In The Truman Show, Truman Burbank is trapped within a television show. He lives in a false paradise (the Garden State) at house #36 (6 x 6 x 6, the number of Man, the Beast). Truman is accosted in front of his Chariot by a black-and-white spotted dog named Pluto, the Roman name of Hades, lord of the underworld, who abducts Persephone. Truman is afraid of dogs, as he is of water and all things that relate to the dark side of his own nature where his liberation must be sought.
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| Fallen Angel |
Immediately after this, Truman encounters a fallen star, Sirius. From previous posts, we will know that this represents the primordial "fall" of Spirit (Persephone) into matter (Hades/Pluto)--when GOD fell upside-down and became DOG (Sirius as the Dog Star).
In the first degree Masonic tracing board, we explicitly see angels descending from the Blazing Star of Sirius into material incarnation. The altar at the base of this ladder is inscribed with a circumpunct, symbol of solar-phallic power.
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| (Jordan Maxwell) |
The Jewish Biblical philosopher Philo (d. ca. 50 CE) presents his allegorical interpretation of the ladder in the first book of his De somniis. . . .Jacob (AKA James, patron saint of alchemists) uses the stone as a pillow, i.e., it is the instrument of his slumber: After he has the vision of the ladder ascending into heaven and realizes that the lowest is but the reflection of the highest, he consecrates the stone and declares it to be the Gate of Heaven (the Key to the Mysteries).
- The angels represent souls descending to and ascending from bodies . . .
- In the second interpretation the ladder is the human soul and the angels are God's logoi, pulling the soul up in distress and descending in compassion. ("Jacob's Ladder")
48 Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. 49 Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel. 50 Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these. 51 And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. (John 1)
Thus the symbol of the Order of the Eastern Star, a Masonic organization open to women, is an upside-down star (spirit fallen into matter).
In Stardust, Claire Danes (our angelic Juliet) plays a fallen star, literally, who must be rescued by the protagonist and raised back up to a state of glory.
In Pinocchio, the Blue Fairy descends ("falls") from Sirius (the first star seen at night) to give life to the Wooden Boy (ape). But though he has been given the spark of life, he is not yet a Real Boy--or a True Man.
Having "died" in the creation of the universe, our primordial Fallen Angel has sacrificed her phallus (i.e., creative power) to a bunch of apes, as seen in the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Monolith is the Stone of the Great Mother, who was, it is said, originally a hermaphrodite. This is the Stone said in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival to have fallen from heaven with the angels.
This is mirrored in the later scene where the Father is given his pen (penis, the "pen of Isis") by the angelic flight attendant.
In The Fountain, we see Izzi dressed almost identically to the 2001 stewardesses, driving home the connection between the two films.
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| A dick in a box (the gift of Isis) |
Izzi: That’s for you.
Tommy: It’s for me? What is it?
Izzi: Open it.
[Tommy opens it. Looks at the pen and ink confused]
Izzi: Pen and ink. For writing. [Grabs her book]. It’s all done except the last chapter. I want you to help me.
Tommy: How?
Izzi: Finish it. Finish it.
Tommy: The…? I don’t know how it ends.
Izzi: You do. You will.
Izzi gives Tommy pen and ink when she dies and tells him to "finish" the unfinished book. He will need to use the pen to complete the Alchemical Wedding.
In Salome's Last Dance, the actress playing Salome gives cigars (obvious phallic symbols) to our playwright-Demiurge, Oscar Wilde. (And this also explains 3:04 in this R-rated clip--Isis, once unveiled, regains her phallus.) Thousands of other parallels could be listed, I'm sure.
The embedded narrative in all of this is the Gnostic myth of how Sophia's power was stolen by the Demiuge--the Hero must sacrifice himself in order to give it back to her.
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| Holy Wood, the Mirror of Nature |
Christof the Demiurge lives within an artificial moon, presiding over the Sphere of Generation, which was said by the ancients to be the sublunary realm. It was the subject of the Mysteries to narrate how Persephone was said to fall into the Sphere of Generation, allegorically depicted as Hades. Here, perishable things are eternally created and die. Plato said that the World-Soul was crucified the heavens in the shape of an X, and Truman lives in a giant hemi-sphere lined with X's.
