the mask of god: Death is the Road to Eleusis

Agora is not a Hero's Journey narrative; it is an allegory about the rise of Christianity.

Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) represents the eternal Wisdom-religion of the Mysteries--her allegiance is to Truth above all else, the philosophy of Alexandria.

She represents everything that was good and pure about classical civilization, even as she shows the fundamental contradiction of existing in the midst of slavery, poverty, and the eternal Empire.

In point of fact, even the Empire loves and protects her (the historical protection of the Mysteries and the schools of philosophy by the Roman government). As the Inner Church, she exists within the Outer Church of the Empire, even as today the Roman Catholic Church is home to the cult of Mary. Rose is within the Titanic (the Tower as the "House of Doctrine").

The Girl with the Book

Hypatia has a Christian slave who is entirely devoted to her, symbolizing the early Inner Church. The Empire, too, courts her devoutly, but she spurns both their advances, as she can be possessed by no man. Her slave later abandons her and joins the intolerant and superstitious mob, the Outer Church.

A sacrificial altar

It is he who, in the end, smothers her to death--a mercy killing. Truth is replaced with Ignorance.

Fallen Angel

They tore her to pieces, another repetition of the primeval dismemberment. Esoterically, the destruction of the Library and death of Hypatia is the pagan equivalent of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem and the departure of the Shekinah (likewise a symbol of Truth). Thus God is not without a witness even among the heathen.

Demeter & Persephone

In ancient Greece, the Mysteries (of which Hypatia was their symbol) were those of Demeter and her search for her missing daughter, Persephone. Rachel Weisz plays the Demeter mother to Saoirse Ronan's Persephone in The Lovely Bones. Rachel Weisz's character leaves the father and works on an orchard, picking apples, showing Demeter's role as the nature goddess. Demeter is referred to as the "fountain" of souls. Thus Rachel Weisz in and as . . .

THE FOUNTAIN

"Take this ring, it's a symbol of your pledge to find the elixir of immortality. You shall wear it when you find Eden. And when you return, I shall be your Eve."

The Fountain seems, in part, to directly continue the narrative. For the last scene of Agora is Rachel Weisz being killed beneath a cross, and the first scene of The Fountain is Hugh Jackman kneeling beneath another cross. Stranger still, it appears to contain a lock of her hair. This motif will be repeated later, when Izzi reappears as the Tree (the Wood of the Cross). The film takes place over three time periods, 1500, 2005, and 2500, but they are really telling the same story, and more or less in sequence.

We first see Rachel Weisz as Izzi (Isabel, Ebeneezer Scrooge's lost love) in the snow (Snow White), gazing up at the stars--Hypatia was an astronomer. Izzi spots Xibalba, the heart of a golden star (cue Neil Young). This is precisely equivalent to the spotting of the New Earth in both Melancholia and Another Earth. After the girl spots the New Earth (Persephone picking the flowers of Beauty; Eve eating the apple), she is catapulted into a Nigredo cycle that will result in her death.

First coniunctio

An alchemical bath

Tommy receives Izzi's book, i.e. her Mysteries which tell the story of the Quest for the Tree of Life and the Elixir of Immortality. This shows that we are dealing with a spiritual quest. Izzi's book is quite clearly the Tarot.

Tommy is working on apes, i.e. his own animal nature (physician, heal thyself). His work, however, is dedicated to finding a cure for his wife, who has brain cancer (another symbolic "insanity").

In Izzi's story, ca. 1500, we open with the Grand Inquisitor and then cut to the Queen behind a veil, writing in a book. The Hierophant and the High Priestess are obviously intended. Once again, we are shown the Queen of the Inner Church fighting against the Spanish Inquisition, a potent symbol of the ignorance of the Outer Church. It has killed her once before.

Isabel: The beast runs amok in my kingdom. He has isolated me, and now he is sharpening his talons for one more fateful push. But salvation lies in the jungles of New Spain. Will you deliver Spain from bondage?

The Inquisitor holds that "our bodies are prisons for our souls"--but the Queen knows that Paradise can only be attained while one lives. She will be his Eve, but, as we will see, the conquistador will only live forever by dying to himself and becoming one with the Tree ("Wisdom is a tree of life," Proverbs 8).

