The Taybor Revisited

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

A couple of years ago, I was brought up short by the realization that Space 1999 might just be more than a shallow, if entertaining, 1970s science fiction vehicle. An episode from the second season called "The Taybor" forced me to give the series a rethink. Specifically, elements of the subtext and imagery, in that episode, point directly to the Tibetan concept of the rainbow body.

I watched "The Taybor" again, recently, and realized that I still hadn't given the episode, or possibly the entire series, enough credit. I'd glossed over a number of details, allusions so direct it's hard to imagine they are not conscious and deliberate.

This analysis of the series addresses the possibility that it's not meant to be taken at all literally – that it only really makes sense if you assume some sort of divine intervention and higher purpose to Moon Base Alpha's unlikely journey across the space.

The idea that the Moon could be thrown from its orbit to drift at speeds allowing it to cross interstellar space in time periods of weeks or months is difficult and often impossible for many viewers to accept. The mass of the Moon is so large and its orbit around Earth so apparently firm and the force of a series of atomic explosions so more likely to obliterate the Moon than to blast it out of orbit, that the imaginations of many of even the most ardent science fiction aficionados were challenged beyond their limit to stretch, despite the fact that the planet Pluto is credibly posited by scientists to have been a satellite of planet Neptune that broke away from Neptune and settled into an irregular orbit around the Sun. And then there is the difficulty that some people have of assimilating the prospect of such an event being caused by human error. Most people prefer to think of future, technological man as incapable of contributing to a disaster of such magnitude.

Fullmetal Plagiarist – UPDATED

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Comment Overflow: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6, Page 7, Page 8


Update: Spiritually Bypassing Citations (see below)
Update: How Many Cheneys on the Cooks Source Scale is This? (see below)
Update: Addicted to Plagiarism (see below)
Update: Plagiarizing Hay House (see below)
Update: Even Her Uterus is a Plagiarist (see below)


In this recent post on Teal Bosworth Scott Swan, I wrote about what I'm calling her "originality gap." I cited a number of examples of recycled material – numerous blog posts which rely on word for word lifts from her own previous articles. As stated, this is called self-plagiarism. I also touched on her propensity for relaying ideas, words, and images that strongly resemble work from other sources. I have noted a number of these parallels in the noncasts.

For instance, in the noncast entitled "The Bottomless Rabbit Hole," I referenced a rather striking similarity between her painting called Alchemy and art from the series Fullmetal Alchemist. Imagine my surprise at seeing that image, once again, heading her recent blog post.

Coraline and the Blue Pearl

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

My dear friend Frog recently created this satire of Coraline called Cameline. His point is that there are some very odd parallels between Cameron Clark's experiences in House Teal and Coraline's in the Pink Palace apartments. It got me thinking about some of the deeper elements of Coraline, things I'd overlooked when I saw it in the theater. So, I've given the film a fresh look and moved Neil Gaiman's award-winning book up on my reading list, which is to say, I've now read it.

It goes pretty well without saying that Gaiman is a genius. Coraline, the novella, is a masterpiece. Like Alice in Wonderland, to which it is often compared, there's a nod to the shamanic ability of children to traverse worlds through the odd doorway. The story has its own version of the Cheshire cat and even a tea party of sorts.

It is also a brilliant depiction of narcissism. The Other Mother lives in her own world, populated by puppets she controls. Those who defy or bore her – who no longer reflect her desires – she throws behind a mirror. She eats up the lives and souls of anyone who crosses her path. Anyone who has ever been taken in by a narcissist for any length of time knows the kind of creeping surreality, the warping of perception, that comes from being caught up in their world view.

Henry Selick expanded on Gaiman's book, which wasn't really long enough for a feature film. Characters were added and storylines were extrapolated. What I now realize about the film, is that a mythic subtext was woven through it and that these themes are revealed in striking visuals.

Tesseract: A Journey Through Art and Time

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

A Wrinkle in Time was considered essential reading in my home. My mother simply loved this book and, once she'd persuaded me to read it, so did I. It has all the elements: a strong female character that any adolescent girl could admire, a fantastical storyline, and travel to other planets. I've always loved stories about interstellar travel. The book revolves around something called the tesseract which allows the central characters to move through space at light-speed by folding, or wrinkling, time. I'd always assumed "tesseract" was one of those funny, made-up words. Obviously, I was incorrect and I only learned this years later when I began to work with sacred geometry and learned about the hypercube, aka, the tesseract.

