The Root of All Goodness

The 32nd Port Townsend Kinetic Sculpture Race went on last weekend. This year’s theme was Mythos: Gods and Goddesses, so of course it was syncy as hell. I have pics of Zeus, Aphrodite, Hades, Isis, The Unknown God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but for me the best kinetic sculpture was The Almighty Dollar.

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. ~1 Timothy 6:10

The curious thing about the dollar is that its symbol is a snake on a staff, which is also the symbol of Asclepius, the Greek God of medicine.

The myth of Asclepius tells us:

Zeus killed Asclepius with a thunderbolt because he raised Hippolytus from the dead and accepted gold for it. ~ wikipedia

This is fascinating, considering our own medical “industry” is all about the gold, and not so much about the healing, except as a way to get… more gold! That’s just the way it is in the land of the Almighty Dollar.

It is not clear why snakes are sacred to Asclepius and to healing:

In honor of Asclepius, a particular type of non-venomous snake was often used in healing rituals, and these snakes — the Aesculapian Snakes — slithered around freely on the floor in dormitories where the sick and injured slept.

However, in shamanic visions, a snake-like character is often described. I’ve seen them myself.

To many occult researchers, the serpent, and especially the intertwined snakes of the Hermetic staff, represent the double helix of our own DNA. If you subscribe to the idea of consciousness being far greater than mere human synapse firing, but something ingrained into the fabric of the universe itself, then it is not so far-fetched to suppose that our DNA has an encoded intelligence, a “library” of information that would make the Library of Alexandria pale in comparison. And this just might be the source of shamanic healing of which Asclepius and his staff are a symbol.

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Notes:

In the short story "The Two Temples" by Herman Melville, the narrator, hired by a lady as a personal physician, describes his job as "the post of private Æsculapius and knightly companion."

I wonder… if you ritually burn a dollar bill, can you release Asclepius from his curse?

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UPDATE: 10/15/14

I read an article in the library about a shortage of snake anti-venom, especially the coral snake, because it was not profitable for pharmaceutical companies to produce it. This syncs fairly hard on the myth of Moses and the brazen serpent.

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UPDATE: 10/16/14

Well, that was weird. Mom asked us to burn some old financial records on the beach, since they no longer needed to be kept. We lit a bonfire, and many printed $ snake signs went up in flames this afternoon. There were many medical bills and receipts in the fire, and old bank statements. The conversation around the fire turned to medical issues of friends and family that were on our minds. It became a sort of fire side lament.

So somehow, we acted out the ritual I had described just above, even though I never goaded, suggested or even hinted that any of this should, or even could, occur.

No Turning Back for Horus

I’ve been following this odd little local story that began on Aug. 15:

Overloaded ferry full of Seahawks fans has to turn back

To recap: The Seahawks resonate Horus, the hawk-headed son of Osiris. Seahawks “slaughtered” the Broncos at the Superbowl, 43-8. 43+8=51, a sacred number of Osiris, because Osiris was murdered by Set (according to legend) on March 17, or 3/17. 3x17=51.

Today, the official report on the ferry incident appeared in the Seattle Times:

Report: Bremerton-Seattle ferry was not overloaded, no need to turn back

A flaw in a handheld clicker led ferry dock workers in Bremerton to overcount the walk-on passengers, a state inquiry found.
A state inquiry found that a ferry carrying Seahawks fans to Seattle on Aug. 15 wasn’t truly overloaded the day it returned to Bremerton and 484 passengers had to walk off the vessel.
Rather, the real number of passengers on the 4:20 p.m. run of the Cathlamet was actually shy of the maximum allowable capacity of 1,200 people — the report’s best estimate is that the vessel carried 1,073 passengers.

Discard the zero to arrive at the magic numbers once again.

The Superman/Horus/Serpent King

The ferry’s name is the Cathlamet, meaning “stone”.

However, Set still refused to relent, and the other gods were getting tired from over eighty years of fighting and challenges. Horus and Set challenged each other to a boat race, where they each raced in a boat made of stone. ~ the conflict of Horus and Set

Set is called the god of the west, sunset, and also the god of desert storms. Horus is the rising sun, east, or son of the morning star.

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NOTES:

Seattle Times article by Paige Cornwell. Osiris is the god of corn.

The "Hawks" once again defeated the Denver Broncos in battle this week.

In myth, the ferry boat is the classic transport to and from the Underworld, Hades, or the Land of the Dead. The "stone" ferry was traveling from West to East. I wonder if Osiris is paddling upstream in time, to return from the dead.