These passages are important enough to be duplicated at length. We will not, however, consent to agree with every part of its pseudo-Gnostic worldview; as the end result of the Mystery of regeneration is the spiritualization, and not rejection, of the body, as we will see.
In our rush to view the controlled-reality narrative, we miss that The Truman Show is really a love story. Truman is caught in a loveless, oppressive marriage with a wife as fake as the product placements she is constantly inserting into their conversations. His true love (anima), Sylvia, is his illuminator who first tells him that he lives in a false reality, the shadow of another world. She now waits for him outside of this construct, metaphorically "beyond the veil."
The key here is that the entire Mystery Play that Truman inhabits is for his benefit alone; the "True Man" (the True Self) is the goal of existence--it is the eternal subject of the endless Play that we call reality. (The method of science, the aim of religion.) In Shutter Island, too, the Play is to catch the conscience of the King.
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| Ed Harris as Ground Control in Apollo 13 . . . |
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| . . . and in The Truman Show |
Christof is both the Antichrist (Christ Off) and the Gnostic Demiurge--the Architect of the Matrix. He has created the material world as an imitation of the true world that exists outside of it. Many of his lines at the end a re taken from Psalm 139.
In The Matrix Reloaded, Neo is haunted by visions of Trinity "falling" to her death. Though he is able to save her for a time, he must, in the end, make the final sacrifice alone.
The Architect: Your five predecessors were, by design, based on a similar predication: a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the One. While the others experienced this in a general way, your experience is far more specific. Vis-à-vis: love.Though the Demiurge wishes to send his own Messiah to set up an earthly kingdom, Neo is driven by the transcendent principle of Love, which is a higher power than that of the Demiurge, allowing him to truly become a Christ.
Neo: Trinity.
[the monitors show images of Trinity]
The Architect: Apropos, she entered the Matrix to save your life at the cost of her own.
Neo: No...
The Architect: [...] But we already know what you are going to do, don't we? Already I can see the chain reaction: the chemical precursors that signal the onset of an emotion, designed specifically to overwhelm logic and reason. An emotion that is already blinding you to the simple and obvious truth: she is going to die and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
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| Television Man |
Neo had expected to find the Source when he opened the door, but instead finds the lonely Creator God within himself, like Geppetto within the belly of the whale. Truman Burbank, too, is reunited with the Father he believed to be drowned ("fear death by water," etc.).
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| Osiris is a black God |
In this parody of the Matrix scene, we see George Carlin (GC) as Ground Control/Galactic Center, the Architect of the Matrix. He is a lonely Creator God, who has only his chair ("Isis" being a word for "throne") for companionship. His daughter went insane and drowned in the well on the family farm (another vegetation sacrifice). The "videotape" is the eternal record of her death that constitutes our Matrix.The Architect: It's very lonely in here. Ergo, I haven't been with anyone in a very long time, not counting myself. Or this chair. [...] My wife and I wanted a child, but she couldn't get pregnant. Neither could I. [...] We loved our daughter very much, but she was evil. Made the horses crazy. Killed our puppies. Hid the remote. Really sick shit. My wife took her to the old family farm and drowned her in the well.
And how apropos, then, that it is George Carlin who guides KeaNeo to become his Messiah (one of the "Two Great Ones") in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
George Carlin introduces himself beneath the Circle K, the Kore Kosmou--the Father guards the Mother.
Further telling is that KeaNeo travels back to ancient Greece to meet Socrates, the narrator of the Allegory of the Cave in Plato's Republic.
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| "Tell me about your mother, Neo." |
Bill and Ted are also both infatuated with Bill's stepmother, which adds an Oedipal dimension to everything that KeaNeo will revisit later. To return to our Fallen Star:
"What does this have to do with aliens?" Everything, of course--Roswell being the "Rose Well" where the Star fell into matter. (2001 is about Ancient Astronauts, but perhaps not in the way you think.) Paris is also known as a Rose, and it is here that the Eiffel ("Eye Fell") Tower appears, also known as the Iron Lady. It also happens to be the site of Princess Diana's death (Diana Nemorensis--the goddess of the Holy Wood).