She has the lunar crescent at her feet, a horned diadem on her head, with a globe in the middle place, and a large solar cross on her breast. The scroll in her hands is inscribed with the word Tora, signifying the Greater Law, the Secret Law and the second sense of the Word. It is partly covered by her mantle, to shew that some things are implied and some spoken. She is seated between the white and black pillars--J. and B.--of the mystic Temple, and the veil of the Temple is behind her: it is embroidered with palms and pomegranates. The vestments are flowing and gauzy, and the mantle suggests light--a shimmering radiance. She has been called occult Science on the threshold of the Sanctuary of Isis, but she is really the Secret Church, the House which is of God and man. (Arthur Waite, "The High Priestess")

The Queen sends Tomas the conquistador to search for the center of the world, the Kore Kosmou (this is the "missing girl" of the Mysteries, Persephone). The Galactic Center as the center of the soul. (Ground Control to Major Tom, etc.)

Major Tom (the Bowman) to Ground Control

Galactic Center (Can you hear me, Tommy?)

Izzi: This is an actual Mayan book. It explains the Creation myth. You see that's first father. He's the very first human. . . . He sacrificed himself to make the world. That's the tree of life bursting out of his stomach. . . . So what do you think?
Tommy: About?
Izzi: That idea. Death as an act of creation.

We are told that the First Father sacrificed himself at the foundation of the world, the Mayan Adam Kadmon (the Hanged Man). We know from Greek philosophy that it was Persephone who fell into Hades at the beginning of things. Tommy does not realize this at the time, but Izzi is telling him what he must do--and she will demonstrate it for him.

All of this takes place in an exhibition of "Divine Words"--the Divine Word being the Logos of God.

Now what those things are I signify unto thee, for I know that thou wilt understand. Perceive thou therefore in me the praising (al. slaying al. rest) of the (or a) Word (Logos), the piercing of the Word, the blood of the Word, the wound of the Word, the hanging up of the Word, the suffering of the Word, the nailing (fixing) of the Word, the death of the Word. (The Acts of John)

"When I fell ... I was full ... held."

We are given ample evidence that it is Izzi's own sacrifice that is here intended. For after reading the story of the First Father, and "death as an act of creation," she immediately "falls" to the ground.

See: Inception and Mal's falling death. This is a primordial incident, but it occurs to Dom at the moment when his "inception" of Doubt takes hold in her subconscious. The Garden State is lost.

Tommy, having started to read Izzi's book (he Fulfills the Law), is advancing on his Hero Quest and is rapidly falling out of his Garden State. As the book progresses, Izzi's condition worsens; i.e. he can no longer pretend that she is alive. So what's going on here? Why does the death of the girl happen in space and time, in the course of the movie, rather than outside of it? If the girl is who our male hero really is, under his mask, then all of the things experienced by him are really happening to her. When this mystery is repeated in the microcosm, the pomegranate that Persephone eats is actually the heart of Dionysos, showing the necessity of the original Underworld expedition. Thus Tommy's quest will take him to Xibalba, the Mayan Underworld, where he and his wife will be reborn.

"I want you to help me. ... Finish it."

Izzi: Remember Moses Morales? . . . The last night I was with him, he told me about his father, who had died. Well Moses wouldn't believe it. . . . He said that if they dug his father's body up, it would be gone. They planted a seed over his grave. The seed became a tree. Moses said his father became a part of that tree. He grew into the wood, into the bloom. And when a sparrow ate the tree's fruit, his father flew with the birds. He said--death was his father's road to awe. That's what he called it. The road to awe. Now, I've been trying to write the last chapter and I haven't been able to get that out of my head!
Tom Creo: Why are you telling me this?
Izzi: I'm not afraid anymore, Tommy.

Moses "Morales" is Moses the lawgiver. It isn't Moses' earthly Father she is talking about here. He didn't want to admit that the Father God was dead, and thus walked backwards, covering him with a veil. "First Father sacrificed himself"--Brad Pitt is Nature in The Tree of Life, the Father as he exists within the sphere of Eternal Nature.

