA Mohawk guy, Bobak Ferdowsi. He cut his hair into a Mohawk for the landing, much like this little guy from Mars, and of course, the God Mars always wears a Mohawkish, helmet of war. It is curious that Horus is the Egyptian, hawk-headed God, and with the red and white striped background he is photographed against, it's hard not to recall the "Stairway to Sirius" aspect of all of this.

The Greek Gods are resonating strongly because of the London Olympics, and it's curious that in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alan Moore calls London "New Troy". We note that what finally brought down Troy was the Trojan Horse - this may explain the London obsession with security cameras.

Last week, I pinged on the strange massacre of "Lion Kings" at the Sikh temple, and it's only getting stranger, because I realized that Captain Nemo was a Sikh. It is interesting that Bobak is from Oakland, and the Sikh temple is in Oak Creek. A helmet or "hat" theme develops.

The Verne character is, as Moore shows here, an Indian prince, a Sikh, driven to misanthropy by British injustice; he is not someone who looks like James Mason.

William Stoddard, among others, took issue with the idea that Nemo could be both Hindu and Sikh. However, Moore himself has stated flatly that Nemo is a Sikh, so the conclusion to be drawn, I think, is that Nemo is ethnically a Sikh and a Hindu by faith.

Santosh Menon adds the following: Actually it is kind of possible for Nemo to be a hindu and a sikh. Hindu families in punjab sometimes initiated the eldest son into the sikh faith; sihkism being a MARTIAL religion in some sense and sikhs being the defenders of the faith and the land - more or less. ~Notes on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #1

True Confession time now. I made a sigil a week before the Synch cabin II in ID 'ho. I thought of it as a cross between the all seeing eye of consciousness and the all powering trident of the subconscious. Later, I realized it might be a primitive squid drawing, and later still, some wizards at sync cabin suggested it was a Martian tripod. Curiously, we were camping adjacent to "Tripod Mountain".

I was inspired by LOEG and their version of Nemo, who is "no man", or "nobody", which also happens to be the name chosen by Odysseus in his battle with Polyphemus. But the trident is much deeper than that - going all the way back to the all powerful weapon of Shiva, the Destroyer. We note that the symbol of the Sikh, if turned upside down, is a tripod with not one, but three eyes. Also, it reminded me of the logo for JC of Mars.

The steering wheel of the Nautilus, seen behind Nemo and Murray, is the god Siva, in his dancing form. Siva is the Hindu god of destruction and of the dance, and one of the three most important of the Hindu religion. It makes a certain amount of sense that Nemo, who is both warrior and philosopher/scholar, would worship Siva, who embodies those (and other) characteristics. Plus, as Moore pointed out in an interview, making the steering wheel of the Nautilus into a statue of the dancing Siva is good design sense; this is another deviation from the description of the Nautilus in the Verne novels, but one within the bounds of artistic license.

The Lord of the Dance

In writing the lyrics to "Lord Of The Dance" in 1963, Sydney CARTER was inspired partly by Jesus, but also partly by a statue of Shiva as Nataraja, and was partly intending simply to give tribute to Shaker music. He later stated, "I did not think the churches would like it at all. I thought many people would find it pretty far flown, probably heretical and anyway dubiously Christian. But in fact people did sing it and, unknown to me, it touched a chord ... Anyway, it's the sort of Christianity I believe in."

Me too, Syd. Me too. It's curious that the woman who climbed to the top of Sync Mountain was a dancer shod in golden sandals, named Maya. We also note that in Disney's epic alien invasion film "Chicken Little", the aliens had three eyes, and they came to earth in search of acorns, from which mighty oaks grow. They seem a tad angry.

As the Perseids meteor showers rain down upon us tonight, I wonder if they might carry the seed of a divine invasion - a Martial, or "Trojan Horse" entry, so to speak.