The Year of Healing

With all the rumors of government conspiracy and god only knows what else, I thought it might be a good idea to focus on who really calls the shots in Washington DC and just about everywhere else:

The Almighty

The Man: He's not much, just looking at him, really just a paper tiger, but everything from birth to death to taxes is valued in dollars - the global fiat currency. He's the machinery behind every transaction from a street corner meth deal to the Wall St. loan shark bankers. And it all goes round and around thanks to a little scrap of paper encoded with the most magically powerful of symbols.

Much sync treasure has been mined from the symbols printed on the dollar, perhaps the most successful magical working - ever. A lot of magic is the art of imparting archetypal power to a physical object, and with the pyramid, all seeing eye, phoenix and all the rest, we can see quite a few of those archetypes inked onto the dollar bill.

The reason the dollar is green is that according to meta-accountants, every dollar bill loaned out is fertile seed, like a green bud of potential profit cast out to the winds. The "good seed" will return to the banker, with interest attached. How Pharaoh Osiris.

The $ sign is an S over a vertical bar: the serpent and staff of Asclepius, the divine physician. Also the brazen serpent of Moses.

Asclepius is the Greek god of health and healing. He is the son of Apollo, the Greek sun-god. His mother died when he was still in her womb and he cried out when her body was placed on the funeral pyre. Apollo cut the womb and pulled the unborn child out and declared that this son of his, Asclepius, would be responsible for the human fight against disease and death.

There is a more than a little irony between this ancient symbol of healing and the unfortunate truth that the dollar is the single most likely culprit behind global warming, deforestation, species extinction and war. Every detective always says, "follow the money".



One myth says Zeus killed Asclepius with a thunderbolt because he raised Hippolytus from the dead and accepted gold for it. What a curious thing, this power of healing connected to the power of money. These days, every physician and pharmaceutical company accepts gold, and plenty of it, for their healing powers. I wonder, is Asclepius still paying for his sin?

Anyway, it's got me to wondering. If Asclepius (hissing sounds, anyone?), the snake on a staff, is the god of healing (and more than that, the god of creative potential energy), and yet his symbol is associated magically with the Gaia destroying power of the American dollar, then something is seriously out of whack. It's almost as if Asclepius is held in some kind of bondage, that makes him work his powers of healing for the dollar bill, and the dollar bill, only.

I found inspiration in the American eagle - really a phoenix. I was driving by a strip mall last weekend and saw "Phoenix Games", with the flaming bird on the window. Can I release Asclepius from his bondage by another magical act - a ritual burning? Can I purify his symbol, by renouncing my claim check?

Releasing Asclepius from bondage

Today, I discovered 2013 is the Chinese year of the snake. I know it sounds presumptuous, but I declare 2013 the year of Asclepius, the year of healing.

A Doubting Thomas

Sometimes I wonder... did Heath Ledger really die? I mean, it seems like his whole life was lived just so he could become a collective sin offering - a modern lamb. And rather sensitively... even beautifully... done, I might add. But if that’s so, then why not just fake the death too... he was an ACTOR for God’s sake. How hard could it be?

Sometimes I wonder if Heath, Elvis, John and Michael aren’t all living it up somewhere on some secret Templar island.

Sometimes I wonder if Jesus really died. That’s the kind of statement that will get you banned from a Christian discussion forum quicker than anything. I mean, yes, “Jesus”, the symbol of my ego’s death and salvation died. He HAD to die. That’s just the way consciousness works. Ego has to die to its sense of self before the true Self can be found. But the body of Jesus - the man? I’d be OK with it if he was secretly taken down from the cross before he actually died and then went off to mary Mary (or John?) or father children or start a chain of successful Kosher delis or whatever. It doesn’t really matter what he did afterwards, he played the part in the passion play and he did a great job, probably won an Oscar.

It is crazy ironic that the original Christians were killed because they wouldn’t worship the Roman Emperor as the literal manifestation of God, and later it was the Christians doing the killing because others wouldn’t worship THEIR literal manifestation of God.

I wonder if someday there will be a Church of Heath Ledger and everyone will study the scriptures (ancient DVDs of his films) to find the hidden spiritual meaning and some uptight clergy will suppress certain films (like Brokeback Mountain) and call them heretical? And they’ll pray to Heath and have great Revivals and even make rulers and kings from his descendants? Crazier things have happened.

This is why I speak to them in parables:
Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
'You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.

--Matthew 13:13-14

Bird Flu Three

My little flight of fancy has taken me down quite the rabbit hole - from birdlike “gods” to the elite, from ancient ritual sacrifice to Heath Ledger. Now I’m going to try to dig my way out, beginning with the origin and reason for the most ancient human religious rite - the sin offering.