God hath several names given him in the Scripture, yet the most, if not all of them, speak his relation to Eternal Nature, as he hath introduced himself into it, and clothed himself with it . . . (John Pordage)

Note the identical floor pattern--her throne is also a grave

Tommy now witnesses the Mystery of Izzi's sacrifice at the beginning of time. She becomes "part of the tree" ("Wisdom is a tree")--hence she is actually Moses' Dead Father God. Her death happens when Tomas at last finds the Temple in her book; i.e. the Center of the Universe. Instead of encountering her glory, he encounters only her grave. This, in the future narrative, happens at the same moment that Tommy arrives at Xibalba. It, too, must die and be reborn. (All of this will be repeated by Rachel Weisz as Isabel in Constantine, exactly.)

Grandma Death (Hail Mary, full of Grace)

Most of us struggle our whole lives to be complete enough when we die to achieve a measure of grace. Few of us ever do. Most of us end up going out the way we came in, kicking and screaming. But somehow Izzi, young as she was, achieved that grace.

They bury her on the farm, like Susie Salmon in the cornfield. (This movie is about coming to terms with her death--but then again, so is everything.)

To finish Izzi's book, he must "write" his own wedding ring. Even this simple proof of their marriage has been lost in this new slough of despond.

Those trees in whose dim shadow
The ghastly priest doth reign
The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain.

We are told that there is a flaming sword guarding the Tree of Life--and it is held by the King of the Wood, the esoteric Rex Nemorensis--"the prize for the victor in single combat was the priesthood of the goddess." Tomas must Kill the King to become the new King of the Wood.

The Tree is revealed to be a lingam and yoni, a glyph of the Lance and Graal. And indeed, we see Tomas plunge his holy dagger (Lance) into the tree (Graal), drinking of its elixir.

It is not enough for Tomas to simply wed the Queen (for she is, in fact, the Tree of Life); he must be entirely transformed into her (she being contrary to his nature). Thus Tomas, as the Old Man, must die, becoming one with the Tree itself.

This Cup is said to be full of the Blood of the Saints; that is, every "saint" or magician must give the last drop of his life's blood to that cup. It is the original price paid for magick power. And if by magick power we mean the true power, the assimilation of all force with the Ultimate Light, the true Bridal of the Rosy Cross, then is that blood the offering of Virginity, the sole sacrifice well-pleasing to the Master, the sacrifice whose only reward is the pain of child-bearing unto him. . . . This formula is, however, a little different in symbolism, since it is a Woman whose Cup must be filled. It is rather the sacrifice of the Man, who transfers life to his descendants. . . . For it is his whole life that the Magus offers to OUR LADY. The Cross is both Death and Generation, and it is on the Cross that the Rose blooms. (Aleister Crowley)

This is the ending that Tommy writes for Izzi's book. "Blood will feed the earth"--Tommy has now resolved to sacrifice himself for the Tree, that he may be reborn in the Graal of Our Lady of the Stars. It was her who first showed him the Mystery of sacrifice through a death which gave life to all things ("death is the road to awe"). But by having willingly walked into this sacrifice, he is, paradoxically, now allowed to live.

This is the re-creation of the universe . . .

. . . and the restoration of what was lost.

Cut back to 2005 (the realm of Assiah), where we see Tommy place a seed in Izzi's grave. When we remember that "the seed is the Word of God," we will realize that Tommy has now successfully restored the Word to the throne of God ("restore the Word to its creator, and replace Him who formed it upon his throne").

Xibalba now explodes overhead, showing that these three narratives were always one. The star of death now becomes a beacon of light.

A strange parallel: Hugh Jackman, our Major Tom, goes to meet David Bowie himself in The Prestige, whose assistant is Andy Serkis, AKA Gollum. Jackman "writes" a Ring on his finger in The Fountain.

The Hanged Woman

Here, too (as has been mentioned), we see Jackman tormented over the loss of his wife, who drowns. In order to become a true magician, Jackman must duplicate his wife's sacrifice. And death by water is the subject of . . .

CONSTANTINE

In the film Constantine, Rachel Weisz plays a dual role as both Demeter (Angela) and Persephone (Isabel). And Isabel would just happen to have the same exact name as Weisz's character in The Fountain.

(When this video inevitably breaks, click here, it's short and worth a watch.)

Her Persephone twin falls from the sky into water, in the center of a cross (the four elements).

For the third time, we see Rachel Weisz symbolically crucified.