It will be interesting to watch who, or what, comes back from the dead, as Halloween approaches.

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.

The Return of the Giant SquID

Heracles vs. the Hydra

Sea monsters were back in the news last week:

Whale dismasts yacht in South Africa

Octopus with cold resistant venom is discovered in antarctica

“Giant” jellyfish stings over 100 people in New Hampshire:

“A jellyfish the size of a TRASH CAN LID raised a posthumous ruckus yesterday, stinging up to 150 at a New Hampshire beach and sending five of those to the hospital. Beach officials had apparently tried to remove its carcass earlier, causing it to break up into pieces that floated through the water stinging swimmers. Officials responding to the scene found a pavilion and beach packed with children crying like they had been stung by a bee, says a firefighter.” --David Abram

Note the TRASH CAN reference, resonating our collective, posthumous Junk DNA. All these monsters broadcast on a chthonic frequency, the whale is Moby Dick and Monstro, while both the poisonous octopus and jellyfish resonate the Hydra:

The Lernaean Hydra was an ancient nameless serpent-like chthonic water beast (as its name evinces) that possessed seven heads — and for each head cut off it grew two more — and poisonous breath so virulent even her tracks were deadly.

The grand daddy of chthonic monsters is the giant squid or Kraken, and I was amazed when my mom tells me she’s reading 'The Highest Tide', a coming of age story about a 13 year old boy who discovers a giant squid washed up on a beach in Puget Sound! Hollywood uses the giant squid to great effect: J. J. Abrams envisioned a monstrous squid attacking New York in Cloverfield, and the avenging Romulan mining ship in Star Trek was decidedly squid like. The tripods in Steven Spielberg’s The War of the Worlds were basically three legged squid, including even the elongated head, two enormous eyes and the central, devouring orifice. The tripods are interesting also because they lied buried in the EARTH for perhaps millions of years... waiting. Buried in the subconscious?

In analytical psychology, the term chthonic was often used to describe the spirit of nature within, the unconscious EARTHLY impulses of the Self, one's material depths, but not necessarily with negative connotations. See anima and animus or shadow. In Man and His Symbols Carl G. Jung explains:

"Envy, lust, sensuality, deceit, and all known vices are the negative, 'dark' aspect of the unconscious, which can manifest itself in two ways. In the positive sense, it appears as a 'spirit of nature', creatively animating Man, things, and the world. It is the 'chthonic spirit' that has been mentioned so often in this chapter. In the negative sense, the unconscious (that same spirit) manifests itself as a spirit of evil, as a drive to destroy."

The Id resonating Iron Giant was also a giant weapon capable of massive destruction, but it acted only in self defense. Perhaps the Id is also acting in Self defense? The judo chop of the mind.

In the War of the Worlds, Tom Cruise plays Ray Ferrier - the “dragon slayer”. His wife was played by Australian Miranda Otto, who also played Éowyn, “Shield maiden of Rohan” in the LOTR trilogy. She was able to slay the dragon because she was “no man”. “No man” is the meaning of the latin “Nemo”, the captain of the Nautilus who also defeated the giant squID. In the Iron Giant, it was the captain of the Nautilus who targeted a nuke directly at the giant - the “giant Id”. Last week’s yacht destruction by the “right whale” carried the insignia of The Saint, who is Simon Templar. The Templars take their symbol, the red cross, from St. George, the dragon slayer. Coincidence? I think not!

Much as I admire the dragon slayers, I think it is time to stop cutting off heads, and come to some kind of terms - lower the shields. After all, we’re only cutting off our own right brain, and they say that two heads are better than one. The war on terror only creates more terror, our modern “St. George” proved that rather well. Instead of being No Men, maybe we can finally become Real Men: friends, and even protectors, of the Id.

NOTES:

There are some great synchs with The War of the Worlds - there were 3 movies released in the same year with the same title and subject. The number three resonates the trident, the time-traveling weapon of Shiva, AKA the destructive impulse of the Godhead.

Otto is a palindrome. A mirror of consciousness.

Miranda is a satellite of Uranus: Uranus is the sky god and first ruler.

Miranda is the name of a planet in the Firefly universe that was the home of the “Reavers”. The Reavers are animalistic, bloodthirsty killers, at least, according to myth.

A “Miranda Warning” is a warning that is required to be given by police in the United States to criminal suspects in police custody (or in a custodial situation) before they are interrogated to inform them about their constitutional rights.