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| Jacob's Ladder |
Beneath the Tree of the Hanged Man we find the Dick in a Box, another Gift of the First Father (the hermaphrodite Adam Kadmon) who sacrificed himself to create the world. (The symbolism of the "candy cane" is too obvious to need explanation.)
The Santa Clause: Because the Father God has "fallen" to his death (Santa = Satan, AKA Old Nick--demon est deus inversus), Tim Allen becomes the Father by default. ("I've gotta get married?") Children all eventually discover that Santa Claus was only ever their parents.
In some old Tarot Keys the shield bears the letters .V.T, written with the periods at the left of the letters, to show that they are to be read, like Hebrew, from right to left. So read, they spell the Hebrew word TV, Tav. This is the name of the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. To an occultist this conveys the same fundamental idea as the lingam-yoni, because the original character fot Tav was a cross, combining the vertical masculine line, with the feminine horizontalm like the cross on the breast of the High Priestess. (Paul Foster Case)
The Charioteer is trapped inside of a TV (idiot box)--the Tru Man Show. It is supremely interesting to note that The Truman Show opens with Truman standing in front of his Chariot, accosted by a black and white spotted dog, just as is seen on the Rider-Waite-Smith card. Within the Macrocosm, the "Dick in a Box" is a Chick in a Box, Spirit imprisoned and torn upon the wheels of space and time. Within the Microcosm, it is the impotent creative power of the individual.
[O]ur prince assumes the role of both Punch and Judy in the pocket theatre he chooses to call his life . . . the two faces embedded in the shoulders . . . are the standard masks for tragedy and comedy, identifying his reign as a drama of his own composition. (Mark Patrick Hederman)We see, then, that as we inhabit the Sphere of Generation, it is sex that ultimately exerts the most fundamental control over our lives. On the Chariot card we see the Charioteer encased within a cube, the original Dick in a Box. The cubic stone is the Kybrick of the alchemists. The Chariot embodies the paradox of sex as method both of enslavement (the pillow with which Jacob slumbers) and liberation--the Kybrick (like the films of Stanley Kubrick) serves a transformative function as the Philosopher's Stone, but only if its inner meaning is apprehended, allowing one to peer "through" the dark outward form of the movie (the Outer Church), the shadows on the wall of the Sphere of Generation, in order to recover the inner gold (the Inner Church).
In The Prestige and the Costa Concordia incident (these both seem to have an equal level of reality), we saw girls trapped inside boxes (or is that televisions?) by negligent magicians. Noah is the ship captain of the Ark (of Salvation); he is drunk and curses Ham (Hamlet) for uncovering his nakedness.
Television is a microcosm of our reality. The Alchemists said that all mysteries can be perceived within the Mirror of Nature, which is an open book. We now perceive these same mysteries on television and in the movie theater--Plato's Cave. But our reality is more of a horror movie than the idyllic Garden depicted in The Truman Show. (New Jersey, the Garden State, is really an absolute shithole.)
"The beams become my dream / My dream is on the screen"
"Max, it's that time again. Time to slowly, painfully ease yourself back into consciousness. No, I'm not a dream, although I've been told I'm a vision of loveliness."
The film Videodrome is highly suggestive in this area, and can only make sense by interpreting it as an esoteric narrative. At the beginning of the film, Max (James Woods) has begun dating Nicki (Debbie Harry), the scarlet woman. During their first fateful coniunctio he shows her a videotape of Videodrome, a television show, possibly real, consisting of nothing but women being raped and tortured, with no discernible plot.
This is an allegorical depiction of the "rape" of Spirit by the shadows of matter. (There is a certain obvious parallel with our own "real horrorshow" of day-to-day life.) Nicki, like Persephone, becomes entranced by the program--she is herself a masochist, and announces her intention to appear on Videodrome--that is, inside of the TV set. For Purity, the only true thrill can be in being defiled--"Let Mary inviolate be torn upon wheels."
This, again, is the repetition of the Macrocosmic Mystery, when Spirit becomes entranced by Generation to descend into the willing bondage of the elements, represented by the tortured and enslaved women shown on the Videodrome broadcast. Nicki Brand thus metaphorically falls into the TV set, i.e. into the Sphere of Generation and the never-ending shadowplay (Mystery Play) of existence.