The Bible of Hades is the Hanged Man: Demon est deus inversus

Keep in mind that Weisz's surname in the film is Dodson. In the Acts of Peter, it is explicitly revealed that Adam Kadmon was crucified in space at the foundation of the world. Peter, being crucified upside-down, states:

Learn ye the mystery of all nature, and the beginning of all things, what it was. For the first man, whose race I bear in mine appearance (or, of the race of whom I bear the likeness), fell (was borne) head downwards, and showed forth a manner of birth such as was not heretofore: for it was dead, having no motion. He, then, being pulled down—who also cast his first state down upon the earth— established this whole disposition of all things, being hanged up an image of the creation wherein he made the things of the right hand into left hand and the left hand into right hand, and changed about all the marks of their nature, so that he thought those things that were not fair to be fair, and those that were in truth evil, to be good. Concerning which the Lord saith in a mystery: Unless ye make the things of the right hand as those of the left, and those of the left as those of the right, and those that are above as those below, and those that are behind as those that are before, ye shall not have knowledge of the kingdom . . . the figure wherein ye now see me hanging is the representation of that man that first came unto birth.

Isabel's last word is "Constantine"--Izzi, the Inner Church, needs the aid of the Outer Church (representing not only the literal church of Emperor Constantine, but the masculine principle of ego, line, and order) in order to be healed.

Rachel Weisz beneath the cross, yet again

Isabel's soul is condemned to Hades because it is ruled a suicide--

Angela Dodson: She has to have a Catholic funeral, Father. She has to.
Father Garret: Angela, it's still considered a mortal sin.
Angela Dodson: She didn't commit suicide.
Father Garret: The Bishop believes otherwise. You know the rules, Angela.
Angela Dodson: Oh, rules! Father... David. This is Isabel. God was the only one she ever believed loved her. Please.
Father Garret: I'm sorry.

And refer to the close parallel in Hamlet--Ophelia being an obvious glyph of Persephone, who drowns while picking flowers--

First Priest: Her obsequies have been as far enlarged
As we have warrantise: her death was doubtful;
And, but that great command o'ersways the order,
She should in ground unsanctified have lodged
Till the last trumpet: for charitable prayers,
Shards, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her;
Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants,
Her maiden strewments and the bringing home
Of bell and burial.

Laertes: Must there no more be done?

First Priest: No more be done:
We should profane the service of the dead
To sing a requiem and such rest to her
As to peace-parted souls.

Laertes: Lay her i' the earth:
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
A ministering angel shall my sister be,
When thou liest howling.

Hamlet: What, the fair Ophelia!

Queen Gertrude: Sweets to the sweet: farewell!

Scattering flowers

I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
And not have strew'd thy grave.

Angela (Rachel Weisz) as Demeter enlists the help of John Constantine (KeaNeo Reeves) help to find her missing sister, Isabel (Persephone), who is trapped in Hades. Isabel possessed powerful magic, and they locked her up in the insane asylum (Ophelia's madness).

"You're fucked."

Gabriel: How many times have I told you? That's not the way this works.
John Constantine: Why, haven't I served him enough? What does he want from me?
Gabriel: Only the usual. Self-sacrifice, belief.

John Constantine, as a symbol of the Outer Church, is contrasted with Angela as the Inner Church. John has been fighting his personal demons his whole life but it's still not enough to get him into heaven.

Persephone in Hades in The Matrix

Persephone in Hades in Constantine

In order to do that, he must enter into a (professional) relationship with Angela and descend into Hades to rescue Isabel. (Thus, also, the necessity of every Muslim to make the pilgrimage to the Kaaba, the black stone of the Magna Mater. The Pilgrims travel to Plymouth Rock, Natalie Portman's portal.)

The alchemist

The tattoo on Constantine's arms is the alchemical symbol of the Red King, which was worn (by him) for protection. It is "the fire triangle with three radiating arrows below represents the 'Perfect Red King,' the Sulfur of the Philosophers." (IMDB)

John, the Baptist

Angela is John's soul, his soma psychikon, as it exists as a product of Nature and the stars. John shows Angela who she really is after a water baptism, in which she "awakens" to her innate divinity from her long slumber in the world of ignorance. Angela will, in effect, become a replacement for her dead twin sister. ("But doesn't she look almost exactly like Laura Palmer?")