Gondola Theory

Sugarloaf gondola - from James Bond 'Moonraker'.

The “Frozen Popsicle” Universe is resonating with me again. See Watching For Snakes and The Chronoliths for earlier musings. A block of space-time is said to be “frozen” because it does not change. The universe is essentially made up of these frozen space-time ice cubes of varying sizes - some nesting within others - a Crystalline Entity where everything is possible and yet everything is pre-ordained.

While our egos experience reality as a stream of nearly random, happenstance events, what is actually occurring is that our sense of perception is moving from one immutable block to another. Our progression through these space-time blocks resembles the path of a snake, a river or film strip. This nature of reality is often experienced during an LSD trip: the “strobe effect”.

The strobe light was popularized on the club scene during the 1960s when it was used to reproduce and enhance the effects of LSD trips. Ken Kesey used strobe lighting in coordination with the music of the Grateful Dead during his legendary Acid Tests. --wikipedia

My own Varen had a visionary experience when he was but a wee lad about the “shape of the universe”, which was a series, not of cubes, but of diamond-like (dare I say pyramidal?) blocks of space-time that interlock into a matrix of stunning complexity, beauty and infinity.

Taking the next obvious step, I wonder why MY egoic space-time experience ride is not quite as fun as say... Brad Pitt’s? (who’s big break came in “A River Runs Through It”). We seem to be spirits of egoic “being” trapped in our own little cell blocks. Maybe Hercule Poirot’s “little grey cells” are entirely too accurate a description. I’m calling this the “gondola theory” of egoic space-time experience: we inhabit our little gondolas, all strung together by a thread of ego consciousness. I’ve known some people who are on pretty nice gondola rides, but I also know more than a few who have taken the cancer ride, and worse. In fact, there are so many bad rides available in the theme park called Earth that it makes you really just want to get the fuck off the merry go round and go find a better theme park!

Mats Roger Jensen - Norwegian Speed Skater, via Neverland blog

Which is why I’m rather attracted to the concept of the “ice skater” - someone who, metaphorically speaking, is able to skate from one frozen block of space-time to another. Maybe that’s the reason why Santa drives a sleigh? His presents are frozen space-time blocks of pleasant experience for good little boys and girls. The rest of us get coal.

I’m reminded of the TV series “Sliders” who travel from one time block to another. The Winter Olympics are full of “sliding” sports, and it may be that the slalom skier winding through his “gates”, or the tobogganer flying down his “track” are perfect examples of ego running through a pre-destined series of space-time blocks.

Which is all fine and good, unless maybe you wanted to jump tracks? More to come.

Watching For Snakes

I’ve always been interested in time travel sci-fi and alternate realities. In most time travel fiction, the paradox of meeting yourself is solved by spontaneous destruction - or something similar. Yet in the latest Star Trek, Spock meets his elder self, and lives to tell. Sorry to go on so much about Star Trek, just be glad I haven’t yet seen Avatar!

I find this idea very intriguing. Is there an “older and wiser” version of my self in an alternate universe? Glad you asked! According to Charles Burke:

Physicists and mystics agree that all of time co-exists simultaneously. The way we experience time, with one moment following another moment after another moment, is (they say) an illusion. In reality, all moments of time are hanging around together, and our consciousness is threading its way through and among those moments of time. 

This concept is consistent with the “frozen time block” experience of Salvia Divinorum and Shamanic ritual that engender an “ego-death” experience. Ego-death is the destruction of the illusion created by our experience of individual (egoic) consciousness, which is threading its way through and among the frozen time blocks - like a snake.

They also say that there are an infinite number of variations of each possible moment. That's what they call "parallel universes" in the science fiction movies. As it turns out, those parallel universes are not actually science fiction after all. They're really there-the physicists say so. We just can't usually see them.

Hmmm. My egoic experience appears to be limited to one time block at a time. Sorta like this Apple Cover Flow™ feature on my iMac - here showing one file at a time in a seamless flow from one to the next, sorta like a movie? (hella snake, btw) Curiously, the apple is associated with the snake and the tree of knowledge. Is this “snake” my own ego, navigating (scheming) itself from one time-block to another, always on the look out for an upgrade? Funny how upgrades always cost you money.

This synchs very strongly with the series of events from the infamous Dreams of Future Past, where the middle dream featured a snake-like movie house usher. Perhaps this “movie house” represents the illusion of egoic perception? The downside is that ego consciousness always ends with death... every movie comes to an end. And maybe that’s what the story of Moses and his brazen serpent was all about:

And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. Numbers 21:9

In other words, anyone who saw through the illusion of ego, who “watched for snakes”, was saved.