I brought my baby home, she, she sat around forlorn
She saw my T V C one five, baby's gone, she
She crawled right in, oh my
She crawled right in my
So hologramic, oh my T V C one five
Oh, so demonic, oh my T V C one five
Maybe if I pray every, each night I sit there pleading
"Send back my dream test baby, she's my main feature"
My T V C one five, he, he just stares back unblinking
So hologramic, oh my T V C one five
One of these nights I may just
Jump down that rainbow way. be with my baby, then
We'll spend some time together
So hologramic, oh my T V C one five
My baby's in there someplace, love's rating in the sky
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| ("Remember Moses Morales?") |
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| "I am my father's screen." |
Seeking answers, Max travels to the Cathode Ray Mission to meet Brian O'Blivion, whom he discovers is dead--the very first victim of Videodrome. Brian is the drowned and sacrificed First Father. His office is adorned with religious imagery, confirming this interpretation of Brian as meant to represent God who, as Nietzsche reminded us, ist tot--trapped within Videodrome, his own creation. The Temple is empty. His daughter Bianca (a dark but faithful girl) keeps alive his memory through video recordings--it is not good for the profane to know the nakedness of the Most High. Videodrome causes brain tumors--that is, it drives the viewer insane (Izzi in The Fountain, too, has a brain tumor).
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| "I was Videodrome's first victim." |
Max is given a videotape that further confirms Brian O'Blivion's identification with the Hanged Man, where we see him hanged by Nicki herself. This, too, is part of Max's initiation--a visual demonstration of the sacrifice he must make.
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| Kali? |
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| Max offers Nicki his head (decapitation motif--"J'ai baise ta bouche, Jokanaan") |
The recording (a sort of "ghost" or simulacrum) of Nicki now beckons him to follow her into the TV set. This is the repetition of the original Macrocosmic Mystery in the Microcosm, in which Max, as a type of Narcissus perceiving his own reflection, descends into the darkness of Hades within to rescue his very Self. Though Nicki is absent from him, she at the same time will act as his initiator (High Priestess of the Suicide Temple), as do all of the women in the film.
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| Personally I feel a bit violated |
Max must still contend with the Architect of the Matrix, the creator of Videodrome, Barry Convex, who symbolically is head of an eyeglasses company--the Eye in the Pyramid. He, in his role as Hierophant of the Outer Church, gives Max the Videodrome tape, hoping to drive him mad with its dark mysteries. He wants Max and other "lowlifes" to be punished for their sins--the sin of having watched Videodrome in the first place, the very sin of being human. (This is the negative side of Shutter Island--despite Dr. Cawley's insistence that his methods are the most humane, the "role play" is really a colossal mindfuck.) Max, as with our protagonists in The Box, becomes trapped in a strange, hallucinatory purgatory.
This is strangely paralleled in the plot of Mystery Science Theater 3000, where the hapless protagonist Mike (Major Tom), as an inhabitant of Plato's Cave, is subjected to the worst movies in existence by the mad scientists (Ground Control) who dwell at the center of the earth (V.I.T.R.I.O.L.). But Dr. Forrester, like the Gnostic Demiurge, only thinks he's in charge--it's actually Pearl who calls the shots.
When Max rends the veil of the (Cathode Ray) Temple, he sees a recorded image of Nicki's primordial death within Videodrome, the Sphere of Generation.
Bianca O'Blivion: They killed her, Max. They killed Nicki Brand. She died on Videodrome. They used her image to seduce you but she was already dead. Don't back away. I stole it from them just for you to see. Videodrome is death. [...] It's always painful to remove the cassette... and change the programme. But now that we have... you'll see that you've become something quite different. You've become the video word made flesh.
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| "Your head. I got your head in this box." |
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| "I'm here to guide you, Max." |
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| Piercing through the false reality of the television screen |
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| Death is the road to awe |
Max in the Microcosm, like Nicki in the Macrocosm, was seduced by the Image (Maya) within himself to enter into Videodrome--into Hades. (To clarify: In the Macrocosm, Hades is the world; in the Micrcosm, it is body and soul.)