(Black Dog Star)

The Mary imagery with Angela is overwhelming. Only, whoops, it's not the Christ Child she bears, but the Eraserhead baby, the Antichrist.

As yet Angela is only a Mary Magdalene, the Dark Madonna--he will have to cast out her seven demons.

The film's climax occurs at the center of the cross, site of Isabel's original death ("The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave")--the mystical heart of the universe where darkness will be transformed into light.

John & Tomas as warriors of the cross(bow)

John and Tommy both take on the role of the ministering Priest of the Eucharist (the Hierophant of the Outer Church), showing forth the mystery of the Father who slays himself and is reborn as the Son to feed the multitude.

He answered me in a weak voice saying, "I am Ion, Priest of the Adytum, and I have borne an intolerable force. For someone came at me headlong in the morning and dismembered me with a sword and tore me apart, according to the rigor of harmony. And, having cut my head off with the sword, he mashed my flesh with my bones and burned them in the fire of the treatment, until, my body transformed, I should learn to become a spirit. And I sustained the same intolerable force." . . .

And again I knew the theophany and again the sacred altar and I saw a certain priest . . . celebrating those same terrible mysteries and I said, "Who is this?"

And answering he said to me, "This is the priest of the Adytum. He wishes to put blood into the bodies, to make the eyes clear, and to raise up the dead." (The Vision of Zosimos)

Death

Awe

When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and [John] the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! (John 19:26)

The Atonement in Constantine . . .

. . . and in The Matrix Revolutions

John is marked for death from the beginning, being not Jesus, but John, another condemned sinner who, like his namesake the Baptist, must have his head removed by the goddess. But by willingly shedding his own blood (he slits his wrists) and sacrificing his own soul for that of Isabel-Persephone, he attains redemption, becoming, so to speak, a Christ. (John and Jesus being the two aspects of one man--"He must increase, but I must decrease.") We will note the close similarities to the ending of The Fountain, visually and thematically. Here, too, it is not enough for John to ascend to heaven; he must return to earth, reborn.

The union of Christ with his bride, the Church

Isis taking Ra's Word

It again comes down to the Spear of Destiny--the Omnific Word, the blood of Christ. John must give the Spear to Angela--that is, drain all of his blood into her Cup. (Yes, John literally gives Angela the spear that pierced the side of Christ.) Another transfer of power.

[H]is divine Essence fills the Daughter (the soul of Man) and places her upon the Throne of the Mother, fulfilling the Economy of the Universe, and thus ultimately rewarding the Magician (the Son) ten thousandfold . . . So holy a mystery is the Arcanum of the Masters of the Temple, that it is here hinted at in order to blind the presumptuous who may, unworthy, seek to lift the veil, and at the same time to lighten the darkness of such as may be requiring only one ray of the Sun in order to spring into life and light. (Crowley)

Trinity: My name's Trinity.
Neo: *The* Trinity? Who cracked the IRS d-base?
Trinity: That was a long time ago.
Neo: Jesus...
Trinity: What?
Neo: I just thought... you were a guy.
Trinity: Most guys do.

(Madame Sosostris, the Girl with the Dragon Tarot)

A game of shadows

(Christchurch: Killing Mrs. Reaper)

. . .

So love with phantoms cheats our longing eyes,
Which hourly seeing never satisfies;
Our hands pull nothing from the parts they strain,
But wander o’er the lovely limbs in vain:
Nor when the youthful pair more closely join,
When hands in hands they lock, and thighs in thighs they twine,
Just in the raging foam of full desire,
When both press on, both murmur, both expire,
They gripe, they squeeze, their humid tongues they dart,
As each would force their way to t’other’s heart –
In vain; they only cruise about the coast,
For bodies cannot pierce, nor be in bodies lost.

– John Dryden, “Lucretius: The Fourth Book Concerning the Nature of Love”

Wherefore great mother of gods, and mother of beasts,

And parent of man hath she alone been named.

Her hymned the old and learned bards of Greece.

Seated in chariot o'er the realms of air

To drive her team of lions, teaching thus

That the great earth hangs poised and cannot lie

Resting on other earth. Unto her car

They've yoked the wild beasts, since a progeny,

However savage, must be tamed and chid

By care of parents. They have girt about

With turret-crown the summit of her head,

Since, fortressed in her goodly strongholds high,

'Tis she sustains the cities; now, adorned

With that same token, to-day is carried forth,

With solemn awe through many a mighty land,

The image of that mother, the divine.