As It Was In the Days of Noah Pt. 2

I made a trip to Blockbuster last week looking for Bond - Roger Moore Bond. As luck would have it, Moonraker was the only Roger Moore movie available - hardly my favorite. But I grabbed it anyway, Roger at his worst is still better than Pierce. Funny thing is, it became obvious that Moonraker followed exactly the same plot as Sky Captain. How odd.

Every Bond movie begins with this quick gunshot at the eye of Horus. Why does Horus need to be killed? And why is he "me"?

Hugo Drax (Michael Londsdale) oddly resembling James Mason’s Captain Nemo, is a fabulously wealthy industrialist obsessed with the conquest of space. His company - Drax Industries - builds the Moonraker space shuttle. The bible doesn’t say if Noah was chairman and CEO of Noah Industries, but it doesn’t say he wasn’t.

Drax lives in a fabulous French Chateau in California, from which he directs and funds an astronaut training program (a thinly veiled eugenics operation) to create genetically perfect individuals for his new world in space, and it turns out, to repopulate the (soon to be decimated) earth.

These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. --Genesis 6:9

Christian nutters say that the "giants" begotten by the angels (Nephilim), were their genetic experiments and "children", back in the day of Noah. Alien cross-breeding is a major feature of modern day alien abduction mythology - Agent Scully duly noted.

How interesting that we have a giant in Moonraker: "Jaws". Jaws (played by seven foot Richard Kiel), eventually sides with James, once he figures out that Noah isn't cool with his seed, or his new girlfriend.

So we don’t forget, this is a Masonic tableau, note the “playing field”.

James follows the leads to a glass blowing shop (and twin towers) in Venice , with an interesting hexagonal logo:

As it turns out, this glass blowing studio is a front for Drax’s nerve gas production lab. The gas (which effects only humans), is injected into hexagonal cylinders, and then placed into globes encased within a hexagonal ring. Drax is seriously into hexagons.

Meanwhile, back on the canals, Bond is being ferried around in his black and gold sea chariot when he’s attacked by a funeral procession (a frequent Bond motif). Thanks to his usual technological advantage, he escapes the grim reaper - this time via a gondola/hovercraft complete with Masonic stripes. Later, Bond is seen skulking about the canals in the same gondola. He docks, and then tosses his gondolier’s hat atop a sea horse. For some horses for courses, read C Horses.

After the lab in Venice, Bond follows the trail to Rio, via some well marked boxes. In Rio, Bond visits the secret lair of British Intelligence: a "Catholic" monastery.

While there, he walks in on some brothers in “meditation”: a pair of warrior monks - Latter Day Knights Templar? So there is no doubt, remember Sean Connery played William of Baskerville, the Franciscan friar in 'The Name of the Rose', by the sly grail echo, Umberto Eco.

James follows the clues north, to a remote Amazonian tributary. He discovers Drax’s earthly, pyramidal headquarters, from which he is launching a squadron of Moonrakers. He follows a white robed Circe across a subterranean river into a pre-Columbian, post-Modern realm.

He soon meets more of Drax’s perfected genome, and Drax himself. He's then cast into a pool to be eaten by a large reptile. James is frequently the Crocodile Huntee, see Jake Kotze’s recent post Gemini about all consuming crocodiles.

James and CIA agent Dr. Holly Goodhead skulk about the complex, and they happen across this crazy box on its stage/alter, that is ignored and left totally unexplained. I gotta ask, why/how does Drax/Noah have the Ark of the Covenant stashed in his pyramid?

All Bond villains have their personnel conveyers, and Drax is no exception. I love this shot, it’s straight out of Josie and the Pussycats.

After all that, James and the good doctor hijack a Moonraker to Drax’s secret space lair, which resembles a shining sword of Damocles at first glance, but is in fact a cloaked space station, AKA the death star, VALIS. I have to admit the idea of a cloaked satellite is interesting. Maybe the satellite is actually hiding in plain site, but cloaked in myth. The moon hits my eye like a big pizza pie...

NOTES:

Richard Kiel acted in an unaired TV-pilot featuring Lee Falk's superhero The Phantom, where Kiel played an assassin called "Big Mike", who was hired to kill the title hero.

Roger Moore rose to Bond prominence playing Simon Templar in 'The Saint'. Is it just me, or does the Saint walk like an Egyptian? Isis/Liberty is a nice touch at the end.