“Sin” is simply egoic separation from the Id. When human consciousness became self-aware it developed the ego, or “self” consciousness. This awakening is also called the Fall, and while a very cool thing, it had the side-effect of virtually unplugging our individual selves from the Id (Cosmic Consciousness, God). This is when left brain, right brain duality appeared, the split between the egoic, analytical side and the Id-like side of emotion, dreams and intuition. We became “two-headed”, and this may have been the genesis of the double-headed eagle as well as the twin deity motif.

As we lost our conscious connection to the Id (cast out of the garden), it began to manifest in our subconscious dreams and visions, and eventually we required shamans/priests or “dream readers” to decipher the symbols. We elected “Daniels” to tell us the meaning of our dreams, because the right brain “has no British”. Soon the dreaming mind was filled with all manner of faeries, goblins, dragons, demons, hawks and eventually... aliens.

The lack of a conscious connection to the “hive mind” created a sense of duality, morality and right/wrong behavior, which lead to a sense of species-wide guilt - the shame of Adam and Eve. As we all know (and maybe especially gay men know this) living with an all-pervading sense of guilt is debilitating and leads to all manner of craziness. See Catholic Church for Exhibit A.

So this concept of a sin offering was created in order to let the ego “off the hook”. The sin offering symbolically places our sins (actions committed while separated from Id consciousness) on an innocent offering (often a lamb). This lamb becomes your ego, which is ritually slaughtered. This “ego-death” creates an emotional catharsis that, at least for a time, allows the conscious ego to “let-go” of its sense of personal identity enough to connect to the Id, bringing a sense of sin (twin headache) relief - you are “born again”.

The offering is then ritually eaten. This is the "Self" eating the "self" - the ecstatic devouring. You are feeding the bird, but... you ARE the bird. You are the dove being eaten, and the hawk eating the dove, the Phoenix, the Ouroborus. What is really going on is an exchange of energy - a conversion of ego guilt into Id power of forgiveness, which just might be the whole reason your entire ego-centered hide came into being. You are a "transformer".

This is a very powerful ritual, and when done on entheogens is no doubt a life-changing experience. Hell, it changed MY life. That is probably what the “mystery” religions were all about, and that’s why Osiris, Dionysus, Mithras and Jesus all tell a very similar story.

As does the life of Heath Ledger.

As others have noted, the movie for which Heath won his Oscar had Batman playing a modern Templar - who sacrificed his reputation for the sake of Harvey Dent - “Two Face”. Batman is an Osiris/Jesus resonator - the Lord of the Underworld. Two Face is “two headed” - perhaps a stand-in for the dualistic nature of our ego/Id experience. Like Spock, Two Face is “us”.

Was The Dark Knight a veiled explanation of Masonic/Templar methodology, and perhaps even an admission and defense? Did the Templars go “underground” in order to hide a truth of which we aren’t yet ready?

“The truth?” You can’t handle the truth!”

Or, are they hiding a truth that could unlock the doors and set the prisoners free?

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." --John 8:31-32

Bird Flu Two

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Spirit of the Lord Upon Joker

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 8:17

The 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.

----------------------------

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.

Why So Serious?

The Dark Knight was reviewed recently by Christopher L Knowles at The Secret Sun. I quote him extensively below. In his review, Chris mentions a few previous incarnations of Gotham's Joker and their motivations.

As with the villains in the first Sin City series, Miller's mincing, effeminate Joker is evil precisely because of his sexuality (Miller's work could keep an entire GLAAD office busy if anyone outside of geekdom bothered to read it). --CLK

Wow. Gay is Evil - the Unoriginal Sin. How many times have I heard that? Let's see... minister, army, comic books and even Walt Disney! From Snow White to Sleeping Beauty to Aladdin to The Lion King to Enchanted, the wicked influence in Disney films is always a Queen. Was Walt a "self-hating homo"?

Even Cesar Romero's Joker in the Batman TV series has a queer vibe going, and his wikipedia entry is fascinating:

While Romero's homosexuality was an "open secret" in Hollywood, the movie-going public was unaware of his sexual proclivities and there was never any embarrassing scandal surrounding his male liaisons, which shows the care and finesse with which he conducted his private life for more than 60 years.

Romero believed in 'liberation theology,' a political system combining Marxism with Catholicism, which purports that, despite the fact that Karl Marx called religion 'the opiate of the masses,' religion and communism are still compatible. Romero was very Christian yet still believed in a utopian society whose belief is that Christ's kingdom would be very similar to Marx's envisionment of communism, and held to this belief until his death."

Cesar and I are on the same page with that - we both drink Red Star beer.

Heath Ledger is something of a gay Saint, and in synchromystic (the dreaming mind) terms I'm free to associate all of Heath's characters with gay archetypes, even when he plays them totally straight.

