The Sirens of Titan

A sync review of Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan on 222.

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my sci-fi prophets who’s influence on sync is the equal of P. K. Dick and Paul of Tarsus. The personal reason is because of a dream of Varen’s several years ago:

He was visited by a translucent jellyfish creature who first told him to “Be not afraid”, and then went on to disclose some things about his future, and closed with …”but for now, you are still in Dresden”.

“Sill in Dresden”. That line lead to finding Slaughterhouse Five, and after that I wondered if Var wasn’t contacted by a Tralfamadorian. I was reading "Sirens" during the anniversary of the Slaughter of Dresden on 2/19.

Since then I’ve read Cat’s Cradle and now The Sirens of Titan. If you haven’t read it then I highly recommend it, but you won’t understand much of this post unless you have, and it’s all spoilers from here on down, FYI.

The essential plot is a faked Martian invasion of Earth in order to create a new world religion based upon God the Utterly Indifferent. Opportunities for Vonnegut’s singular brand of humor/pathos abound.

The Pope of this new religion is Winston Niles Rumfoord who was a wealthy Newport aristocrat who was “infundibulated” and turned into a wave energy thought form spanning from Sol to Betelgeuse, who had perfect foreknowledge of events. He’s the one who engineered the Martian invasion. The plot is oddly similar to Alan Moore’s The Watchmen, with Dr. Manhattan as the man who can see his entire future and past in perfect detail. That book also featured a faked attack in order to bring about a global shift in human consciousness - or “new religion”.

On Mars, everyone is a mind controlled soldier with an antennae that causes pain whenever you think something not inline with the “message”. Heavily propagandized, in other words. “UNK”, the mind-wiped former earthling and current Martian soldier, gives himself a secret scroll of “what really happened”. In a way, Kurt Vonnegut is one of those scrolls: The KV Version.

I found out about mind control soon after 9/11, and how difficult it was to find people in meat space who would talk about 9/11 in a way that wasn’t spoon-fed from the media. We are all good soldiers. On Mars, there is a class of citizen who are not mind wiped and who do not have pain antennae installed and who control the other soldiers. They control things via a hidden control box in their pants pocket, and they are a secret class, few of the soldiers know who they are, or that they even exist, though they all take various low-level positions in the army.

The one we meet is named Boaz.

Boaz is one of two columns in the Masonic Temple of Solomon. Boaz is the column of the sun, severity and justice, which also resonates Mars. The other column is Yachin: the moon, mercy, and loving kindness. If Mars is Boaz, then Venus is Yachin. It is also true that the Freemasons are often accused of being a secret influence behind the scenes, much as described by Kurt Vonnegut above.

On Mars though, even the “Masons” don’t know who’s behind it all. They don’t know that Rumfoord is running the whole show. The only place from Sol to Betelgeuse on the entire spiral of the Infundibulated Man’s possible existences, where he is materialized permanently, is a moon of the planet Saturn: Titan. Saturn, Cronus, Chronos, the God of Time. Rumfoord is Satan. His great black dog is named Kazak, a palindrome. The palindrome reminds me of Janus: A Roman god who represented time, because he could see into the past with one face and into the future with the other.

Janus is often depicted looking both forwards and backwards in time. Also, dog = god, a clever Saturnian pun. Remember that pun, we’ll return to it later.

The Tralfamodorians control humanity as a sort of messaging system to others who can read the symbolic language. The meaning of Stonehenge is “Replacement part being rushed with all possible speed”. The Great Wall of China means “Be patient. We haven’t forgotten about you”. The Moscow Kremlin meant “You will be on your way before you know it.”

So in effect, all of human civilization, culture, religion and monuments large enough to be seen from space, are the result of Tralfamodorian meddling, up to and including even Saturn himself and his secret societies like the Masons. And all of this to get a spare part to a marooned Tralfamodorian on Titan. Apparently mythic messages travel considerably faster than the speed of light.

The conceit of the book is that while absolutely every character in the book is intricately manipulated and controlled, sometimes openly but often secretly, Rumfoord’s new religion is based upon the concept that God is completely indifferent to human concerns, and therefor everything that happens is a random accident. This understanding brings about a new “Golden Age”. "Nothing above us, only sky."

Ironically, I happened to watch Mr. Peabody and Sherman last night, which was about a dog wearing a red bow tie who had a time traveling device named The Way Back Machine, which was a red ball made of hexagon tiles. He’s a master of time. By the end of the film, in a scene eerily similar to the Je Suis Charlie” meme in Paris, everyone is chanting “I’m a dog too!”, or in Illuminati palindrome speak: I’m a god, too!” Kazak returns.

Sync back to Sirens of Titan, Rumfoord’s wavelength spanned from Sol to Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse is the red star on the left shoulder of Orion, the Hunter, which forms a prominent bow tie in the heavens.

As luck would have it, Beetlejuice star Michael Keaton is up for an Academy Award tonight, all dressed up like a blue bird/angel.

A Blue Bird of Titan

In Sirens of Titan, Chrono is the product of an arranged rape/marriage by Rumfoord, and if we take all this Satanic shit as far as it will go, that would make him the “Son" of Satan, or the Antichrist, Rosemary's Baby. Chronos joins the “blue birds of Titan”, and wears a costume made of blue feathers.

I just don’t know what to say… except Fuck You Tralfamodorians!