De rerum natura

"I believe in philosophy."

what kind of world do you want?

("I propose that a reader of De rerum natura is going to find joy.")

The highest good?

Joy?

Beauty?

Pleasure?

Ecstasy?

Suffering?

(what's the point again?)

"The Monkey In The Machine and the Machine in the Monkey"

This is a story about the rise of machines.

And why no one believes you can change the world for the better any more.

How we decided that we were machines ourselves.

Played video games.

And helped start Africa's world war.

*please note the amount of dancing in this video. Obviously it's intentional. The clearest expression of JOY is dance.

“Death is nothing to us.”

So, when our mortal frame shall be disjoin’d,
The lifeless lump uncoupled from the mind,
From sense of grief and pain we shall be free;
We shall not feel, because we shall not be.
Though earth in seas, and seas in heaven were lost,
We should not move, we only should be toss’d.
Nay, e’en suppose when we have suffer’d fate
The soul should feel in her divided state,
What’s that to us? for we are only we,
While souls and bodies in one frame agree.
Nay, though our atoms should revolve by chance,
And matter leap into the former dance;
Though time our life and motion could restore,
And make our bodies what they were before,
What gain to us would all this bustle bring?
The new-made man would be another thing.

~Lucretius On The Nature of Things (trans John Dryden)

Lucretius, who was born about a century before Christ, was emphatically not our contemporary. He thought that worms were spontaneously generated from wet soil, that earthquakes were the result of winds caught in underground caverns, that the sun circled the earth. But, at its heart, “On the Nature of Things” persuasively laid out what seemed to be a strikingly modern understanding of the world. Every page reflected a core scientific vision—a vision of atoms randomly moving in an infinite universe—imbued with a poet’s sense of wonder. Wonder did not depend on the dream of an afterlife; in Lucretius it welled up out of a recognition that we are made of the same matter as the stars and the oceans and all things else. And this recognition was the basis for the way he thought we should live—not in fear of the gods but in pursuit of pleasure, in avoidance of pain.~Stephen Greenblatt

The good news?

"That's the 'good news'?"

Together We Will Live Forever

(Coming Home)

The Astronaut's Wife

"And she came back straightway with haste unto the king and asked, saying, 'I will that thou give me at once on a charger the head of Dave Bowman.'"

The head of the Disco King

The moon is a Dead Girl, a dead satellite. (What a depressing thought.) The astronauts leave the Garden of Earth to get to her, but everything goes wrong--they get trapped in the Underworld (the lunar unconscious) with the dread shade of Persephone. So let's look at Jay Weidner's Kubrick-faked-the-moon-landings-and-encoded-it-in-the-Shining thing as a purely esoteric narrative.

Danny, bewildered, walks down the hallway. He sees that Room 237 - the room that Halorann warned him about - has a key in the lock and the door is wide open.

It is important to note that the room in question was numbered 217 in the Stephen King version of The Shining. For unknown reason's Kubrick changed it to 237.

Those unknown reasons are about to be come known.

Danny is literally carrying a symbolic Apollo 11, on his body, via the sweater, to the Moon as he walks over to room 237.

Why do I think this? Because the average distance from the Earth to the Moon is 237,000 miles. . . .

May I humbly suggest that the word "All" in this repeated sentence actually stands for "A11" that is: "A-One-One", or Apollo 11?

"A11 work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." (Jay Weidner)

Many older typewriters did not include a separate key for the numeral 1 or the exclamation point, and some even older ones also lack the numeral zero. Typists who trained on these machines learned the habit of using the lowercase letter l ("ell") for the digit 1 . . . ("Typewriter")

The Fall

The Big Ship (an Ark of Salvation)

The girl with the books

A zero with no name looks dull-eyed to Ms. Stone, the drone that says "in the future, everything was up to itself". Yes. I remember Ramona. She set herself up as the no-future priestess of the Caucasian Suicide Temple, vomiting out her doctrine of death-as-eternal-party into the empty vessels of Berlin youth. The top floor rooms were the gateways to giving up to the holy ghost. (DB)