Alchemical Perfume

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I love Christmas ads. I know. Commercialism is ruining Christmas and making us forget about the baby Mithras Jesus. But they're festive, nostalgic, and sometimes quite beautiful. Yes, I worked in marketing for long enough that I actually appreciate the artistry of advertising. And the industry rolls out some of its best work at the holidays.

A couple of years ago I noted a perfume ad featuring Julia Roberts that resurfaces every year at this time. It is full of elegant, if not terribly subtle, allusions to Rousseau and the French Enlightenment.

Much of popular entertainment, of late, from movies and television to the Olympics, has me marveling at the imagery. Is the symbolism subconscious or deliberate? I don't know, but it's getting really hard to miss it. 

This new ad from Dior, featuring Charlize Theron, is nothing short of stunning. The past is nothing but a "dream," an illusion. "The future is gold" she says, ascending through an oculus into a "new world."

Once Upon a Time There Was a Chymical Wedding

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

"Stories are medicine. I have been taken with stories since I heard my first. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything -- we need only listen. The remedies for repair or reclamation of any lost psychic drive are contained in stories." ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés in Women Who Run With the Wolves

I'm a little late to this party -- two years to be exact -- but I have recently fallen in love with Once Upon a Time. Once again I tried to curl up with a little diversionary fluff and was instead abruptly pulled into the heart of the mysteries. As ever with these pop culture creations I am left to wonder if the writers are just randomly pulling these profound archetypes out of their deep subconscious, totally unaware of the implications, or if it's a carefully scripted foray into Gnosis.

The central plot is clever and entertaining. The evil queen from Snow White, she of the poison apple, takes her revenge by casting a spell that drags a myriad of fairy tale characters into a small town in Maine. There they live trapped in time and unable to remember who they really are. But the curse may be undone by the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, who was secreted out of the enchanted forest before the curse fell and predestined to return at the age of 28. Twenty-eight years later Emma Swan is living a lonely life in Boston until a young boy claiming to be the son she put up for adoption pulls her to Storybrooke. He insists she must fulfill her destiny and break the curse cast by his adoptive mother, who he is quite sure is the evil queen in his very unusual book of  fairy tales.

Each episode weaves together the complimentary narratives of the characters' lives in Storybrooke and their history as fairy tale creatures. It's skillful, if somewhat predictable, storytelling. But it's in the imagery that the creators tip their hand. They speak the language of symbols far too well for me to take the series lightly. From the first episode I was struck by the subtle but brilliant use of sacred geometry, character names, and striking tableaux. 

It is essentially a mystical story employing the most basic numerical code to appeal to conscious oneness.

Television and the Quest for Immortality

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Torchwood: Miracle Day begins tonight
Sept. 14 at 9:00 pm EDT on BBC America

I've not been doing much writing lately... obviously. I'm still settling in after our most recent move. But, on my breaks from unpacking boxes, I've mostly been staring at that other box... the idiot box. It was supposed to be passive, relaxing entertainment -- a restorative after long, hard days of hating the entire process of moving.  Instead, I've once again been pulled down a rabbit hole into a network of intertwining symbolism and myth. I pretty quickly noticed that a theme was emerging and that the theme was immortality.

I finally had the opportunity to see Torchwood: Miracle Day when it came on Encore. I'd been wanting to see it since it came out but I don't have or want Starz. The previous Torchwood miniseries Children of Earth was excellent if very, very disturbing. I had wanted to write about some of the symbolism of that series when it aired but after I watched the final episode, I was just too emotionally wrecked and I never wanted to look at the series again. Miracle Day is also very dark. The mythic symbolism is, once again, so veiled, you could easily miss it.

Human immortality is suddenly, inexplicably achieved and the world discovers that it's really very inconvenient. This is not a good version of immortality. It's not an ascension of any kind. It's just an inability to die no matter how sick, old, injured, or executed one might be. But underneath all the gruesome dreariness of that Torchwood sensibility, there are subtle points to some greater themes, which keep this from being pedestrian science fiction of the "wouldn't it be weird if" variety.

As Doctor Who fans know, Jack Harkness's immortality is an aberration -- a fluke that the Doctor finds disturbing and wrong and against the natural order. But there are subtle nods to a deeper mythos. In Children of Earth, for instance, Jack is killed, dismembered and buried in cement, only to be reassembled and resurrected. He has become Osiris. In Miracle Day we again see him playing out a resurrection mythology as he is effectively crucified -- hung by his arms, tormented by townspeople, and put to death, only to rise again... and again and again.