The Joker is so emotionally involved with Batman that he prevents his "outing" on TV by blowing up a hospital. The fact that Ennis Del Mar is the Joker and that Maggie Gyllenhaal (sister of Ledger's Brokeback Mountain co-star) plays one of the Joker's victims might be telling us something about the character not made explicit in the script. --CLK

Del Mar = Of the Sea = Born of MARY

As to metatext, the Templar symbology we recently looked at weaves in and out of the plotline. It's interesting to note that the Joker blows up a hospital to preserve Batman's secret identity. The Knights Hospitaller were the Templars' primary rivals. --CLK

H = 11 = Hospital = Hospitaller

Hospitality (giving shelter to a stranger) is close to the ultimate virtue of the Old Testament. Inhospitality was the sin for which Sodom was destroyed (besides the sex with angels thing). I've had some extremely personal H Hospital synchs recently, the most recent was a visit to the VIRGINIA MASON Hospital emergency room.

There were lots of little Easter eggs for the Synchromystic crowd (all 38 or so of us). The bus the Joker uses to make his first getaway is marked "District 22". This calls to mind the Fool trump of the Tarot (the predecessor of the Joker card in modern playing decks) which is numbered as 22 in esoteric circles. --CLK

Gavin of Altantean Times, who has studied the archetypes represented by Heath Ledger in depth, associates The Fool trump with Jesus.

The Fool is sometimes known as the most worthless card, yet also as the most valuable one. ...the first and the last, the alpha and the omega... the Negative space above the Tree of Life, the source of all things... the Qabalistic Zero, the Equation of the Universe, the initial and final balance of the opposites, both the father and the mother - male and female. --June Kaminski

The Rider-Waite-Smith version of The Fool trump

The Fool = 22 = 11:11 = HH

I have plenty of personal 22 syncs, the most important being that I was 22 years old when I came out. I think coming out is a pretty good example of playing the Fool - publicly declaring I'd rather suck cock that receive all the blessings of the hetero status quo. What an ultramaroon! A recent one is that I found out I live in Kirkland's Fire District 22!

Which brings me to the recent ritual murder/sacrifice of Canadian Tim McClean, alter ego = JoKAwiLd. Tim was 22. Todd has a great post at Through the Looking Glass about this bizarre death and it's Batman/Joker syncs. Looking at The Fool tarot, we can find a few more:

The Fool is accompanied by a small dog, synching up with SIRIUS, the dog star. Tim was attacked on a GreyHOUND bus, and we see the Joker asking, Why so SIRIUS?

The Fool is shown carrying a rucksack, showing his status as a traveler - a "sojourner" in this world, implying that his true home is NOT of this world. The Fool is a friend of hobos, tramps, hitchhikers, backpackers and Gypsies the world over, and the greyhound bus syncs up here as well - definitely traveling coach, and hospitality is always welcome.

The Fool's planet is Uranus, which syncs him up with the Loyalists in the War of Heaven.

Uranus (the Greek Ouranos) was the first child of Gaia (Mother Earth). As the original sky god, Ouranos became the first heavenly father when he poured water in the form of rain onto his mother earth below so that she would flourish with plant life. Ouranos also impregnated his mother to produce the first race of gods that ruled over mankind. Only when Ouranos became a tyrant did his mother plot with their son Cronos (Saturn) to wrest power from his father Ouranos by castrating him with a sickle.

I figure it takes a sirius joker to to align his planet with your anus. Ben Dover!

The murder occurred in Winnipeg, Canada, and thanks to Jake Kotze's recent post Galactic Center Temple at the Blog we know that Winnipeg is at the geographic center of North America (AKA Atlantis) which represents the Axis Mundi and Galactic Center.

The Fool is the ultimate "Free Spirit" - this card represents the self-actualized person, free from societal constraints, someone who is able to let go of outmoded beliefs and ideals with the courage to pursue their own special path. --June Kaminski

But if the Joker is meant to be a neo-Assassin, then Batman is by implication a new Templar. So is his sacrifice- to be disgraced to protect Two-Face's reputation- meant as an analogy to the Templars' own disgrace in the eyes of the public? Interesting that both Batman and Two-Face represent duality but the Joker represents singularity. He has no other identity other than as an agent of death and chaos. --CLK

Apparently, The Fool is a FIEND in the New Templar Order, and it makes me wonder... why? Was Lucifer the victim of some cosmic practical joke, and was that the catalyst for the War of Heaven? They say pride goeth before a FALL, and Lucifer's pride was mythic. Is Lucifer - the most glorious of God's creation - incapable of laughing at himself? Maybe he just doesn't know how to take a joke.

Why so serious?