To complete the Great Work and put on the New Flesh of incorruption, he must duplicate her original sacrifice. She has demonstrated the Macrocosmic Mystery as part of his initiation, and he must demonstrate it in the Microcosm. (Long Live the New Flesh.)
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| (Obligatory) |
In Revolutionary Road, Alice Wheeler (Kate Winslet) is an actress trapped inside of a bad play. (Another girl in a box--this seems like an important point.) The "Wheeler" family is trapped within the eternal Wheel of Dharma (or, the Chariot's wheels). Alice, as a sort of High Priestess figure, acts as her husband Frank's (Leo DiCaprio) Initiator, pushing him (unsuccessfully) to abandon his dead-end job and travel to Paris (the site of the Fall--a figurative pilgrimage to Mecca) in order to find Self.
Sophia is the youngest of the Aeons. Observing the multitude of Aeons and the power of begetting them, she hurries back into the depth of the Father, and seeks to emulate him by producing offspring without conjugal intercourse, but only projects an abortion, a formless substance. Upon this she is cast out of Pleroma and into the primal sub-stratum of matter. In the Valentinian systems, the fall of Sophia appears in double guise. The higher Sophia still remains within the upper world after creating a disturbance, and after her expiation and repentance; but her premature offspring, Sophia Achamoth, is removed from the Pleroma, and becomes the heroine of the rest of the drama. This fallen Sophia becomes a world creative power. ("Valentinianism")
Her death is the final stage of his initiation, a duplication of Sophia's creation of the world in the Gnostic mythos--she has an abortion and bleeds onto the carpet--her blood feeds the earth. This event was explicitly described as both a "fall" and an "abortion" (ectroma), symbolizing the unfinished state of creation.
Orpheus says that the vivific cause of partible natures (i.e. Proserpine), while she remained on high, weaving the order of celestials, was a nymph, as being undefiled; and in consequence of this connected with Jupiter and abiding in her appropriate manners; but that, proceeding from her proper habitation, she left her webs unfinished, was ravished; having been ravished, was married; and that being married, she generated in order that she might animate things which have an adventitious life. For the unfinished state of her web indicates, I think, that the universe is imperfect or unfinished, as far as to perpetual animals (i.e., the universe would be imperfect if nothing inferior to the celestial Gods was produced). Hence Plato says, that the one Demiurgus calls on the many Demiurgi to weave together the mortal and immortal natures; after a manner reminding us, that the addition of the mortal genera is the perfection of the textorial life of the universe, and also exciting our recollection of the divine Orphic fable, and affording us interpretative causes of the unfinished webs of Proserpine. (Proclus)
And it is now Christ, in Gnostic eschatology, who is charged with finishing her work (Izzi's unfinished book) and returning Sophia's stolen power. Sophia, as the World-Soul, has become the barren Maya, goddess of an imperfect and unreal universe, and must be transformed into the fertile Maria. "Maria is simply Maia with the solar R in her womb."
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| Infinity in reflection |
Thus we can now synthesize several disparate strands and films. Tommy in The Fountain is traveling to the "Mayan" underworld, "Maya" being the shade of Izzi (Angela Dodson, the dark twin in Constantine). Izzi as Persephone/Narcissus sees the Mayan underworld as herself reflected in the waters of the dark mother (Maya), and Tommy (that is, the mask of Izzi herself) descends into Hades to rescue her (his own soul).
This is Kirsten Dunst seeing Melancholia (another planet of darkness that is paradoxically the New Earth--Maya and Maria), which is really herself. Rachel Weisz as Angela similarly sends John Constantine to rescue her twin sister Isabel from Hades.
And Neo in The Matrix meets with Persephone herself, bride of the Merovingian.
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| The World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky |
Truman Burbank symbolically pierces and impregnates the World Egg (the feminine ship now becoming a masculine phallus) at the end of The Truman Show, stepping through the very Monolith-resonating stargate into a new life.
Dave Bowman (a Space Oddity) travels to the Monolith, the Black Stone of the Great Mother, the Silver Screen, in order to impregnate Kybrick's (the Father's) play (the Mirror of Nature) and turn Maya into Maria.