William Henry on the Judgement Day Device

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I noticed this article about the Muslim view of the apocalypse The Huffington Post and it reminded me that I've been meaning to listen to two recent interviews with William Henry. From the article:

Muslim and Christian views of the Apocalypse are remarkably similar, albeit with a different ending.

. . .

Contemporary Muslim apocalyptists have even borrowed from their Christian counterparts, such as Hal Lindsay, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, to discern the dates of the Antichrist's arrival, said David Cook, an expert on Islamic eschatology and associate professor at Rice University.

. . .

Some Muslims don't like the idea of Jesus playing the messianic hero, and have thus assigned a larger role to the Mahdi, said Cook. That belief is strong among Shiites, particularly the "Twelvers" in Iran, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has often spoke of the Mahdi's return.

William Henry's research adds an important piece to the puzzle of apocalyptic prophecies: the Ark of the Covenant. Henry believes that all the players are seeking the ark, in hopes of harnessing its mythical power. Above is posted his recent interview on Red Ice Radio and his interview on Awake in the Dream can found here.

The whole thing is a study in the dangers of literalism. Supplemental reading and listening can be found here and here.

"And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." ~ Luke 17:20-21

The Increasingly Blatant Symbolism of Doctor Who

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes." ~ Doctor Who

A while ago Stephen Fry made waves when he bemoaned the infantalizing nature of BBC programming and characterized Doctor Who as "not for adults." Perhaps Fry, for all his many talents and artistic sensibility, is one of those hardcore atheists who has no appreciation for the power of myth. Admittedly, I haven't spent a lot of time on the mythical underpinnings of the show, although I did explore one episode's point towards indigenous creation mythology here. 

I will also give Fry benefit of the doubt and assume his comments in 2010 pertained entirely to the pre-Matt Smith years. There is no question that with the massive production changes after David Tennant's departure, came a more interesting, and I dare say, more adult show. Smith, as an actor, has more depth and gravitas than Tennant. (Christopher Eccleston was also brilliant and I took his departure hard. I know. I know. David Tennant was the most beloved Doctor ever. Blah, blah, blah... whatever.)

Not only is the writing under Steven Moffat darker and edgier, there has been a peeling away of the veils that obscured the core mythos. It seems rather obvious in discussing a show that opens with a trip through a wormhole, that we're talking about alchemy/kundalini/stargate mythology. But with the recent Christmas episode, "The Snowmen," key archetypes were even more blatant than they were in the London Olympics. Even the advertising was provocative.

The Wizard of Wormholes

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I've had The Wizard of Oz on my mind a lot lately, for some reason. When my daughter was little, she watched my video of the movie until I really got sick of it -- something I'd never thought possible. But lately I've been yearning to watch it. I'll need to get it on DVD... Anyway. I've been contemplating some of the metaphysical imagery that hadn't occurred to me previously. I should caveat that I've long been taken with some of the mythical themes.

That Dorothy is taking a shamanic journey into non-ordinary reality where she interacts with strange creatures and is assisted by guides seems obvious on its face. But there are some elements to that journey that deserve some analysis. This won't be a deep study. I may do that at some point. It's just some things that have been popping into my head of late.

Years ago, when I first read Clarissa Pinkola Estes's Women Who Run With the Wolves, it occurred to me that, in the movie, Dorothy also wore red shoes. In Estes's analysis of "The Red Shoes," our heroine who dances to her death under the spell of her magic shoes, is an orphan, like our Dorothy Gale. And the girl is raised by a somewhat overbearing and opinionated matriarch, who makes all the decisions for her orphan charge. While she acts out of love and compassion, she crushes the girl's soul, symbolized by the burning of the girl's own handmade, red shoes. The red, magical shoes she obtains later are a poor substitute for her now languishing, authentic wildness. Auntie Em is also loving, but overbearing. She is not terribly patient with Dorothy's emotional needs and drives. And she turns her beloved pet over to the local harridan. Dorothy's authentic self is being crushed, so like Estes's red shod heroine, she becomes reckless and impetuous, risking her own safety. These are interesting parallels that I've pondered when it comes to the underlying mythos of the film version of the story.

There are other mythical themes that have really just occurred to me over the past few days as this movie started ping-ponging around my head, despite the fact that I haven't watched or thought about it in some time.

Earlier today, a Facebook friend posted the above image. My first thought was that I can't seem to get away from this movie. My second thought was, is that a butterfly? I'd simply never noticed before that Glinda is wearing that classic symbol of transformation as a pendent.

The Alchemy of Puss in Boots

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I only just got around to seeing Puss in Boots with the family. It's a cute little film that could fairly be described as Shrek meets Zorro meets Desperado. And I have little doubt the boardroom discussion went about like that.

I was not, however, prepared for all the esoteric subtext in the movie. I do remember William Henry pointing out the stargate imagery in the Friskies commercial tie-in. Not that there's anything terribly new about fantastical imagery in children's stories -- including portals into magical lands. But it is kind of interesting that it's through a circular Stargate like opening. Having now seen the movie, I think it's at least arguable that the commercial is a thematic extension of the movie.

It had never occurred to me before that Jack and the Beanstalk is a kundalini metaphor. Now it all seems kind of obvious -- a magical vine that connects earth to heaven and leads to a winged creature that manufactures gold. No duh, huh?

But Puss in Boots ups the ante on that metaphor. Not only is the gold they discover in the shape of an egg, which connects it to core creation mythos. Puss's partner in crime is an egg, specifically Humpty Dumpty.

Humpty's lifelong ambition is to find and plant the magic beans of legend. So an egg is seeking golden eggs. And ultimately the base, mortal, and terribly fragile Humpty is transformed into the gold he is seeking.

Olympics Close Goes For Alchemical Gold

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

We've made it through the entire Olympics, both opening and closing ceremonies, without a false flag incident or alien invasion. This leaves the woo woo world with nothing to do but pick through the Illuminati and Masonic symbolism and speculate about how the elites are mocking us with their openly practiced death rituals. They're not entirely wrong. There was some interesting symbolism in the closing ceremony and, as in the opening, it was fairly well obscured by bad theater. But, again, all I saw were beautiful, recognizable, symbols of ascension. And as with the opening ceremony, if the viewer wasn't looking specifically at that nearly subliminal through-line, there wasn't one. The close was considerably less cluttered and confusing than the opening but it was equally high on spectacle and low on making sense.

They continued on with the theme of "Great Britain has produced many great musicians and wouldn't you like to hear them all in rapid succession but in no recognizable order." As a theme, a "Symphony of British Music" creates a less than coherent narrative. "Disco at the end of the wedding," another description offered by organizers, is even less helpful... unless you're considering the possibility that we are looking at a stream of alchemical symbols. A wedding is a marriage of opposites, or polarities -- a representation of the transcendence of duality and return to oneness. One notable example, attributed to the Rosicrucians, is The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rozenkreutz. Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval give a thorough analysis of the symbolism in The Master Game, concluding:

It seems to us beyond serious doubt that a great allegory of death, rebirth and spiritual transformation lies at the heart of the Chemical Wedding and that Adam McLean is right to compare the entire process to an ancient mystery initiation.

So was the closing ceremony celebrating a completed initiation into the mysteries? I'm inclined to say yes. The only other explanation is that a lot of highly respected talent collaborated on a giant mess with a few random symbols poking out by happenstance.

William Henry on Olympic Strangeness

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Wenlock and Mandeville: Mascots for 2012 London Olympics

I will be the first to admit that I don't pay much attention to the Olympic Games. When I was a kid, I liked the figure skating but even that doesn't hold my attention anymore. No sports fan I, but more than that, I've completely lost interest in group-think. I find the collective, water-cooler nature of the experience off-putting. At the same time I realize that that's the major draw for a lot of people, hence the group-think. This year, though, I think perhaps I should pay more attention because it seems like something unprecedented is being directed at the collective mind. Or so I've learned from William Henry.

Henry's interview with Chad Stuemke is fascinating. The symbolism associated with the upcoming games in Great Britain is positively heavy-handed. So much so that Iran has threatened to pull out because of charges of a Zionist conspiracy. They've also apparently blocked the website. It would seem that by pulling the logo apart and readjusting the angles a bit, we come up with something that looks sort of like the word Zion. So conspiracy theories abound.

William Henry, however, has a somewhat different take, which speaks to one of the reasons I love his work. Henry's new book Secret of Sion is an examination of the mythical significance of Sion/Zion. He posits that it points to plane of existence associated with ascension, the seraphim, and the legendary rainbow body. And both he and Stuemke see the imagery associated with the 2012 Olympics as redolent with those themes. And, now that they say it, it's kind of hard to miss. This page on Stuemke's website gives a good rundown.