Tyler Durden (Ferrous Bueller, the Sausage King, the God of Nature, Thomas Hobbes) is the projectionist, the Father God, who impregnates Maya with his ideas--the Architect of the Matrix.
"Actually, you're fucking Marla, but it's all the same to her."
The Matrix is Bellatrix Lestrange (Bella Tricks = Ma-Tricks = Matrix) in Harry Potter, played by Helena Bonham Carter (Marla Singer in Fight Club), the dark Maya.
("Dusty frames that still arrive die in 1955")
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| The Child of the Aeon |
Neo in The Matrix Revolutions has to go to the Source (the Borg Queen) and sacrifice himself (spill his blood into the dark mother's cup), thus transforming the Matrix into a New Earth--turning Maya back into Maria. The fact that the Matrix is not destroyed would seem to contradict the entire theme of the previous films--but this is not a literal narrative.
At the end of Dark City, the hero transforms the Rocky Horror Picture Show (run by Riff-Raff) into the New Earth. And this seems to hold the explanation for the rest. The Image is redeemed.
Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images. The world will not receive truth in any other way. There is a rebirth and an image of rebirth. It is certainly necessary to be born again through the image. Which one? Resurrection. The image must rise again through the image. The bridal chamber and the image must enter through the image into the truth: this is the restoration. (The Gospel of Philip)
Madonna and MIA
Maria and Maya
M.I.A. was born in Hounslow, London to Arul Pragasam, an engineer, writer and activist, and his wife, Kala, a seamstress, her parents are Hindu and of Sri Lankan Tamil descent. The couple had two daughters in the UK in the 1970s, Mathangi ("Maya") and Kali, both named after two of the Mahavidyas, the ten Tantric goddess deities in Hinduism.
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| Madonna Enthroned |
"Our Lady of Sirius"?
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| Isis raising Osiris |
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| Sea Low Green Man (fear death by water, Osiris) |
(Mirrored?)
"I think I'm falling out of the sky"
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| Maya catches Maria |
"You have all the L-U-V / I gave you everything you need (now move!) / Now it's up to Y-O-U"
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| The CLUB slays the God that his head may be offered on a DISC |
(The High Priestess of the Suicide Temple demands that her LVX be returned to her)
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| Give Me All Your LUX |
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| Las Tres Marias |
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| An Underworld invitation |
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| Into the Underworld (life is a Mystery) |
| The Lost Sheep |
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| The lamb slain from the foundation of the world |
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| (John Granger) |
Lambda (uppercase Λ, lowercase λ; Greek: Λάμβδα or Λάμδα, lamda or lamtha) is the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet.("Lambda")
Again, we find the fall of the twelfth Aeon, Sophia, indicated in the alphabet; for Λ, which arithmetically denotes 30, the number of the Aeons, is only the eleventh letter in the alphabet. But it set about to seek another like itself, and so the next letter is M, or ΛΛ. ("Marcosians")
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| "Maya (stylised as /\/\ /\ Y /\) is the third studio album by British-Tamil recording artist M.I.A." |
(Maya's bird in a box)
While the mystic symbolism of Freemasonry decrees that the apron shall be a simple square of white lambskin with appropriate flap, Masonic aprons are frequently decorated with curious and impressive figures. . . . Those not raised to spiritual life by initiation are described as "dead from the sting of a scorpion," for they wander in the night side of divine power. Through the mystery of the Paschal Lamb, or the attainment of the Golden Fleece, these soul are raised into the constructive day Power of Mars in Aries--the symbol of the Creator.
When worn over the area related to the animal passions, the pure lambskin signifies the regeneration of the procreative forces and their consecration to the service of the Deity. (Manly P. Hall)
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| The Snitch (she's full of secrets) |
And a soldier with a spear pierced his side; and thereforth there came out blood and water. This Wine, collected by the Beloved Disciple and the Virgin-Mother, waiting beneath the Cross or Tree for that purpose, in a Cup or Chalice; this is the Holy Grail or Sangreal (Sangraal) of Monsalvat, the Mountain of Salvation. [Grail (gréal) actually means a dish: O.F. graal, greal, grasal, probably corrupted from late Latin gradale, itself a corrupt form of crater, a bowl.]
